PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny* (2) *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) *poor,* (2) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *irony,* (2) *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*
In a commentary by Roger Corman on
MGM’s DVD release of these two AIP films, Corman notes that he worried about
the films in the “Poe cycle” beginning to seem overly similar. This change in
focus eventuated in these two films, in which the subject matter of Poe is
played for humor. (To be sure, Matheson
notes in a commentary that Poe himself took a humorous slant in many of his
macabre stories.)
The title of THE COMEDY OF TERRORS
spoofs the name of a Shakespeare play, but in the Fryean terminology I use
here, it would be more properly termed an “irony” than a “comedy.” In the world of the irony, the characters
exist in a world where all striving is ultimately futile, a world dominated by
entropy and death—which seems more than appropriate for a story about crooked
undertakers.
COMEDY establishes its ironic
credentials early on, depicting the familial strife in the funerary parlor run
by Trumbull (Vincent Price). Largely
through his quarrels with his shrewish wife Amarillis, it’s revealed that
Trumbull, a perpetual drunkard, only married her in order to gain control of
the business from her doddering father (Boris Karloff). Trumbull has proceeded to run the business
into the ground and accrue enormous debt, so that his landlord, one Mr. Black
(Basil Rathbone), threatens to kick Trumbull out. Trumbull’s only ally, the inept coffin-maker
Gillie (Peter Lorre), obeys the undertaker (while obsessively calling him
“Tremble”) only because the undertaker threatens to expose Gillie’s past crimes
to the police.
Trumbull has a unique way of
drumming up business: when things get slow, he breaks into the homes of rich
people and kills elderly victims, so that their relatives will have to pay for
expensive funerals. However, the first
time this happens, the victim’s daughter skips town without paying Trumbull,
giving Price one of his best moments, as he addresses the audience plaintively:
“Is there no morality in this world?”
Desperate to prevent his dispossession,
Trumbull decides to remove Black from this vale of tears. He sends Gillie to break into Black’s house,
where the reluctant stooge witnesses the landlord, a former stage-actor, performing
scenes from Macbeth. Black is so shocked
by Gillie’s appearance that Black falls down from a heart attack, which seems
to accomplish Trumbull’s purpose.
However, it turns out that Black suffers from catalepsy, and “comes back
to life” while Trumbull and Gillie prepare him for internment. The undertakers kill their corpse and inter
them—but they don’t kill him quite dead enough.
At no time does Black come back
from the dead due to any supernatural cause, so his catalepsy falls within the
phenomenality of the uncanny, with particular attention to the trope of the
“phantasmal figuration.” I’ve often used
this trope to categorize plotters to pretend to be ghosts, so it seems equally
applicable to a person whose body-chemistry causes him to “fake” being
dead.
Even before the persistent corpse
returns for the big climax, the fractured family dynamics are coming
apart. Once Trumbull has been paid for
Black’s funeral, Amarillis attempts to make nice with him, only to be rejected
by the dyspeptic undertaker. She takes
up with Gillie and intends to run away with him, but then Black breaks in,
seeking vengeance. In an amusing climax,
Trumbull finally manages to kill Black (or so it seems at the time)—albeit only after Black has uttered
several death-soliloquies—but he almost kills Gillie and Amarillis as
well. But even a witness threatening to
call the police is not enough of an indignity to finish off Trumbull: he’s done
in accidentally by Amarillis’ father.
To be sure, this “irony of terrors”
has one thing in common with Shakespearan comedies, in that a romantic couple,
that of Gillie and Amarillis, escapes the general carnage. However, neither of them are overly
sympathetic characters, not to mention being dominantly portrayed as idiots.
COMEDY is only fitfully
entertaining, though, for the characters are largely flat stereotypes that
serve Matheson’s scenario in mechanical fashion. THE RAVEN, however, plays a
little more imaginatively with the *dramatis personae* established in the
earlier “Cormanized Poe” pictures.
Given that the Poe “Raven” offered
no narrative around which a scripter might assemble a picture, Matheson
essentially built a new story out of elements from other Poe-pictures,
particularly drawing on PIT AND THE PENDULUM and the “Morella” segment of TALES
OF TERROR.
THE RAVEN starts out in an undefined
medieval era, focusing first on Doctor Craven (Vincent Price), who lives an
ascetic existence in near-solitude in his secluded mansion, devoting himself to
the practice of thaumaturgy. His only
family consists of his daughter Estelle, whose mother is long gone. Craven never speaks of her, but only has eyes
for the picture of his “lost Lenore,” who was “stepmother” to Estelle but who
vanished from Craven’s mansion two years previous. So obsessed with Lenore is Craven (much like
Price’s character in the “Morella” tale) that he even asks a visiting raven
whether or not he’ll ever again see Lenore—to which the bird replies, “How
should I know? Do I look like a
fortune-teller?”
After the magician uses his magic
to return the raven to a semblance of humanity, the bird is revealed to be
another magician, Doctor Bedlo (Peter Lorre), who fell afoul (or a-fowl?) of
yet another magician, Doctor Scarabeus (Boris Karloff). Craven mentions that Scarabeus was once the
rival of Craven’s father Roderick back when both men were members of a mystic
organization, “the Brotherhood.” With
Roderick dead, his son has retreated from contact with the Brotherhood,
allowing Scarabeus to take over.
Just from this bare description
it’s plain that like the protagonist of PIT AND THE PENDULUM, Craven is
“craven” regarding the overshadowing history of his father’s exploits. Though he’s willing to help the bad-tempered
Bedlo, who seems to have earned his transformation by quarreling with Scarabeus,
Craven wants no trouble with his father’s old enemy—or so it seems. When Bedlo has been only partially restored
to humanity (he still has a wing for an arm, a la the “Swan Maiden” folktale),
he insists that Craven should raid the local graveyard for one
potion-ingredient, “the hair of a dead man.”
Craven is initially horrified at the suggestion of despoiling graves,
yet in the next moment, he thinks it’s a good idea to despoil the crypt of his
dead father Roderick and take the hair from that source. This suggests that on some level Craven is
aware of the dominating influence of his father’s legacy, and that he wants to
throw off that influence. The results of
this bit of grave-robbery are ambiguous: in the comedic film’s one creepy
scene, the corpse of Roderick comes to life when Craven clips its hair—but it
does so only to tell his living son to “beware,” and then falls back dead.
Though Craven has no interest in
helping Bedlo avenge his grievances, Bedlo piques Craven’s interest when he
remarks that he’s seen Lenore—whom he recognizes from her portait in the mansion—in Scarebeus’s
castle. Craven disbelieves Bedlo,
protesting that Lenore’s only reason for being absent is that she must be dead,
but he decides to join Bedlo in questioning the older wizard. Before they can leave, Craven, Bedlo and Estelle
are attacked by one of Craven’s servants.
Craven’s magic subdues the man, who was obviously controlled by hostile
magic. Slightly later, the threesome are
joined by Bedlo’s son Rexford (Jack Nicholson), looking to bring his foolish
father back home. Instead all four
journey to the castle, though the trip is interrupted briefly when Rexford is
also magically possessed, so that he almost overturns their carriage.
At the castle Scarabeus is the
genial host, showing no knowledge of the spirit of Lenore. But Bedlo has told the truth: the
flesh-and-blood Lenore has been in the company of Scarabeus since leaving
Craven. Between them, wizard and
unfaithful wife plan to imprison Craven and learn his mystical knowledge. To
that end, they manage to gain Bedlo’s help, though Bedlo is somewhat less than
pleased with his reward: that of getting turned into a raven again. Bedlo turns against his former allies and
gets Craven free. The conflict climaxes
in a magical duel between the two wizards, which Craven wins. At last aware of Lenore’s duplicity, Craven
escapes the castle and leaves Lenore with her lover as the castle comes
crashing down in flames. However, given
the jubilant spirit of the comedy here, both villains survive with only each
other to increase one another's misery. With
Estelle and Rexford set up to be “the romantic couple,” Craven returns to his
mansion and gives the traitorous raven his punishment: to sit upon a “pallid
bust of Pallas” and speak “nevermore.”
THE RAVEN is much more fun than
COMEDY OF TERRORS, and gives each of the actors more individual moments (even
having Rexford show the same paternal deference to Bedlo than Craven does to
his late father). The “daddy issues”
don’t run as deep here as in the “straight” horrors, but it’s a testimony to
Matheson that he managed to work them into a farcical tale with an admirable
attention to detail.
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