Dir. Roger Corman
The Roger Corman AIM (American International Pictures) films, usually based on and named after a particular work of Edgar Allen Poe, are horror classics. However, they are odd classics as they don't serve much insightful commentary, as the likes of Get Out or Dawn of the Dead do, being rather vehicles for Vincent Price to chew fantastically-designed scenery. In your mind, where films reside as echoes and shadows after being viewed, the Corman films tend to be remembered for locations, sets, and Price's shenanigans within them, rather than the message they invoke, or even the scares you might have felt.
To a modern audience, there is little of actual fright to be had in viewing these films, as like Poe's stories, they deal less in making you jump, and more in making you despair. Corman adapts them into entertaining, enjoyable yarns, but interestingly in The Haunted Palace, despite being nominally named after a Poe poem, it is in fact H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward which is adapted. Lovecraft's horror deals more with creatures beyond human comprehension, often idolised by cults, offering sacrifices and women to mate with these unearthly creatures. In The Haunted Palace, it is Price's Joseph Curwen who acts as a necromancer or warlock, offering women from the local village to a caged monstrous demon, one which lies under his manner home.
Curwen, who is burned alive for his actions by the villagers, promises a curse on the families of the villagers for generations to come. Now in the 19th century, Charles Dexter Ward (Vincent Price), the descendent of Curwen, returns with his wife (Debra Paget) to their inherited home, the manner/mansion of Curwen. We see that Curwen's curse has had an effect on the denizens of the town, as blind, disfigured children walk the streets, or are hidden in barred rooms.
Within the dusty palace, above the mantle-place is a portrait of the original Joseph Curwen. The similarity of likeness between Curwen and Ward is commented upon by himself and his wife, as well as the villagers, who fear that his evil has returned. From his arrival, Ward appears to have a knowledge of the mansion, and slowly-but-surely it becomes apparent that Curwen is actually possessing Ward's body, in essence, returning to life to finish what he had began. Aiding Curwen are the similarly possessed descendants of his servants.
The portrait itself is presented multiple times throughout the film, as Curwen's striking features seem to probe malevolence outwards. Here then, in a similar manner to Poe works such as The Fall of the House of Usher, also filmed by Corman starring Price, we see the past return and negatively influence the present. In The Haunted Palace, this literally occurs as Ward is possessed by his ancestor, and made to do horrific things. Such things include: attempting to rape Anne, Ward's wife; murdering the descendants of those villagers which burned him alive, often through the use of their own deformed children; and finally, a direct repetition of the past, as the possessed Ward offers Anne to the Elder God residing under the mansion.
The horror of Lovecraft and Poe, where the past can never be forgotten, always returning to effect the present no matter how long it has lain dormant (see The Call of Cthulu where the eponymous Elder God sleeps awaiting a call to awake and wreak terror upon the Earth) is a strong streak of horror. I daresay in 2018 it is apparent that particular evils of the past, in particular fascism and xenophobia, have arisen anew, both within older generations and the younger. Therefore perhaps the creaky horror or The Haunted Palace isn't as outdated as it first appears.
Unfortunately however, unlike The Haunted Palace there is no easy fix. In the film, the solution of the past is required once again to break the hold of the past over the present. The villagers rally and burn the entire mansion down. In doing so, the portrait of Curwen is destroyed, allowing Ward's presence to return. In razing the physical remnants of the past, the past's negative influence is removed. If we apply the analogy to the rise of fascism, then unfortunately the repeated historical solution would be a world war against an organised fascist party - a road that is unbearable to even contemplate.
The film appears to make-out that the portrait was what held the malignant spirit of Curwen, a concept best known to many in Voldermort's Horcruxes, which physically hold parts of a distorted soul. However the film crescendos with the reveal that Ward may not be free of Curwen's influence, as Price turns to the camera, his face pale with the possession of Curwen. Unfortunately, I think this undermines the message of the film, as it appears more as a playful tease to allow the viewing audience to leave the cinema (or wherever they view the film) with a knowing laugh.
However, it may belie a darker message, one where the past cannot simply be burned away, and the evils spirits of the past have the ability to continue on. Here the allegory of that message is strengthened by Ward being an ancestor of that same evil, as the past overcomes a once normal, average man. In real-world terms, I'm afraid that this possessive power is not fantastical, as some people today fall into the same psychological traps that allowed evil to rise in a new, horrific way back in the 1930s and the 1940s. I mentioned Get Out earlier, which managed to act as a contemporary warning of the repeated horrors of the past, many of which don't seem to have left at all, only laying dormant, or transformed into 'new' versions of the same evil. The Haunted Palace addressed similar themes but in a much more direct, fantastical way. The seemingly outdated horror of the Corman era may not have fright, but it certainly still has a bite.
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