The Tomb of Ligea

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🎙️ EPISODE 302: 02.05.2021 This is my first foray into the Cormanverse (well technically it's this, but I wasn't aware that I was watching a Corman film at the time). I'm sure I've seen bits of his movies on over-the-air TV in childhood or on late night cable surfing, but I have never sat down to watch a Roger Corman directed movie, of which there are some 50+ (almost all between the years of 1955 and 1970). He's of course better known as "The Pope of Pop Cinema," serving as producer for some 350+ films, mostly low budget and indie affairs. Much of the early 60s, Corman spent helming what's been called "The Poe cycle," a series of adaptions based on the stories of Edgar Allen Poe. These films also marked the beginning of his collaboration with the legendary actor Vincent Price, whom I really only know as an elderly caricature, a sort of ghoulish pop culture meme or concept. I'd never seen him actually act before, I don't believe.

The Tomb of Ligeia is a somewhat obscure title in the Corman/Price fimography–it's predecessor, The Masque of the Red Death (1964), feels much more famous–but in that sense it was the perfect selection for TRUE RANDOM. The Gods of True Random don't care about your feelings, or if you've seen the 'good' movies. This also marked the conclusion of "The Poe cycle." It's a film, and I watched it!

Judging this by modern horror standards isn't fair of course. It isn't scary or even really suspenseful. Our modern brains can't interact with this in the way it was intended when it was originally made and released. Imagine, if you will, a bunch of folks in the mid 60s who paid like 25¢ to get into the theater oohing and ahhing at this. Little did they know about the little red devil who would one day sneak up behind Patrick Wilson...


All that said, this is a perfectly enjoyable film if you can let yourself get into. Shot on location an actual British castle (Castle Acre Priory), it's quite magnificent to look at and Corman clearly has a knack for framing nice shots and crafting an interesting story. And as for that story, "interesting" doesn't necessarily have to equate to "makes sense." LOOSELY based on Poe's short story "Ligea," a fascinatingly dense piece with its own strange history, the movie is a fairly convoluted affair, albeit in the most well-intentioned and–again–intriguing way. From my notes on its ending (major SPOILERS, I suppose, although I can't see how this information would dissuade someone from watching this one way or the other 55 years after the fact):

Lol the ending of this so convoluted. No idea what's going on. ... H dumps the evil wife in the fire. Then good wife comes back as evil wife and he kills her only she then looks like good wife and the other dude carries her out of the tomb then evil wife comes back as a cat and fights him and they burn the whole place down and die in the fire (main guy, cat and bad wife... cat merged back into wife at very end) but only good wife doesn't die she hooks up with the other random dude. Got it.

Ultimately, this was an enjoyable watch for me. And it's peaked my interest as far as the Cormanverse is concerned. So be on the lookout for my ROGER CORMAN DIRECTOR FOCUS wherein I watch and rank every single movie he's either produced and/or directed. COMING NEVER.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 301 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 302B ⫸

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