TALES OF TERROR (1962)

TALES OF TERROR is a 1961 horror film directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, and Luana Anders. The screenplay by Richard Matheson was loosely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story of the same name. Set in sixteenth-century Spain, the story is about a young Englishman who visits a foreboding castle to investigate his sister's mysterious death. After a series of horrific revelations, apparently ghostly appearances and violent deaths, the young man becomes strapped to the titular torture device by his lunatic brother-in-law during the film's climactic sequence.

The film was the second title in the popular series of Poe adaptations released by American International Pictures, the first having been Corman's House of Usher released the previous year. Like House, the film features widescreen cinematography by Floyd Crosby, sets designed by art director Daniel Haller, and a film score composed by Les Baxter. A critical and box-office hit, Pit's success convinced AIP and Corman to continue adapting Poe stories for another six films, five of them starring Price. The series ended in 1964 with the release of The Tomb of Ligeia.

Film critic Tim Lucas and writer Ernesto Gastaldi have both noted the film's strong influence on numerous subsequent Italian thrillers, from Mario Bava's The Whip and the Body (1963) to Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975). Stephen King has described one of Pit's major shock sequences as being among the most important moments in post-1960 horror film.

PLOT:
In 1547 Spain, Englishman Francis Barnard visits the castle of his brother-in-law, Nicholas Medina, to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his sister, Elizabeth. Nicholas and his younger sister, Catherine, offer a vague explanation that Elizabeth died from a rare blood disorder three months earlier; Nicholas is evasive when Francis asks for specific details. Francis vows not to leave until he discovers the truth behind his sister's death.

Francis again asks about his sister's death during dinner with the family physician, Dr. Leon. Dr. Leon tells him that his sister died of massive heart failure, literally "dying of fright". Francis demands to see where Elizabeth died. Nicholas takes him to the castle's torture chamber. Nicholas reveals that Elizabeth became obsessed with the chamber's torture devices under the influence of the castle's "heavy atmosphere". After becoming progressively unbalanced, she locked herself into an iron maiden, and died after whispering the name "Sebastian" one day. Francis refuses to believe Nicholas's story.

Francis tells Catherine that Nicholas appears to feel "definite guilt" regarding Elizabeth's death. In response, Catherine talks about Nicholas's traumatic childhood. Their father was Sebastian Medina, a notorious agent of the Spanish Inquisition. When Nicholas was a small child, he explored the forbidden torture chamber when his father entered the room with his mother, Isabella, and Sebastian's brother, Bartolome. Hiding in a corner, Nicholas watched in horror as his father repeatedly hit Bartolome with a red-hot poker, screaming "Adulterer!" at him. After murdering Bartolome, Sebastian began torturing his wife slowly to death in front of Nicholas.

Dr. Leon later informs Catherine and Francis that Isabella was not tortured to death; instead, she was entombed behind a brick wall while still alive. He explains, "The very thought of premature interment was enough to drive your brother into convulsions of horror." Nicholas fears that Elizabeth may have been interred prematurely. The doctor tells Nicholas that "if Elizabeth Medina walks the corridors of this castle, it is her spirit, not her living self."

Nicholas believes that his late wife's vengeful ghost is haunting the castle. Elizabeth's room is the source of a loud commotion, now ransacked and her portrait slashed. Her beloved harpsichord plays in the middle of the night. One of Elizabeth's rings shows up on the keyboard. Francis accuses Nicholas of planting the evidence of Elizabeth's "haunting" as an elaborate hoax. Nicholas insists that Francis open his wife's tomb. They discover Elizabeth's putrefied corpse frozen in a position that suggests she died screaming after failing to claw her way out of her sarcophagus. Nicholas faints.

That night, Nicholas– now on the verge of insanity– hears Elizabeth calling him. He follows her ghostly voice down to her tomb. Elizabeth rises from her coffin and pursues Nicholas into the torture chamber, where he falls down a flight of stairs. As Elizabeth gloats over her husband's unconscious body, her lover and accomplice, Dr. Leon, appears. They had plotted to drive Nicholas mad so that she could inherit his fortune and the castle.

Leon confirms that Nicholas "is gone", his mind destroyed by terror. Elizabeth taunts her insensate husband, but then Nicholas suddenly begins laughing hysterically while Elizabeth and Dr. Leon recoil in horror. Believing himself to be Sebastian, he replays the events of his mother and uncle's murders, mistaking Elizabeth for Isabella and Dr. Leon for Bartolome. Nicholas slams Dr. Leon against a pillar and seizes Elizabeth, repeating his father's promise to Isabella to torture her. After dealing with Elizabeth, Nicholas attacks a fleeing Dr. Leon, who falls to his death in the pit while trying to escape.

Francis, having heard Elizabeth's screams, enters the dungeon. Nicholas also confuses Francis for Bartolome and knocks him unconscious. He straps him to a stone slab located directly beneath a huge razor-sharp pendulum. The pendulum is attached to a clockwork apparatus that causes it to descend fractions of an inch after each swing, closer to Francis' torso. Catherine arrives just in time with Maximillian, one of the Medina family's servants. After a brief struggle with Maximillian, Nicholas falls to his death. Francis is removed from the torture device, bleeding but still alive.

The three survivors–Francis, Catherine, and Maximillian–leave the torture chamber, and Catherine vows that no one shall ever enter it again. Unbeknownst to them, a still-living Elizabeth, gagged and trapped in the iron maiden, watches helplessly as the door is closed and locked forever.

CAST:
Vincent Price as Nicholas / Sebastian Medina
John Kerr as Francis Barnard
Barbara Steele as Elizabeth
Luana Anders as Catherine Medina
Antony Carbone as Doctor Leon
Patrick Westwood as Maximillian
Lynette Bernay as Maria
Larry Turner as Nicholas as child
Mary Menzies as Isabella
Charles Victor as Bartolome