{"id":2799,"date":"2013-01-16T13:10:23","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T13:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alchemy1977.wordpress.com\/?p=1603"},"modified":"2015-10-16T10:59:39","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T09:59:39","slug":"corman-king-of-the-b-movie-to-revisit-poe-master-of-the-macabre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/2013\/01\/corman-king-of-the-b-movie-to-revisit-poe-master-of-the-macabre\/","title":{"rendered":"Corman, King of the B-Movie, to Revisit Poe, Master of the Macabre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>It\u2019s no secret that we\u2019re big fans of Edgar Allan Poe \u2013 the 19th Century author whose Romantic visions of melancholy and madness helped define Gothic \u2013 here at Alchemy. So it was exciting to hear the news that the B-movie legend Roger Corman, who made his name adapting Poe, is planning to revisit the author\u2019s work. Corman\u2019s been in the film business for sixty years now, during which time he\u2019s directed more than fifty features and produced well over 300 more. While he\u2019s best known for shooting his films faster and cheaper than the competition, Corman\u2019s also noted for fostering young talent. Directors such as James Cameron and Francis Ford Coppola and stars like Jack Nicholson and Robert de Niro were given breaks and learnt their respective crafts on Corman productions.<\/p>\n

After a number of tacky 50s drive-in flicks \u2013 like Swamp Women and Attack of the Crab Monsters \u2013 it was Corman\u2019s Poe adaptations of 1960-64 that established the man himself as more than a Hollywood hack, but a director gifted with vision as well as speed (though with eight Poe movies in just four years, he was hardly slacking!). The films also established Vincent Price, already respected as a charismatic character actor, as cinema\u2019s suave master of menace. Made in the wake of the popularity and profitability of the pioneering period horror films from the UK\u2019s Hammer studios, Corman\u2019s Poe pictures focused on creating an atmosphere of creeping insanity and decadent perversity in a historic setting, thrilling and unsettling audiences and critics alike, and establishing them as classics of the genre. <\/p>\n

\"tomb_of_ligeia_poster_01\"<\/a>Hollywood history is perhaps repeating itself, as Corman has returned to Poe just after Hammer has risen from the grave with the huge success of their adaptation of the Victorian ghost story, The Woman in Black, last year. This time, Corman will produce rather than direct, with a production schedule that mirrors the order of his original Poe adaptations of five decades ago. So, House of Usher will be followed by The Pit and the Pendulum, then Premature Burial, Tales of Terror, The Raven, The Haunted Palace, The Masque of the Red Death and, finally, The Tomb of Ligeia. (Though, as horror pedants are fond of observing, The Haunted Palace was actually adapted from a story by horror author H.P. Lovecraft.)<\/p>\n

\u201cNow being able to do them in 3D and with a lot of computer graphics, we can do things we never dreamed of doing before,\u201d Corman told The Hollywood Reporter recently. While he plans on bringing the technical aspects of his productions up-to-date, Corman has no intention of tailoring the films to recent trends towards brutality and torture in the horror genre. \u201cPoe always worked with the unconscious mind, and there\u2019s a lot of fantasy,\u201d explained Corman, who employed some of Freud\u2019s psychological theories to give the original adaptations uncanny resonance. The only thing that remains is for \"House<\/a> the filmmaker to find another actor capable of replicating the \u201csensitivity and neuroticism\u201d that the incomparable Vincent Price brought to the original productions.<\/p>\n

While we\u2019re as suspicious as most film fans of the flood of remakes, re-imaginings and straight rip-offs emerging from Hollywood these days, we can\u2019t help feeling a little excited over this. We won\u2019t be able to judge whether Corman can recapture the Gothic magic of his originals till House of Usher comes out in a year or so. In the mean time, perhaps you\u2019d care to join us in continuing to obsess over Poe himself. To assist your moonlit meditations, we can offer a range of designs dedicated to America\u2019s master of the melancholy and macabre, featuring such items as the Nevermore fob watch (in tribute to Poe\u2019s poem \u2018The Raven\u2019) and the Vulture\u2019s Eye belt buckle (inspired by his haunting story \u2018The Tell-Tale Heart\u2019) www.alchemyengland.com\/buy<\/a>
\n\"poeimage\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no secret that we\u2019re big fans of Edgar Allan Poe \u2013 the 19th Century author whose Romantic visions of melancholy and madness helped define Gothic \u2013 here at Alchemy. So it was exciting to hear the news that the B-movie legend Roger Corman, who made his name adapting Poe, is planning to revisit the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[323,324,325,326],"class_list":["post-2799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-edgar-allan-poe","tag-house-of-usher","tag-roger-corman","tag-tomb-of-ligeia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2799"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6261,"href":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions\/6261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alchemyengland.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}