13 Nights of Shocktober: Twice-Told Tales

by A.J. 

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and, October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 4: A Trio of Terror: Twice-Told Tales

It’s hard to go wrong with a horror anthology movie starring Vincent Price, especially when the source material for the stories is the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Released in 1963, Twice-Told Tales has a bold color pallet and excellent production design that help make this a wonderful collection of Gothic short films. Though the sets may not have the most realistic appearance, their artificiality only adds to the surreal nature of these supernatural stories.

Each of the three stories begins with skeleton hands opening a book and Price providing the opening narration. In "Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment" two elderly friends celebrate Dr. Heidegger’s 79th birthday. A storm blows open the entrance to the crypt that holds the body of Dr. Heidegger’s dead fiancé. They find that a natural spring has been dripping on her tomb and though she has been dead for 38 years her body has not decayed at all. They experiment with the spring to make themselves young again, but soon find that the joys of youth also come with the troubles of youth. "Rappaccini’s Daughter" has Price playing the sinister Rappaccini who keeps his daughter, Beatrice, locked in a garden and away from all human contact. Young Giovanni falls in love with Beatrice and becomes determined to free her from her father and his experiments with plants. The final story is a short adaptation of the novel The House of the Seven Gables in which Price plays Gerald Pyncheon, who returns to his family home to search for a secret vault that holds a treasure, but is also cursed because of the family’s dark past.  

For being over 50 years old, this movie has some special effects that hold up well. The lapse photography used to de-age the characters in "Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment" is not as dated as you might expect and looks more convincing than CGI in a recent movie would look. Other effects are a little humorous, but also bizarre, such as a guinea pig that turns purple from one of Rappaccini’s experiments. However, the film as a whole relies more on set design and the performances of the actors than special effects to engage the audience. 

Typically, when you think of 19th century horror stories Edgar Allan Poe comes to mind before Nathaniel Hawthorne, but after watching this movie you’ll want to read some of Hawthorne's spooky stories. I know I do. Twice-Told Tales is classic, spooky fun from a time when horror films where almost always period films and shocks were accomplished without blood and gore. If you’re looking for a horror film that is enjoyable without being intense, let Vincent Price and Nathaniel Hawthorne provide you with three eerie flights of horror and the fantastic.