An Evening with Edgar Allen Poe

When Vincent Price, the famous horror actor was asked which of his films he liked most, he named a little known one, scarcely one hour long. I have found and posted here the full film, its title is "An Evening with Edgar Allen Poe" (1972), and is a one man act of four of Poe's short stories. For Price, who had his roots in theatre, this indeed seems a very good means to show his talent of acting as the dramatic narrator of the stories. Poe had the talent to convey an atmosphere in his few pages long stories, all being very visual and filled with suspense. The first of the short stories thus filmed is one of his most highly regarded ones, an example piece of Gothic fiction and also one of my personal favourites, "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843). The story is of a man who tries to convince us not to take him mad while he explains the terrible circumstances why the reader may think he is. He thus relates his crime while slowly his explanations are mingled with sincere outbursts of memories and feelings he has been trying to avoid by applying the disguise of rationality. The next, "The Sphynx" (1850) is a game with perception and should I say deception. The narrator is on a visit when he starts to observe a strange creature, sees more and more details of it until he is able to identify it. "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) offers a similar narration to that in The Tell-Tale Heart, a story of revenge over an insult from a friend, but unlike the Heart, the memories don't seem to haunt the narrator. "The Pit And The Pendelum" (1842) is a story of a man thrown at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. In this final piece we learn of the refined torture methods used by the Inquisition. All these I liked as they are the unaltered stories of Poe delivered by one of the finest actors of Poe's genre at his best. The whole thing is POEtic...