The Tomb of Ligeia

Audience Reviews

View All (101)

Henry M Eastman color film is put to full affect in this campy but cool Poe adaptation. The outfits are brilliant reds and blues. The green grass is vivid and nice to look at. I enjoyed the ruined church they filmed at. In general the locations and sets were very pleasant and well done. Vincent Price played a good melancholy, reclusive lord. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 08/30/23 Full Review sean s Neat old Roger Corman movie based on an Edgar Allan Poe short story. The acting and photography have held up well for being from 1964. The original story is from 1838. Wrap your mind around that if the dialogue seems a little out dated and hammy at times coming out of Vincent Price. I remember seeing most of these Poe inspired Roger Corman movies on TV in grade school in the early and mid 1970s. It is neat to be able to see them again...and they have mostly held up well. I would guess that many of the movies being made today won't be as good 60 years from now. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Unfunny and unoriginal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review dave s Roger Corman's Tomb of Legeia, his last entry in the entertaining but inconsistent Edgar Allen Poe series, turns out to be a bit of a disappointment. Vincent Price plays Verden Fell, a distraught widower who bounces back quite nicely when he marries the alluring Lady Rowena. Unfortunately for Rowena, her new husband is not quite over the death of his first wife, who seems to linger about the abbey they inhabit. It's a nonsensical and somewhat confusing plot that seems to get lost in its own absurdities. Despite that, it's not all bad – Price is entertaining, as always, and the sets are great, but there are just too many shoulder- shrugging, eyebrow-raising moments of confusion to recommend it. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Audience Member Based on Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia" and adapted by Robert Towne, this is the last of the Roger Corman Poe films. Because Poe's story was so short, Towne expanded on the themes of mesmerism and necrophilia. The result? "Literally being controlled by someone who was dead, which is gruesome notion but perfectly consistent with Poe." said Towne to John Brady in The Craft of the Screenwriter. In that same book, Towne confessed he thought that "…it would have been better if it had been with a man who didn't look like a necrophiliac to begin with. I love Vincent. He's very sweet. But, going in, you suspect that Vincent could bang cats, chickens, girls, dogs, everything. You just feel that necrophilia might be one of his Basic Things." Corman agreed, as he was thinking Richard Chamberlain would be perfect. Yet American-International Pictures wanted Price and Corman had to break the news to Towne. The film starts with a casket on display with a young woman's face visible through a window in the pine box. A black cat jumps on the coffin and takes her soul, which belonged to Ligeia, the wife of Verden Fell (Vincent Price). He's troubled by her death, as she refused to die and was blasphemous about God to the end of her life. Despite his strange appearance — he must wear special glasses as he is allergic to sunlight* — he meets another woman at the grave, Rowena (Elizabeth Shepherd, The Kidnapping of the President, The Omen II). They fall instantly in love and he moves her into his home which is haunted by the spirit of his wife in the form of that black cat. By the end of the film, we learn that he's been mesmerized by his dead wife and can only love her, yet he battles the cat that has her soul until her tomb burns around them. As for his new wife, well, she goes back to the man she left at the start of the movie and has a happy future, which is pretty sad for poor Vincent Price. *Poe invented being goth. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member The last of the Corman-Poe-Price collaborations has Vincent Price incarcerating his second wife (Elizabeth Shepherd) in his cavernous Abbey while he absconds upstairs for some light necrophilia with his first wife (also played by Elizabeth Shepherd). Rather slow and pedestrian to begin with - and the bright Norfolk exteriors don't help - this develops into quite a creepy piece. Corman is always good at suggestion and is aided as always by the snarling camp of Price, who plays every moment with a seriousness that borders on comedy. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Tomb of Ligeia

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW

Most Popular at Home Now