Included here are a pair of vintage, cheesy, grindhouse movie productions loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tale of psychological horror, The Tell-Tale Heart. First up is a 1960 feature sharing the source story’s title and having the audacity to give the lead character—a timorous, awkward suitor to a passionate florist—the name Edgar Allan Poe (Laurence Payne). Rattling around in his big house with no one else around, neurotic Edgar spots shopgirl Betty (Adrienne Corri) and asks her to dinner. Far from making a good first impression, Edgar begs for a second chance, more or less trapping Betty into weeks of dull, bloodless dating. The pot is stirred when Edgar’s chess buddy, the strapping Carl (Dermot Walsh), is introduced to Betty, and animal lusts are instantly activated. When Edgar discovers their secret trysts, he kills Carl and buries him beneath the floorboards of his piano room. It’s at that point that The Tell-Tale Heart begins to resemble the original story, with Edgar going mad believing that Carl’s dead heart is beating louder and louder throughout the house.
The second film, Legend of Horror (1971), has an even more tangential connection to Poe. Pierre (Ben Daniels), a womanizing dandy, hits on the daughter of a governor and ends up in a horrible prison. Thrust into a cell with a crazy old man, Sydney (Stevan Serrador), who has been there for years, Pierre befriends the fellow and protects him from the cruelties of guards. An escape plan gets them out and on the run, where Sydney’s killer impulses reveal him to be something less than harmless.
A second storyline interwoven with the principal one concerns Sydney’s earlier years leading up to his conviction for murder. It’s an awkward device, but the subplot does accommodate Poe’s notion of a guilt-inducing beating heart that drives a killer crazy. Neither black and white film is scary, but both are grisly by mid-20th century standards.
Legend of Horror is less successful at hiding its ultra-low budget, including dialogue recorded entirely in post-production and never properly aligned with the movements of actors’ mouths. This double bill will largely be appreciated by lovers of historic schlock in horror. Everyone else can give it a pass. Lightly recommended.