Twice-Told Tales

Twice-Told Tales (1963)

Runtime: 120 minutes

Directed by: Sidney Salkow

Starring: Vincent Price, Sebastian Cabot, Brett Halsey, Beverly Garland, Richard Denning

From: United Artists

First off, I won’t be watching any films tonight; honestly, things have been exhausting as of late: stressing over the hurricane, bad things happening to people I know (things are fine now), unexpected stressors due to the incompetence of others… I need a night off but hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow. With that out of the way…

This Vincent Price anthology is one I apparently rate higher than many others, but that is OK. This likely won’t be the last anthology I see in October (or maybe even the last Price anthology) yet this is the only one based on two Nathaniel Hawthorne short stories and a truncated version of the novel The House of the Seven Gables. Apparently these are rather loose adaptations although I hadn’t read any of them before so it’s a moot point.

Price not only provides brief narration before and after each segment, he’s the star of each. The two short stories are Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment and Rappaccini’s Daughter. To break it on down:
Experiment takes place during a dark and stormy night; Price and Sebastian Cabot are two old men, the former having lost his bride right before the wedding almost four decades ago, and he never got over it. It’s a great bit of romanticism before the terror begins. Truth be told I went into the film almost completely blind; none of the three plots were known to me whatsoever so I won’t get too detailed in the review. Each segment was around 40 minutes long, meaning there was enough time to tell these twice-told tales.

Rappaccini’s Daughter is the plot which has the most F-ed up dynamics… what I mean is that one person’s behavior is pretty abhorrent if you dwell on it even a bit. RD’s set in Italy, featuring a poisonous plant, not to mention male behavior that by today’s standards would be notated as REALLY toxic. The House of the Seven Gables has a lot going on, all revolving around a house in Salem 150 years after the Salem Witch Trials. That has a bleeding portrait, curses, spirits, family feuds, other squabbles, etc.

All three stories had nice performances, colorful sets, plots that work with each presentation having only a few characters present, fine music, and tales that grabbed me/never let me go. The two hour runtime just flew by as I was invested in this macabre delight. In conclusion, it does actually make me want to read some of Hawthorne’s work, if only for comparison’s sake but also because presumably I would like the cut of his jib.