Director: Roger Corman
Vincent Price portrays kindly gent Charles Dexter Ward whom with his lovely wife Ann is set to move into his great-great grandfathers home in the ancient town of Arkham. Unbeknownst to Ward, grand pappy Joseph Curwin was an evil warlock who a hundred and ten years prior was intent on raising the dead, conjuring up various “elder gods”, and to top it off, crossbreeding the town’s various women with an ancient demon kept holed up in his basement. Nice. For these healthy hobbies grandpa Curwin is burned alive by the town’s villagers, but not before placing the appropriate curse on the townspeople and their descendants. Flash ahead 110 years later as Ward, who’s the spitting image of his grandfather, is welcomed with less than open arms by the townspeople. Moving into the “haunted palace” he inherited, Ward is summarily possessed by his grandfather’s spirit, picking up where he left off with his evil experiments and looking to exact revenge on the townspeople.
Loaded with tons of gothic atmosphere and ambience, this one was a real surprise. While not as well known as the more popular Corman/Price flicks like “House of Husher” and “Pit and the Pendulum”, this one is just as enjoyable. The sets are all lavishly designed and photographed, and we get everything from fog-enshrouded graveyards to Curwin’s deliciously Gothic basement of horrors. There’s a nice little subplot about the townspeople suffering from a form of mutation thanks to the curse, resulting in a fairly creepy scene of Ward and wife being circled by a group of mutants in the town square. Price excels in turn as both the evil Curwin and his victimized grandson, going back and forth from good to evil with ease. The film does stumble a bit in the middle, as there’s really not much else for Price to do except kill some villagers and say a few lines of mumbo jumbo magic, but that’s okay. The films overall look coupled with Price’s performance more than makes up for any lacking bit of substance.
