Extraordinary Tales (2015)

EXTRAORDINARY TALES  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Raul Garcia
Five Edgar Allan Poe stories, efficiently told with animation and connected by an ongoing graveyard conversation between Poe (as a raven) and Death. Christopher Lee narrates "The Fall of the House of Usher". It was one of the last things he did. Bela Lugosi does "The Tell-Tale Heart". It's a very old recording by Lugosi, and the filmmakers have done nothing to clean up the sound, leaving all the pops and hisses and scratches intact. It's a nice effect. Julian Sands reads "The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar", in which the character telling the story looks (no accident) like Vincent Price. Guillermo del Toro takes over for "The Pit and the Pendulum", and "The Masque of the Red Death" is wordless, except for one line, spoken by, appropriately enough, Roger Corman. Poe's concise, morbid tales are ideally suited to Garcia's approach, and the director obviously has a deep appreciation not just for Poe, but for Corman's adaptations from 50 years ago. Edgar himself would like this one, I think.