The Haunted Palace

The Haunted Palace

Year: 1963

IMDb Rating: 6.7/10

Genres: Horror

Directors: Roger Corman

Cast: Debra Paget, Lon Chaney Jr., Vincent Price

Loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's novel THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, this fright flick opens with a warlock placing a curse on a group of villagers about to burn him at the stake. Generations later, the warlock's descendant returns to the village to pick up where his ancestor left off.

The Haunted Palace is a 1963 Gothic fantasy horror film released by American International Pictures, starring Vincent Price, Lon Chaney Jr. and Debra Paget (in her final film), in a story about a village held in the grip of a dead necromancer. Directed by Roger Corman, it is one of his series of eight films derived from or inspired by the works of American author Edgar Allan Poe. Although marketed as "Edgar Allan Poe's The Haunted Palace", the film actually derives its plot from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a novella by H. P. Lovecraft. The film's title is derived from a 6-stanza poem by Poe, published in 1839 (which was later incorporated into Poe's horror short story "The Fall of the House of Usher"), and the film uses eight lines from the poem within the framing of the story.

Charles Dexter Ward travels with his wife to Arkham to inspect a large house he has inherited. It was once owned by his great grandfather Joseph Curwen, a disciple of the devil, who cursed the local villagers as they burned him at the stake. Everyone is hostile to Ward, blaming the curse for the number of mutants in the village. Indeed, Ward's arrival allows Curwen to take over his body and restart his evil ways by revenging himself on the descendants of those who killed him.

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