The Haunted Palace Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

The Haunted Palace Blu-ray Movie Review

No asylum in this Arkham.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 20, 2013

Note: This film is currently available as part of The Vincent Price Collection.

Shout! Factory’s Scream Factory imprint is giving horror fans a little early Halloween present this year, bringing six classic Vincent Price – American International films to high definition for the first time. Though horror tends to be a genre that, to paraphrase one Rodney Dangerfield, “gets no respect”, and indeed probably all of these films were thought of as B- movie drive in fodder back in the day, most if not all of them hold up surprisingly well today, with several of them offering a quasi- hallucinatory quality which Roger Corman, the supposedly low rent auteur who is responsible for the majority of the offerings in this set, states was a deliberate choice (not one necessitated by relatively paltry budgets) in an attempt to viscerally recreate the inner life of the (perhaps troubled) mind. Though Price had made at least a couple of forays into horror in the fifties with such fare as House of Wax 3D and The Fly , it was really the American International pictures that established Price’s “second act” in the film business, offering him more or less steady employment when many of his contemporaries had either resigned themselves to the ostensibly less glamorous world of television or who had outright retired from show business.

The Haunted Palace is in some ways the “odd man out” in the so-called Corman-Poe oeuvre, if only because it really isn’t Poe, despite an attempt to make it part of the franchise with a title culled from a little known Poe poem (and a brief quote from that poem which closes out the film which frankly doesn’t seem to have much to do with what has actually transpired in the film). Corman had wanted to branch out a bit and had suggested that instead of returning to the Poe well, he instead adapt a piece by H.P. Lovecraft, who in those days was not nearly so well known as he has become in the intervening years (ironically due at least in part to The Haunted Palace). While American International seemed to agree, Corman reveals in the interview included on this Blu-ray as a supplement that he feels they were actually kind of stringing him along, secretly planning to make The Haunted Palace (which early in its gestational phase had the same title as its Lovecraft source novel, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) as much of a “Poe piece” as they could.

The Haunted Palace is in a way rather like the film that started the whole “Poe” ball of wax rolling, The Fall of the House of Usher, in that a building, or at least something in the building, affects its inhabitants. A prologue details the unseemly demise by burning of one Joseph Curwen (Vincent Price), thought (correctly it appears) to be a warlock. As Curwen is about to perish in the flames, he casts a curse on the town of Arkham saying that his tormentors’ descendants will one day know his wrath. Segue forward 110 years (to the late 19th century), and Curwen’s great-great grandson Charles Dexter Ward (also Price) arrives to take up residence in the family manse which he has just inherited. Accompanying Ward is his comely young wife Anne (Debra Paget in her last film appearance). The two are struck by the cold shoulder they receive from the townsfolk and are later appalled by the appearance of a number of horribly disfigured people whom the town’s physician, Dr. Willet (Frank Maxwell) informs them are thought to be the horrifying result of Curwen’s long ago curse.

Ward finds himself oddly familiar with the labyrinthine interior of his family palace, and he’s also obsessed with a portrait of his great-great grandfather. Simon (Lon Chaney, Jr.), the odd caretaker of the place, seems to know that something circumspect may be going on with regard to Ward and his ancestral past, and he may indeed even be facilitating that state of affairs. It soon becomes obvious that Curwen’s spirit is very much alive, finding a suitable home in Ward’s psyche. Meanwhile, the townsfolk are once again becoming restless, especially when Ward (now more or less Curwen) engages in more “magickal” activity.

The Haunted Palace, while an (unintended) hybrid of sorts, actually fits rather well into the overall Corman-Poe filmography. While it’s a bit more “concrete” than Poe’s more psychologically skewed offerings (there are real demons rather than imagined ones in this film), the general ambience here is quite similar to many of the other Corman Poe films. Price is once again wonderfully compelling, especially once Curwen starts to reassert his presence (aided by some changes in make-up coloring which cast Price in a ghoulish green light). This may not be at the top tier of this particular batch of films, but it’s still highly watchable and eminently enjoyable.

The Haunted Palace Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Haunted Palace is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.33:1. This is probably the weakest of the transfers in The Vincent Price Collection set, though it's really on an incremental difference (I can only score things in half points here, so I have booted this down to a 3.5, though I might be tempted to give it a solid 3.75 if I were able to). While colors are generally quite nicely saturated, if occasionally varying (flesh tones especially), there are some recurrent issues with rampant mosquito noise in some of the fog enshrouded scenes. Watch for example at around 18:39, when Price and Paget confront the first of the "mutated" inhabitants of Arkham, when small black dots suddenly swarm over the frame, so much so that Paget actually looks like she's wearing a veil for a second or two. The elements used for this transfer also have a bit more damage than some of the other films in the set. As should be expected, several of the opticals are fairly dirty and grainy looking. Otherwise, though, this is a solid looking presentation, with some very nicely saturated reds and blues, very good fine detail (the mutant make-up literally shows its seams) as well as a very natural layer of fine grain and which also has a generally very well defined image.

The Haunted Palace Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Haunted Palace features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix which is delivered via DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Dialogue is very cleanly presented, and this track has a fairly full sounding midrange, though occasionally a very minor hint of distortion peeks through Ronald Stein's creepy score (it's most noticeable in the opening credits sequence). Other than this very minimal anomaly, the rest of the track is problem free, offering excellent fidelity and some nice dynamic range.

The Haunted Palace Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Vincent Price's Introduction and Final Words for The Haunted Palace (1080i; 3:47) and (1080i; 1:29) are culled from Vincent Price's Gothic Horrors, an Iowa public television broadcast of the film.


• Audio Commentary by Author Lucy Chase Williams and Richard Heft is a fairly whimsical piece (listen at around the 30 minute mark for a funny transition between the two commentators).


• Audio Commentary by Tom Weaver. Weaver is a huge Corman fan who offers a really nice commentary full of interesting information, including a debunking of the widely assumed "fact" that this film was the first adaptation of a Lovecraft tale.


• A Change of Poe: An Interview with Producer and Director Roger Corman (1080i; 11:15) is an enjoyable featurette with Corman reminiscing about American International's "subterfuge" of making this a Poe film when it really wasn't.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:13)


• Photo Gallery (1080p; 2:37)

The Haunted Palace Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Perhaps because Lovecraft dealt in more ostensibly real evils than the sometimes psychological ones Poe tended to explore, The Haunted Palace doesn't quite have the weirdly hallucinogenic dreamlike quality that made so many of the other Corman films so memorable. That said, this is still a wonderful film full of some great moments, not the least of which is Price's bifurcated performance. This Blu-ray has slightly less impressive video than the rest of the films in this set, but the supplementary material is outstanding. Recommended.