Twice Told Tales

The success of American International's string of Edgar Allan Poe-inspired movies starring Vincent Price in the early 1960s led to this 1963 attempt to repeat the formula using stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Twice Told Tales is an anthology very loosely based on three tales, only one of which—“Dr. Heidegger's Experiment,” a fountain of youth story—actually appeared in the titular Hawthorne collection. The second, “Rappacini's Daughter,” centers on a botanist who creates poisonous plants that affect his daughter's ability to interact with her suitor, and the third is a much slimmed-down version of Hawthorne's novel The House of the Seven Gables, about a ne'er-do-well out to claim the haunted mansion his family stole from its rightful owners. Price hams it up mercilessly as the villain in each tale, but while the cast also includes such stalwarts as Sebastian Cabot, Brett Halsey, Richard Denning, and Beverly Garland, the direction by Sidney Salkow is plodding, and the threadbare production values are only negatively accentuated by the luridly colorful cinematography (the collapse of the house in Gables is laughably chintzy, with the same papier-mâché pillar repeatedly falling down). Extras include a pedantic audio commentary by film historians Richard Harland Smith and Perry Martin, and an interview with filmmaker Mick Garris. Not a necessary purchase. (F. Swietek)