THE HAUNTED PALACE *** USA 1963 Dir: Roger Corman. 87 mins
Roger Corman has reportedly never made a film that didn’t make money. Not really so as a young William Shatner starred in The Intruder (1962) for Corman which turned out to be one of his failures to make money. I mention this since most legends even if they are “legends in their own minds” tend to have weak spots. This Corman produced and Directed film The Haunted Palace (1963) comes from that time period from the masterfully funny The Raven (1963) and the necrophiliac ballet The Masque Of The Red Death (1964). The Haunted Palace (1963) sits in all its cobbled-together glory for us monster kids to see in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.
The Haunted Palace (1963) is not a stinker, but it does bare several of the Corman tendencies. The use of a lead star with box office appeal or new in this case Vincent Price and a cast around them of people on harder times so we have Lon Chaney Jr on the downside of his life and the bottle. Add to this Debra Paget in her final film after appearing in Europe trying to battle a declining career. The film features a melded-together script of H. P Lovecraft themes and a poem by Edgar Allan Poe where the film gets its title. The on-screen result is Vincent Price being Vincent Price the evil and the good which he has done before, chewing some scenery and he tries to do his husbandly duties with Debra Paget in the role of his wife. The eyebrows arch many times and the voice drops and octaves as Price switches from the Good to the Evil.
The evil in this case shows up in a prologue in 1765, the inhabitants of Arkham, Massachusetts, are suspicious of a grand building known as the “palace” that overlooks the town. The Villagers think the palace’s owner, Joseph Curwen (Price), is a demon as a betrothed woman was found to suffer from mind control. Curwen is torched by a mob in the best Universal Studios Horror tradition of pitchforks and anger. During the burning, he curses the villagers and their descendants with eternal torment. The picture then moves to 1875, 110 years later with Curwen’s great-great-grandson, Charles Dexter Ward, and his wife Ann arriving in Arkham after inheriting the palace. They find the townsfolk hostile towards them and are disturbed by the horrific deformities that afflict many of Arkham’s inhabitants. All sorts of events happen that we have seen before such as the hunting down of those that killed the original Curwen who happens to look like the modern one. Is this a poor film due to these factors…no it isn’t because everything Roger Corman and his cast and crew do is sincere.
The script is without dull moments with some instances supporting work by Elisha Cook Jr, Leo Gordon and others. You also get some sadism for the time in the form of death by burning as the screams are particularly prolonged. The sets are small but opulent made larger by filming in cinemascope. You have really Saturday Matinee horror fare ground fogs, creaking castles and secret doorways, and loud thunderstorms with odd sounds. Corman even puts to use his new zoom lens to move through the hallways of the set involving something that is a lot bigger than it is and it works.
In fairness to Lon Chaney Jr he was likely dropped into the thankless role as it was meant to be by an aging Boris Karloff. The Corman process of which this is a prime example is not for all people. He worked with actors if he had you under contract like cattle. I have this from face-to-face encounters with Boris Karloff’s daughter Sara at her home in Lake Tahoe of whom I am so lucky to call a friend. She told me among other things that if he had the contract he would write a script around you and you would film for the length of the contract to the last moment. The crew would be the same with fast setups with little time for retakes to get it done even if one of them was the young Francis Ford Coppola who repeatably contributed additional dialogue to this work. You learned your craft at a price.
The Haunted Palace (1963) will thrill you if you can get past sets that look like a studio and some actors namely in 20th century hairstyles delivering deadpan sincere dialogue like Frank Maxwell in the role of Dr. Marinus Willet then you will enjoy this excursion in popcorn matinee and sugary soft drink horror.
Review by Terry Sherwood