Tomb of Ligeia
Day 21 of my 31 Days of Horror viewing
For the last few years, I have used October to give myself a viewing assignment: a different horror film each day. Now that I have escaped the real life horror of New Zealand’s public service, I intend to write a piece inspired by each film.
My twenty-first film is Roger Corman’s The Tomb of Ligeia (1965).
The Tomb of Ligeia had been sold to me as the best of Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations with Vincent Price. Unfathomly prolific, Price made six films between the silliness of The Raven, and my favourite of the series, The Masque of the Red Death with all the above released within 1963 and 1964. Even if the amount of time that lapsed is relatively short, Masque and Ligeia (the final film in the series) represent a tangible change in the work.
From the beginning of Ligeia, we are treated to exteriors! These final two films were shot in the UK and Corman makes the most of the locations. From the open fields that would foreshadow later period films like Price’s Witchfinder General to the ruins of Castle Acre Priory and even Stonehenge, this feels so much bigger than many of the earlier movies.
And the location work does not come at the expense of atmosphere. The open spaces of its first half make the second feel so much more claustrophobic. Price plays Verden Fell, an odd widower whose light-sensitivity forces him to wear sunnies outside (making him feel all the more out-of-place in those exteriors). He falls for the beautiful Rowena (Elizabeth Shepherd, one of the best performances by a supporting actress in the series) and the pair quickly marry. As is often the case in gothic romances, it because apparent that Fell may not be over his first wife Ligeia. What’s more, the ‘dead’ Ligeia may not be over him.
Much more naturalistic and restrained than the wizard duels of The Raven or the mugging of Tales of Terror, this is an excellent, moody haunted house film. There’s still comedy here: I lost it in an extended set piece in which Rowena chases the black cat who has stolen Fell’s sunglasses, but it definitely feels tonally closer to the source material. At the end of the day, it is Roger Corman film though and the man couldn’t resist ending the series in a literal blaze of glory.
