I was contacted by Leila who wondered if I had given thought to the potential vampire aspects of the segment Morella in the 1962 Roger Corman vehicle Tales of Terror. In truth it was one of Corman’s Poe themed films I had not seen and so it seemed like a mighty fine excuse to watch it, if nothing else. After all this was a film with an exceptional genre cast – with Vincent Price front and centre in all three segments and Peter Lorre (M) and Basil Rathbone (Queen of Blood, the Magic Sword & Madhouse) supporting in a segment each. The screenplay was by Peter Matheson.
However, before I look at the film I wanted to just touch on interpretations of Poe’s story, which was published in 1835. In the Forlorn Demon (1953) Allen Tate made an observation regarding “Poe's heroines—Berenice, Ligeia, Madeline, Morella, {who} with the curious exception of the abstemious Eleanora—are ill-disguised vampires”. Indeed, I have looked at the Fall of the House of Usher, from whence Madeline comes, for it’s play with vampire tropes. Twitchell likens Morella to a lamia (which he ties into the vampire myth) mentioning her cold hands and almost mesmeric eyes.
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| Locke's House |
The story has Morella die, in childbirth, leaving the unnamed narrator with a child who he does not name (until the story climax) but who, as she grows, looks more and more like her mother. It is clear in the original that the narrator was tied to his wife but not in love (indeed she repulsed him eventually) but doted upon his daughter. Not so in the film, which begins with the now adult (26-years old) daughter, Lenora (Maggie Pierce), returning to the family home to visit her father Locke (Vincent Price). She arrives at night and the coachman has to return to Boston, so she dismisses him thinking her father’s servants will help with her luggage.
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| Lenora arrives |
However, no-one answers the door and she lets herself in. The inside of the mansion is festooned with cobwebs and no-one answers her calls. In the dinning hall the remains of a feast are buried in the dust of years and cobwebs aplenty (and a large spider to make the heroine scream). The kitchen is in marginally better shape. She finds her father and we hear that he has had no contact with her, bar paying for her tuition, having sent her away. She wanted to see him and he retorts that she has and should leave. On his own he speaks (to Morella (Leona Gage)) and says that her murderer has returned.
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| Morella mumified |
Eventually truths start to emerge. The mummified corpse of Morella lies upon a bed – Locke unable to bear the thought of her buried in the earth. It also transpires that Lenore is dying, hence wanting to reconcile and her father quickly softens. In the story the narrator gives the child Morella’s name at baptism, when she is ten, and the child dies as he seems to hear the mother, from her tomb, say “I am here!” He then carries her to the vault to find the corpse of Morella gone. Tate suggests, “that the daughter is no real daughter but, as Morella's empty "tomb" reveals, Morella herself come back as a vampire to wreak upon her "lover"”
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| spectral touch |
In this film, as father and daughter reconcile and Locke says “You have come home at last”, we hear the spectral voice of Morella say “At Last!” and see the complexion of the corpse change from mummified to something more lifelike. Lenore goes to bed and we see a shadowy spectral form of Morella leave her corpse and move through the house. I was reminded of the folkloric theory of the vampire actually remaining in its grave and its spirit wandering the neighbourhood. It reaches out to Lenora who screams. When Locke gets there she dies, but then breaths again after a moment, only to pass again. He covers her up but she makes a noise, he moves the sheet but the blonde Lenora is now the brunette Morella. Running back to the room where Morella’s corpse had lain, he sees Lenora now mummified on the bed…
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| Locke and Morella |
It is easy to see, given the connection previously made by academics between Poe’ story and vampirism, how some tropes could stray into this. In this Morella has waited to return to avenge herself – not only on the child she blamed for killing her but also Locke, who she strangles as the house burns around them – as Tate suggested the returned Morella “{wreaking} upon her lover” though the narrator survives and Locke is killed. In this, it should also be noted, Locke adored his wife, she went unburied as he couldn’t bear to be parted and rather than doting on the child, he sent her away hating the one who had murdered his wife. Thus, Morella is the restless dead and she appears to need Lenora’s life to come back. Whilst she seems to possess the body, it does physically transform (and swap clothing, it should be noted) and the corpse takes on Lenora’s form – one might argue she has literally taken her daughter’s life so she might live. This lasts until her revenge is wreaked and she falls, becoming Lenora once more.
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| hypnotised at the point of death |
I also want to mention the segment The Case of M. Valdemar, where Price plays the titular character – a dying man who has turned to the sinister Carmichael (Basil Rathbone), a mesmerist, to help manage his pain on condition that he allows Carmichael to hypnotise him at the point of death. This occurs and then Carmichael holds him in a state between life and death (despite the voice of Valdemar begging for release). I mention this because this reminded me of the Bloodthirsty Doll, which was released in 1970, in which the vampire is created by hypnotising her whilst dying.
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| ambulatory and rotting |
The other thing to mention is that in this the state is kept for some time (we have an establishing shot showing a passage from rain to snow), though in Poe’s The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845) we are told directly that death had been arrested for nearly 7 months. In the film, however, Valdemar is able to get up and attack Carmichael to defend his widow (Debra Paget) rotting as he moves towards him. In the story, released by the mesmerist, we graphically get, “within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk -- crumbled -- absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome -- of detestable putridity.” A literary prototype for vampiric rapid decay in cinema, well over a century later.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK
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