The final AIP "Poe" film is a shambling, near-incoherent mess that bears little resemblence to anything Poe did. The plot involves a French theatre troupe being picked off one by one by a supposedly-dead man as revenge for what was done to him many years earlier. The troupe are putting on a bastardized version of Poe's story that owes more to the 1932 film with Bela Lugosi, and borrows heavily from the 1943 film "PHANTOM OF THE OPERA", which itself was a totally-bastardized adaptation of that classic story.
Director Gordon Hessler, in an interview, says he felt audiences were so familiar with Poe's simple murder mystery that "one cannot adapt it as a film" and had to "do something different". I call B***S*** on this. To me, this film should have had a different title.
Apparently, before its release, AIP drastically re-edited the thing, removed 11 minutes, moved several scenes around, and tinted several "dream" sequences so as to remove the intended vagueness & confusion they might cause. On top of that, my local TV channel cut another 2 minutes out, and I'm at a loss to be sure exactly what was cut by AIP and what by the TV station. Either way, the film I've barely been able to put up with for decades is almost completely-incoherent.
Shout Factory's 2016 Blu-Ray (where it's coupled with "THE DUNWICH HORROR") contains the original unreleased director's cut, taken from apparently the only known intact print of it, from before AIP's mutilation. It's a beautiful-looking film-- bright, gorgeous location filming in Spain, looking like no other "Poe" film in existence. But it also drags on at an insanely-leisurely pace as it bounces between long, long stretches of dull tedium and SHOCKING, completely UNCALLED-FOR brutal murders, with people either having acid thrown in their faces or having their throats slashed.
I would rank this as one of the WORST films I've ever watched more than once, and I'm not sure seeing it in a stunning uncut widescreen print helps at all.
Jason Robards plays "Cesar Charron", the head of the stock company, and according to Hessler, realized 2 weeks into shooting he should have asked to play the other main character.
Herbert Lom is "Rene Marot", effectively reprising his role of The Phantom from the 1963 Hammer film, alternating from intelligent, almost-sympathetic leading man to utterly-insane kill-crazy lunatic.
Michael Dunn is "Pierre Triboulet", Marot's polite sidekick, who has perhaps the most amusing line in the film, when he tells someone he descended from royalty: "An ancestor of mine was a court jester!" Clearly, a reference to Poe's story "Hop Frog".
Adolfo Celi is "Inspector Vidocq", who ceaselessly works to track down the perpetrator of the growing number of horrific crimes.
It was only after trying to re-watch my local TV print that I did a bit of research, and ran across something amazing. Reviewer Eric McMillan ("EditorEric_com"), posted, "Poe's creation of his sleuth Dupin is thought to have been based in part on French criminologist Eugène-François Vidocq, credited as the first real-life private detective."
This led me to a LONG biographical article about Vidocq on Wikipedia, where I learned he had a long career as a criminal before switching sides and working for the French police, then organizing the Surete (the undercover security force featured in the 1925 "PHANTOM OF THE OPERA" film!), later still forming the world's first known detective agency, and was the model for at least 3 different authors' detective characters.
Vidocq having resigned from the police TWICE due to incessant harrassment by new, much-younger superiors, would also seem to be the basis for the MUCH-classier, far-more-entertaining 1986 CBS-TV film "MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE" with George C. Scott in the role of "Dupin"!
It also turns out a man named "César Herbaux" was a fellow convict who, along with Vidocq, was convicted of document forgery. I have to assume the writers of the 1971 film named their main character "Cesar" after him!
I still have Steve Haberman's audio commentary to sit through, and I shudder at the thought of watching this thing once again so soon.
Director Gordon Hessler, in an interview, says he felt audiences were so familiar with Poe's simple murder mystery that "one cannot adapt it as a film" and had to "do something different". I call B***S*** on this. To me, this film should have had a different title.
Apparently, before its release, AIP drastically re-edited the thing, removed 11 minutes, moved several scenes around, and tinted several "dream" sequences so as to remove the intended vagueness & confusion they might cause. On top of that, my local TV channel cut another 2 minutes out, and I'm at a loss to be sure exactly what was cut by AIP and what by the TV station. Either way, the film I've barely been able to put up with for decades is almost completely-incoherent.
Shout Factory's 2016 Blu-Ray (where it's coupled with "THE DUNWICH HORROR") contains the original unreleased director's cut, taken from apparently the only known intact print of it, from before AIP's mutilation. It's a beautiful-looking film-- bright, gorgeous location filming in Spain, looking like no other "Poe" film in existence. But it also drags on at an insanely-leisurely pace as it bounces between long, long stretches of dull tedium and SHOCKING, completely UNCALLED-FOR brutal murders, with people either having acid thrown in their faces or having their throats slashed.
I would rank this as one of the WORST films I've ever watched more than once, and I'm not sure seeing it in a stunning uncut widescreen print helps at all.
Jason Robards plays "Cesar Charron", the head of the stock company, and according to Hessler, realized 2 weeks into shooting he should have asked to play the other main character.
Herbert Lom is "Rene Marot", effectively reprising his role of The Phantom from the 1963 Hammer film, alternating from intelligent, almost-sympathetic leading man to utterly-insane kill-crazy lunatic.
Michael Dunn is "Pierre Triboulet", Marot's polite sidekick, who has perhaps the most amusing line in the film, when he tells someone he descended from royalty: "An ancestor of mine was a court jester!" Clearly, a reference to Poe's story "Hop Frog".
Adolfo Celi is "Inspector Vidocq", who ceaselessly works to track down the perpetrator of the growing number of horrific crimes.
It was only after trying to re-watch my local TV print that I did a bit of research, and ran across something amazing. Reviewer Eric McMillan ("EditorEric_com"), posted, "Poe's creation of his sleuth Dupin is thought to have been based in part on French criminologist Eugène-François Vidocq, credited as the first real-life private detective."
This led me to a LONG biographical article about Vidocq on Wikipedia, where I learned he had a long career as a criminal before switching sides and working for the French police, then organizing the Surete (the undercover security force featured in the 1925 "PHANTOM OF THE OPERA" film!), later still forming the world's first known detective agency, and was the model for at least 3 different authors' detective characters.
Vidocq having resigned from the police TWICE due to incessant harrassment by new, much-younger superiors, would also seem to be the basis for the MUCH-classier, far-more-entertaining 1986 CBS-TV film "MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE" with George C. Scott in the role of "Dupin"!
It also turns out a man named "César Herbaux" was a fellow convict who, along with Vidocq, was convicted of document forgery. I have to assume the writers of the 1971 film named their main character "Cesar" after him!
I still have Steve Haberman's audio commentary to sit through, and I shudder at the thought of watching this thing once again so soon.