Midnite Movies Double Feature: Tales of Terror / Twice Told Tales

Tales of Terror (1962, 89 minutes): This triple treat of terror is a three-episode treat dripping with murder, necrophilia, live burials, zombies and the terrifying performances of some of horror's greatest spooks - Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone - resulting in nothing less than "juicy entertainment" and "spine-chilling cinema" (Cue)!

Twice Told Tales (1963, 120 minutes): It's spine-tingling terror...in triplicate! "Virtuoso of horror" (Los Angeles Times) Vincent Price dials up the depravity in this spellbinding trilogy of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "all-chiller" (LA Herald-Examiner) classics! Featuring "a demented genius! Poisonous plants! Oozing Blood! (And) a corpse in a wedding gown" (The Film Daily), Twice Told Tales spins three diabolical nightmares of madness, mayhem and murder most foul!

TALES OF TERROR: Three Edgar Allan Poe tales are brought to the screen in this devilishly fun anthology starring the great Vincent Price. The first, "Morella," finds a young woman (Maggie Pierce) visiting her father (Price) at their now-crumbling castle, where his mourning of her dead mother, Morella (Leona Gage), has taken on grim dimensions. The middle tale is a darkly comic adaptation of "The Black Cat" (with Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" woven in) that stars Peter Lorre as a drunken scoundrel who walls his wife (Joyce Jameson) and her lover (Price) up in his basement...alive. "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar" costars Basil Rathbone as a scheming doctor who uses hypnotism to keep his terminally ill patient (Price again) conscious after death. Part of a series of atmospheric Poe adaptations made in the 1960s by King of the Bs Roger Corman, TALES OF TERROR is presented in rich, moody color, with the stories linked by ominous narration and the pulse of a beating heart. The lyrical script is by Richard Matheson. Corman enjoyed working with Lorre in the comedic middle segment and tried a similar approach with the next film in the series, THE RAVEN.

TWICE TOLD TALES: Vincent Price stars in this trio of thrillers based on stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Titles include: "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," where Dr. Heidegger becomes involved in an attempt to give his friends back their youth. In "Rappaccini's Daughter," Rappaccini traps his daughter in the garden with regular doses of poison. Lastly, one brother frames another for murder when they inherit a large house in "The House of the Seven Gables."