Darryn Green

My obsession with anthologies grows even more after watching Roger Corman's "Tales of Terror". This Vincent Price vehicle is geared toward horror but adds some humor to the mix.

Of the three stories here I'll give the nod as the best to the funny and eerie "The Black Cat". The story stars Price and Peter Lorre. Lorre is an always drunken husband who is mostly abusive to his beautiful wife. One day Lorre stumbles into a wine-tasting competition and matches skills with the overly-stuffy and elite Price who plays a wine-tasting expert. The techniques of the two are so totally different and Price is so awesomely outrageous that it makes the film worth watching on it's own.

The final tale called "The Case of Mr. Valdemar" features Price and Basil Rathbone. It is a genuinely spooky tale about keeping a man alive at the very moment of his death. Price's telepathic telling of his afterlife experiences as they are happening is chilling stuff.

The first act is called "Morella" which is tragic but kind of stuffy and overly-dramatic. There's nothing very scary about it but it is entertaining enough as it moves toward it's climax.

I like some of the camera tricks scattered throughout the three stories. They were fun even though they did distract me from time to time.

John Stamos ... CHECK
Vanity ... CHECK
Gene Simmons ... CHECK
George Lazenby ... CHECK
Robert Englund ... CHECK

How could you go wrong?

I'm not entirely sure what I just watched. It starts with a mutiny at sea. Then it's a shipwreck movie, only with man-eating seaweed. Then there's a woman whose top doesn't button up very well, men with balloons tied to their shoulders, a fight between a giant crab and a giant scorpion, Spanish Conquistadors, the Inquisition and a gunfight.

It didn't make any sense at all. But it was never boring.