Grindhouse Gothic: Roger Corman Directs Edgar Allan Poe

Grindhouse Gothic: Roger Corman Directs Edgar Allan Poe

11 Episodes

When exploitation cinema’s most visionary impresario took on American literature’s greatest horror writer, it was a match made in hell. Having honed his knack for genre filmmaking with the string of B movies he produced fast and cheap for American International Pictures in the 1950s, Roger Corman began one of the most artistically ambitious projects of his heroic career with a series of brilliantly inventive, hair-raising adaptations of stories by Edgar Allan Poe. These menacing and macabre films, produced between 1960 and 1964, found Corman experimenting with color, lighting, and art direction in sometimes avant-garde ways to achieve their otherworldly gothic atmosphere. They also cemented the immortality of genre legend Vincent Price, who, as star of seven of the eight films, tore into the scenery with diabolical relish.

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Grindhouse Gothic: Roger Corman Directs Edgar Allan Poe

11 Episodes

  • Grindhouse Gothic Teaser
    01:03
    Grindhouse Gothic Teaser
    Episode 1

    Grindhouse Gothic Teaser

    Episode 1

  • Roger Corman in Conversation
    23:54
    Roger Corman in Conversation
    Episode 2

    Roger Corman in Conversation

    Episode 2

    The trailblazing filmmaker on a lifetime of moviegoing

  • Roger Corman on THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
    05:03
    Roger Corman on THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
    Episode 3

    Roger Corman on THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

    Episode 3

  • House of Usher
    1:22:26
    House of Usher
    Episode 4

    House of Usher

    Episode 4

    Directed by Roger Corman • 1960 • United States
    Starring Vincent Price, Mark Damon, Myrna Fahey

    Roger Corman’s celebrated cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations begins here. Convinced that his family’s blood is tainted by generations of evil, Roderick Usher (Vincent Price) is hell-bent on destroyi...

  • The Pit and the Pendulum
    1:20:37
    The Pit and the Pendulum
    Episode 5

    The Pit and the Pendulum

    Episode 5

    Directed by Roger Corman • 1961 • United States
    Starring Vincent Price, John Kerr, Barbara Steele

    Happily-ever-after goes under the knife in this unforgettable horror classic, a saga of murder, madness, and forbidden desire based on one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most diabolical tales. Haunted by the ...

  • The Premature Burial
    1:21:20
    The Premature Burial
    Episode 6

    The Premature Burial

    Episode 6

    Directed by Rorger Corman • 1962 • United States
    Starring Ray Milland, Hazel Court, Richard Ney

    The only one of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations not to star Vince Price, this ghoulish tale of murder and suspense casts Ray Milland as a painter whose obsessive fear of being buried alive ...

  • Tales of Terror
    1:28:44
    Tales of Terror
    Episode 7

    Tales of Terror

    Episode 7

    Directed by Roger Corman • 1962 • United States
    Starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone

    A collection of stories by Edgar Allan Poe provides the basis for this triptych of tension. In “Morella,” Vincent Price is haunted by the spirit of his dead wife, who inhabits the body of his daug...

  • The Haunted Palace
    1:27:12
    The Haunted Palace
    Episode 8

    The Haunted Palace

    Episode 8

    Directed by Roger Corman • 1963 • United States
    Starring Vincent Price, Debra Paget, Lon Chaney Jr.

    In 1765, a young village girl is seen wandering off toward the shadowy mansion of Joseph Curwen (Vincent Price) and is later found in a strange trance. The angry villagers storm the estate and the...

  • The Raven
    1:25:52
    The Raven
    Episode 9

    The Raven

    Episode 9

    Directed by Roger Corman • 1963 • United States
    Starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff

    Scream legends Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff play rival magicians whose paths cross when Dr. Craven (Price) hears Dr. Bedlo (Lorre) tap-tap-tapping on his windowpane. You see, Bedlo...

  • The Masque of the Red Death
    1:30:27
    The Masque of the Red Death
    Episode 10

    The Masque of the Red Death

    Episode 10

    Directed by Roger Corman • 1964 • United States, United Kingdom
    Starring Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher

    The seventh of Roger Corman’s eight celebrated Edgar Allan Poe adaptations is perhaps the most eerily effective and visually remarkable of the bunch, thanks in part to the striking cin...

  • The Tomb of Ligeia
    1:21:46
    The Tomb of Ligeia
    Episode 11

    The Tomb of Ligeia

    Episode 11

    Directed by Roger Corman • 1964 • United Kingdom
    Starring Vincent Price, Elizabeth Shepherd, John Westbrook

    In the culmination of Roger Corman’s Poe cycle, the legendary Vincent Price plays a man so haunted by his past that he is unable to function in the present. His now-deceased first wife Lig...

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