THE TOMB OF LIGEIA (1964)
A man's obsession with his dead wife drives a wedge between him and his new bride.
Originally, Roger Corman hadn’t intended to make his series of definitive Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, but the first, House of Usher (1960), was a big hit for American International Pictures (AIP) and studio producer Samuel Z. Arkoff realised they had a winning formula. The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) confirmed that Roger Corman directing Vincent Price was a perfect pairing. Over the ensuing three years, the Corman-Poe cycle expanded to seven or eight titles—depending on whether one includes The Haunted Palace, which was actually based on the H.P Lovecraft novel The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward but subsequently renamed with the title of a Poe poem and marketed as another Poe adaptation. It was Corman’s attempt to change direction, but AIP reined him back in. Which turns out to have been a good decision as the penultimate entry into the Poe sequence, Masque of the Red Death (1964), is arguably the best of the bunch, vying with The Tomb of Ligeia, made back-to-back and both films shot in England.
The choice to film in England was influenced by the Eady Levy, a system of tax breaks to encourage film production in Britain that stipulated that the majority of cast and crew were British. Corman was already in the UK after taking advantage of this incentive for the making of Masque of the Red Death. So, Ligeia would have seemed a natural follow-on, with the original story being part-set in a ruined abbey in England. He also wanted to break the mould by freeing the action from the artifice of his deliberately symbolic sets. There would still be the stairways, secret chambers, and dark towers representing the shadowy recesses of the psyche. This would contrast with the open countryside bathed in the bright light of day, with striking use of Castle Acre Priory and the surrounding English countryside lending an element of the English eerie.
Although shot in broad daylight, the opening scene among the ruins is truly Gothic as Verden Fell (Vincent Price) oversees the funeral of Ligeia (Elizabeth Shepherd), his late wife. The event is interrupted by the local priest (Ronald Adam) who protests that it is against ‘God’s will’ that she be buried on the holy ground of the old abbey. Fell counters that Ligeia’s will is stronger than God’s, stronger than death itself. On cue, we see through the windowed coffin Ligeia’s dead eyes open, and he must lift the lid to close them again, explaining it is but a reflex as he caresses the cheek of her corpse. Presiding over the brief proceedings is a black cat, ubiquitous in Corman’s Poe adaptations but more necessary to the narrative than ever before.
Later, the tomb is discovered by Lady Rowena Trevanion (Elizabeth Sheperd in a dual role) who has strayed from the fox hunt led by her father. We note the striking resemblance to Ligeia as she pauses to read the epitaph on the tomb, “Man need not kneel before the angels, nor lie in death forever.” The sudden appearance of the black cat startles her horse and she’s thrown, landing among a scattering of red flowers. Moments later, Verden Fell appears, seemingly from behind a nearby tree, causing her a second startlement. He helps her up, explaining the flowers are asphodels, which she comments are the flowers of death. This is accurate for the Victorian period when all flowers had a coded meaning, and the more common yellow asphodel specifically meant “Remembered Beyond the Tomb”.
This is the first of many examples where the mise-en-scène holds clues to a somewhat elusive narrative. When Verden carries Rowena back to his house, to bind her sprains, we transition from the rational exterior and its light of reason into the dark halls of the old priory interior with its many shadowed alcoves. Verden has become a recluse since his wife’s death and shuns the daylight due to hypersensitivity to bright light, hence his near-opaque glasses. Such morbid conditions of the senses are a recurring theme in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and feature prominently in his 1839 short story The Fall of the House of Usher.
The grand interior set, shot with wide-angle lenses to make it seem even more cavernous, was at Shepperton Studios, and Corman filmed the location and studio scenes in separate blocks to ensure a distinctive contrast in mood. Corman’s regular set designer, Danny Haller, does a great job and, after detailed discussion with the director, included plenty of plot-related props, such as ancient Egyptian artefacts and a prominent sarcophagus. In addition to their narrative duties, the props were all moveable and could be rearranged to balance the compositions, creating a rhythm of forms that work with the blocking of the actors. It’s this kind of forethought that elevates Roger Corman above the jobbing B-movie director some detractors once tried to dismiss him as.
We learn about the mysterious Ligeia mainly through hints dropped into the dialogue, but Corman constantly tries to avoid becoming bogged down with exposition. Instead, he ingeniously employs subtext throughout, giving the viewer the task of fitting the pieces together to fill in her backstory. Thus, we are engaged both emotionally and intellectually, drawn deeper into the darker world of Verden Fell. We form the notion that Ligeia may have been around since ancient times. Perhaps she once reposed in that sarcophagus but defied death and returned to life…
This theory is supported when Rowena’s father (Derek Francis) is presented with the fox the hunt finally accounted for. It’s not a common red fox but a silver-grey animal with distinctive black markings that Verden explains is an Egyptian desert fox that Ligeia used to keep as a pet.
Despite their better judgement, Rowena and Verden are attracted to each other. She is fascinated by his morbid demeanour and sees it as her challenge to pull him out of his lingering morosity over the death of his wife. In addition to her resemblance to his late wife, he finds her rationality and strength of will attractive and they are soon married. However, after a brief interlude of happiness while they tour Europe for their honeymoon, things turn inexorably darker on their return to the abbey. Verden attempts to put it on the market but learns that he cannot sell as the deeds are in Ligeia’s name and no death certificate has been issued for her. And, that’s not the only way Ligeia affects his life from beyond the grave.
Back in the house filled with the legacies of Ligeia’s life, Verden often falls into a distracted, trance-like state and is prone to somnambulism and hallucinations. There’s a distinct touch of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca thrown in too, as Rowena feels haunted by the ghost of Verden’s first wife and, in many ways, she begins to behave more like her.
It’s never made entirely explicit, but it seems the lurking black cat has preternatural intelligence and actively dislikes Rowena, as if jealous of her. Could the cat be a vessel for the mind or soul of Ligeia that lingers, waiting for an opportunity to possess Rowena and be reborn through her? Even Verden is vague about the origins of Ligeia and the circumstances in which they met. He does mention her prowess in mesmerism and demonstrates a little of what she taught him, causing Rowena to speak with the voice of her deceased predecessor. It’s a chilling transformation well-conveyed by Elizabeth Shepperd, who puts in a strong performance as a foil to what is one of Vincent Price’s most masterly and nuanced roles in all the Corman-Poe films.
Robert Towne was tasked with adapting Poe’s 1838 short story, simply titled Ligeia, which he significantly reworked by adding new subplots and expanded it by pulling in themes from other works by Poe. He also changed the ending for something more visually spectacular, twisting the original dénouement into a different kind of doom-laden tragedy that allows a happier ending for at least some of the characters.
He had written the part of Verden Fell for Richard Chamberlain, who was very popular at the time as the star of Dr Kildare (1961-66), but, by the time casting was underway, it was pretty much a given that Vincent Price would be taking the lead again. The Tomb of Ligeia starring Richard Chamberlain would have been a very different film. For one thing, his youth would have made it less convincing that Fell was a widower who’d lived a long time under the spell of Ligeia. Also, no one does the melancholic tragi-Gothic hero like Vincent Price, who’s certainly on top form here.
Towne’s first screenplay had been Corman’s post-apocalyptic The Last Woman on Earth (1960) in which he appeared in the cast of three. He’d also written a rejected draft for Masque of the Red Death and would go on to win the Academy Award for his screenplay for Chinatown (1974), just one of several notable awards he garnered, including the 1997 Writers Guild of America Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement.
On The Tomb of Ligeia, his script was aided by contributions from Paul Mayersberg, the uncredited production assistant and second unit director responsible for filming the newlywed Fells’ European tour, including the scenes at Stonehenge, using stand-ins. Mayersberg would later accrue some most impressive screenwriting credits, including The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and Eureka (1983)—both excellent films directed by Nicolas Roeg, with whom he had worked on The Masque of the Red Death. Corman productions were responsible for starting the careers of several notable writers, filmmakers, and directors and have become known as the Corman Film School.
Francis Ford Coppola was a protégé of Corman’s, having learned the ropes on Battle Beyond the Sun (1959), The Terror (1963), and Dementia 13 (1963), and some have conjectured he had an uncredited involvement with Tomb of Ligeia. Whether or not he had any hands-on involvement, it’s clear that the look of Verden Fell is a precursor to how the young Dracula (Gary Oldman) appeared in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), with the top hat, voluminous cravat, and Victorian shades. Plus, both stories share central themes—the ability of one’s will to overwhelm and control another, a rejection of received morality, and, of course, traversing the veil between life and death.
The Tomb of Ligeia is perhaps the most marvellously moribund of all Corman’s Poe adaptations. And that’s saying something. It’s deliciously amoral, touching upon the topics of obsessive love, toxic relationships that border on the parasitic, black magic, mesmerism, and necrophilia…
It looks fantastic, with Hammer’s regular cinematographer Arthur Grant making the contrast between the set-bound aesthetic and open-air work dramatic, and Corman’s smoothly gliding camera giving authenticity to the spaces and bringing us into the action. The script cleverly shares the work with the mise-en-scène more effectively than ever. And the finale delivers anything and everything one would want from a cinematic realisation of all the best tropes that Edgar Allan Poe came up with.
UK • USA| 1964 | 82 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH
Cast & Crew
director: Roger Corman.
writers: Robert Towne & Paul Mayersberg (based on the story ‘Ligeia’ by Edgar Allan Poe).
starring: Vincent Price, Elizabeth Shepherd, John Westbrook, Derek Francis & Frank Thornton.
