|
Abstract (sludgy paint splashed over the lenses) and Gothic (matte view of castle on the ocean's edge) are the stated styles, Poe provides the canvas. The callow Londoner (John Kerr) comes to Spain to investigate his sister's death, the widower (Vincent Price) welcomes him with anguish and more than a touch of culpa. Indoor crypts are "a family custom" and so is "the miasma of barbarity" palpably choking the place, memories of the Inquisition linger in catacombs stocked with groaning mechanisms. The mistress of the house (Barbara Steele) is a desolate belle in blue-tinged flashbacks and a grimacing corpse behind brick walls, the bereft husband embraces the possibility of a vengeful ghost. The maiden from Barcelona (Luana Anders), the passageway in the bedchamber, a bogus diagnosis from the doctor friend (Antony Carbone). "I should have thought that a man of your investigative zeal would have already solved the mystery." The gruesome pull of the iron maiden perfectly serves Roger Corman the severe moralist: The camera behind the fireplace fills the screen with flickering infernal intimations, a bloody hand reaches out from inside a coffin to reopen the cycle of betrayal and torture. Bergman's The Magician for the frightful ruse, it mocks the supernatural and yet triggers a resurrection of the meek mind seized by mad fury. El Greco elongations prepare the unveiling of the eponymous apparatus—the blade that swings across the Panavision rectangle and the abyss very much like hell. "Buying and selling, living and dying... The weave of life." The calm after the fireworks is shattered by a punchline out of Clouzot, the author's "final scream of despair" rendered mute in a withering stinger. With Patrick Westwood, Lynette Bernay, Mary Menzies, and Charles Victor.
--- Fernando F. Croce |