I’ve been watching the entire Corman-Poe cinematic cycle – a series of eight films mostly based on the nineteenth century writer of the macabre’s stories – for a while, and have continued on into this Halloween month. I went into Roger Corman and Charles Beaumount’s film The Haunted Palace cautiously thinking that it would only tangentially be related to Edgar Allan Poe’s works, with some adaptation from H.P. Lovecraft’s novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward to a Lovecraftian, rather than a Cthulhu Mythos degree.
What do I mean by that?
More specifically, I thought it would be a loose adoption of Lovecraft’s plot focusing on the inherent malevolence and indifference of a reality based in cosmicism as opposed to specific elements of the Cthulhu Mythos- the Great Old Ones, Miskatonic University, and the like.
But I was wrong. And you know what? As an avid Mythos lover, and corresponding to the spirit of The Horror Doctor itself, I’m glad that the film adaptation wasn’t what I thought it would be. Of course, I’m not alone in this: Corman, the director, and possibly even the screenwriter, Beaumount, also didn’t believe this film would become what it did. Due to the intervention of American International Pictures (AIP), the film’s title was changed from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward to The Haunted Palace – forcing the addition of a few of Poe’s stanzas from the eponymous poem into the cinematic narrative. Corman wanted to try something new with his work. The result was different, but reminiscent of the horror-comedy experiment of The Raven – the film introducing Vincent Price and other classical horror actors, after the notable lack of them in Premature Burial, with its convoluted ending. However, AIP then made the decision to centre this work in the same continuity as Corman’s Poe Cycle, which, in my view, further obfuscated the film.
If anything, Poe’s The Haunted Palace poem is indeed more at home with something like “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The poem is incorporated into Roderick Usher’s song in Poe’s short story of that name, and could have easily been an epigraph or voiceover in Corman’s film adaptation. Nevertheless, the stanza “And travellers, now, within that valley/Through the red-litten windows see/Vast forms that move fantastically/To a discordant melody …” fits well with the preceding scene of Joseph Curwen conducting experiments- terrifying cosmic eugenics- on captive women who end up cursing the town of Arkham, somewhere in the eighteenth century. This fragment seems to hint at the Cthulhu Mythos creatures known as shoggoth: eldritch abominations and predominantly formless beings created by, and in servitude to the Elder Things; shape shifting beings that can form any organ or limb at will. These were the monstrosities contained under Joseph Curwen’s old estate in Lovecraft’s novella. Distinctively, in Corman’s film, there is one entity that is vaguely humanoid and wavering between realities, and whom Curwen and his followers utilized to forcibly impregnate young women from Arkham whom he had mesmerized.
This might be a stretch, and indeed Poe’s “The Haunted Palace” is all about something that was once beautiful: the seat of a wise ruler was overthrown, the memory has become bitter and corrupted by the proceeding violence. You can see how that might fit “The Fall of the House of Usher” to an extent when you look at something beautiful becoming rotten through terrible acts, but Curwen’s estate is already a font of evil- taken from Europe, and transplanted there brick by brick to continue his family and coven’s work, into allowing the dark gods a way back to Earth’s reality through his mutants.
It is generous to say that Corman’s The Haunted Palace is a fully faithful adaptation of “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” or even Edgar Allan Poe’s poem.
There are several other key ways in which the film adaptation departs from the source material. One such factor is that of setting. One could make the argument that the origin of Lovecraft’s Curwen did indeed come from the eighteenth century, but the main story took place in 1928 and not 1875. It may be that Corman’s film is set in the nineteenth century, complete with horse and buggies, to make it fall in line with the background and scenery of the Poe Cycle – it essentially being Poe’s time period – but it is fascinating to consider how the grafting of Charles Dexter Ward to the late nineteenth century as opposed to the early twentieth might pan out, and how that would change the telling of the story. Lovecraft’s story takes place in Providence, Rhode Island while Corman’s work occurs in Lovecraft’s creation of Arkham, Massachusetts.
Charles Dexter Ward is a bachelor amateur antiquarian who lives with his parents. He is fascinated with the history of his home and family. Through his research, Ward discovered his ancestor Joseph Curwen’s ashes in his old residence, and with more investigation into his occultic practices, he resurrected his predecessor. Ages before his death, Joseph Curwen had created a space-time spell that affected the flows of fate. This had his descendant – who aside from a birthmark, and a lack of a forehead pit and witchmark, was practically his ancestor’s twin – find, and bring him out of his “essential Saltes.” In the context of the novella, these “Saltes” are the basic compounds left from a body that can be reanimated into a humanoid form- to be controlled, and interrogated by a necromancer. After that, Curwen – who still speaks an older dialect of English – disguises himself as Doctor Allen. You may recognize this surname to be an important one in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos. Wearing a fake beard and dark glasses to disguise himself, Curwen manipulates Charles into helping him continue his work.
“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” novella begins with what seems to be Charles in a mental institution having physically and psychologically changed. The entire narrative is about family doctor Marinus Bicknell Willett attempting to figure out what is afflicting his young patient, which leads him to discovering secrets of the world that he really did not want to know. In the end, Doctor Willett discovers that Charles died a long time ago, having refused to do something truly heinous for his ancestor. In turn, Curwen killed Charles, hid his remains behind an old portrait of himself – which led Charles in his quest to find more information about him in the first place – and took his place, hoping to continue his experiments. However, the good doctor realizes what happened, and has studied just enough Mythos lore to not only unleash an ancient spirit of immense power on Curwen’s lich colleagues Jedediah/Simon Orne and Edward Hutchison, but to also undo Curwen’s own resurrection as he’s trapped in his cell in the asylum. In Lovecraft’s work, a young man’s benign but misguided focus on family genealogy takes a dark turn, and he is taken advantage of by forces he doesn’t understand; ultimately, reason, logic and kindness win out against the darkness, avenging his demise.
Corman and Beaumount’s cinematic narrative begins with Curwen and his mistress Hester Tillinghast luring young women to his estate. The purpose of this is to implant what seems to be Great One-Human hybrids inside of these women. Again, there are some interesting references evoked from their choices in name for Curwen’s mistress, the etymology of which has likely been based in Lovecraftian lore. She shares the surname of the mad scientist Crawford Tillinghast in Lovecraft’s “From Beyond”, and Hester possibly mirrors the name of “Hastur,” a terrible deity adopted by Lovecraft from Ambrose Bierce and Robert W. Chambers.
In the film, we find a completely different practice from the Joseph Curwen in Lovecraft’s novella: while the man was involved in the slave trade, and experimented on countless human beings, he and his compatriots seemed more fascinated with reanimating and tormenting the dead through their essential salts in order to question them, and gain their powerful lore. Necromancy seemed the word of the day for Lovecraft’s Curwen, and forbidden knowledge his ultimate vice- at any cost. Further, we know that Curwen had fled one witch trial before, and was prolonging his life unnaturally. He took a wife, and gave to civic pride in Providence to keep up appearances before the citizens raided his lair after hearing rumours of his atrocities.
Corman and Beaumount’s work posits that Curwen, in taking Hester as his mistress, infuriated her betrothed Ezra Weeden. This, combined with seeing countless young women go to their estate, brought the wrath of Arkham down on him. Curwen’s death in the film seems far more personal, compared to the relative civic duty that Lovecraft makes clear in his work. Yet this also sets the way for personal revenge, as Curwen, in being burned alive by a mob, curses the entire town for generations until – one day – he intends to return.
One hundred and ten years later, in the film, we get a Charles Dexter Ward who isn’t a young twenty-six year old introverted bachelor who loves antiquity, but an older, more cynical and sarcastic man, accompanied by his wife Anne to Arkham. They have come to this town to check on some property that is in Charles’ family. Charles clearly doesn’t even want to be there, and it’s Anne who is fascinated with this dark and dreary town with its sullen, unfriendly people, as well as many afflicted with a terrible mutation. In this version Doctor Marinus Willet, the only person in the town who isn’t superstitious, doesn’t even know them, but he guides them to the estate, informing them of what occurred before. Further, it seems to be Joseph Curwen’s portrait on the mantle in the estate that begins to affect Charles’ mind, and he begins to struggle with the spirit of his ancestor. It is interesting to note that this Curwen doesn’t try to befriend or even manipulate Charles. Charles himself has almost no idea what is going on. In the end, a hapless but kind man is overcome by the soul of his ancestor. The idea of bad blood telling is both a Poe and Lovecraftian idea, or a Gothic one at least. There is some resonance to Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep.” While in “Charles Dexter Ward”, Curwen is resurrected from his ancestor’s remains, here he switches minds with his descendant, and no longer has a body of his own.
In fact, there is a moment where I thought Curwen would get his original body: when he and Simon Orne and Jabez Hutchinson- in this iteration, as his followers, rather than his friends and equals as in the original story- robbed a graveyard. However, that is only to get the corpse of Hester Tillinghast back, to reanimate her. It is the only instance beyond Lovecraft’s novella where we see Curwen use necromancy to raise the dead, and there is no mention of “essential Saltes,” just a repetition of the Latin word for “live.” I do have to say, though, that given the cold and dark beauty that is Tillinghast’s actress Cathie Merchant, I can’t say I particularly blame him.
However, whereas Lovecraft’s Charles Dexter Ward had his father afraid for him, and his family doctor fighting for him, in Corman and Beaumount’s work it is his wife Anne, played by Debra Paget, who won’t leave him despite all of his terrible changes in behavior after coming to the estate. In the end, she calls on Doctor Willet – the descendant of one of the men who helped burn Curwen – to help her and her husband. It is interesting to see the character dynamics play out in this setting. Lovecraft’s Curwen uses blackmail, extortion, and murder to get his way in “Charles Dexter,” as a matter of course, whereas the Curwen in Corman’s film is petty and spiteful against the descendants of the people who killed him the first time, but strangely proud of the man whose life he has now possessed. He almost admires Charles in resisting him, though only because of that “Curwen blood,” which of course is an extension of him. He is an entity that ruins Charles’ life, consuming it into the void that is himself, and attempts to rape Anne. When he gets tired of doing all of that, he even gaslights her to Doctor Willet, trying to get the man to take her away, and let him continue his plans. Vincent Price plays both Charles and Curwen, and the mental dynamic and struggle between them pretty well, but that is no surprise when you look at his dual-roles in Corman’s The Pit and the Pendulum a few movies ago in the Cycle.
And those plans are sinister as all get out, even as they are amazing to someone who is a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos. You have a man who possesses a copy of the Necronomicon, a book that has links to the powers of the “Elder Gods” – or as Lovecraft calls them Great Old Ones – such as Cthulhu himself, and Yog-Sothoth. You also have the fact that the afflicted villagers and their ever-worsening mutations are reminiscent of the Innsmouth Deep One-Human Hybrids, and the Dunwich Whateley sons of Yog-Sothoth in Lovecraft’s work. This is not just a Lovecraftian film, you realize at this point, but a Cthulhu Mythos adaptation. And it is exciting to see something like that occur in 1963, long before Stuart Gordon’s films, and other depictions. This may well be one of the first cinematic adaptations of Lovecraft, and you can witness it through so many of these themes.
But while many of those elements – the Necronomicon and Yog-Sothoth – are referenced from Lovecraft’s story, several plot point in Corman’s film are different. Curwen’s ultimate plan in making Anne the mate of the shoggoth, the demonic thing in the wavering green pit, is foiled when Charles seems to regain control of his body. The townspeople attack the estate after Curwen used fire to assassinate two of their number. This actually troubles his followers, as, after waiting for Curwen to return for over a century, they wanted to continue resurrecting their dark gods. This makes the viewer wonder if there was going to be a mutiny, though it never happens. Then, Orne, Hutchinson, and Hester Tillinghast disappear, as Willet goes back to rescue Charles from the fire. I can almost forgive this rush job given how awesome performances were by Price, and Lon Chaney Jr. – who plays Simon Orne – but it does feel a little rough. Even so, I do like the idea that however we got to that point, there is the strong implication that despite the destruction of the portrait, Joseph Curwen is still in possession of Charles Dexter Ward, and ending the film on that dark note finishes strong. There is no stalwart, elderly doctor that vanquishes evil here. No banishment into dust. No deus ex machina destroying Curwen’s peers off page or off camera. Curwen continues on. Evil survives.
It makes you wonder who had a far worse end: Lovecraft’s Ward, who at least got to die after all of his suffering, (though he knew the terrible truths of the world and was forced to commit unspeakable acts before he did so), or Corman and Beaumount’s Ward, who didn’t know anything before being subsumed by his ancestor’s malignant soul. The film’s end, and the thoughts they conjure up, tend to linger long after their stories are over.
It’s mentioned by Willet – or perhaps it was the descendant of Weeden – that the estate, or “the Palace” of Curwen and his family was taken from somewhere in Europe in pieces, and reassembled in America. I feel, too, that this is the case in a more localized geographical, but literary way in North America. According to Corman in his interview with Chris Alexander in Corman/Poe: Interviews and Essays Exploring the Making of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe Films, 1960-1964 A.I.P. took fragments of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem and attempted to expand it, to mutate and build blocks from it as the Elder Things – and sorcerers after them like Curwen – would shoggoth. One can even argue that Curwen and his associates learned how to reanimate the dead through breaking down organic beings into their salt contents by studying – and feeding – shoggoth as basic building blocks of life. But more like Lovecraft’s Herbert West – and it’s hilarious as there is a Benjamin West as one of the townsfolk that killed Curwen ages ago – in that they attempted to regrow this reptilian skin loosely over a whole other kind of body of work in Lovecraft himself. “The Haunted Palace” stanza, at the end of the film, “While, like a ghastly rapid river, /Through the pale door /A hideous throng rush out forever, /And laugh—but smile no more,” just doesn’t quite … fit.
I am a fan of stories and films that use epigraphs – fragments of literary passages and quotes from other works – and even include parts of them within the body of their narratives. Even Lovecraft and Poe utilized these devices. So if I were to change anything about The Haunted Palace, (aside from not having Orne, Hutchinson, and Tillinghast vanish for no reason, or Charles suddenly return again, or Curwen falsify that act), and I had to make this very clear specimen of the Cthulhu Mythos in the cinematic medium fit in with the thematics of the Corman-Poe Cycle, I wouldn’t have used “The Haunted Palace” at all.
Instead of “The Haunted Palace,” one could speculate on what might happen if the filmmakers took another tactic. What if we go back to right after Curwen’s burning, and have Vincent Price recite in his velvety sardonic voice:
That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
And then end the entire film with the following lines on screen:
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Just think about how these stanzas fit the themes, and the content of this film: the mob mentality, the plot of the film, the non-human elements in the form of the mutants and the thing in the pit, the desecration of the dead, and the ghouls that play with death and flesh. It goes back to the mutants, and the disease, and the curse. I mean, if you are going to name a Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos story after Poe’s work, you might as well title it “The Conqueror Worm.”
But really, it should have just been The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and if you look at “The Haunted Palace” as a genuine inspiration of this film, perhaps it is less a commentary on the film itself, and it more refers to its place in the Corman-Poe Cycle. It is placed in a continuity of lush and vibrant, startlingly colourful films, but it is twisted, dark, and cynical. Perhaps the poem talks about the beauty that once existed in the Corman-Poe Cycle, but is now consumed by Lovecraft’s indifference towards any concept of human life and meaning, and the changing of a cinematic era: where all of that dark wonder has become shadows of what they once were. Chris Alexander, in his Corman/Poe, mentions that the change of writers – from Richard Matheson to Beaumount – represents a shift in the Cycle from an immersive experience of twists and turns to “the mechanics of plot.” He argues that the film is almost “pornographically direct” and he further calls Lovecraft the antithesis of Poe, and in his interview with Corman, the latter mentions how Lovecraft is darker and more overt: an approach that both he and Beaumount were looking for in trying something new.
And I think they did make something new, though not necessarily what they might – or might not – have been looking for. They made the first Cthulhu Mythos film for the general public. And while it might be awkward to place it into the Corman-Poe Cycle, as one of Lovecraft’s adaptations it is solid on its own merit for the most part. Like Lovecraft, while it might seem more blatant and steeped in realism, instead of the surrealism of the previous films, Corman’s film reaches into the supernatural and its inherent madness, leading to further grandiose and terrifying spectacles to come.
The Horror Doctor 