I first saw THE TELL-TALE HEART in the mid 1960s on one of those ubiquitous late night horror shows. In my hometown of Greenville SC. It was called INFERNO with the tagline “The meeting place of the Supernatural AND the Unknown”. The print was rather murky but several scenes stood out such as the murder of the friend, the breathing floorboards, and the fate of the principal character. Although I didn’t realize it then, the voyeuristic aspects of the story also made quite an impression. Being a shy and awkward 13 year old at the time, I related to Laurence Payne’s Edgar.
The movie then disappeared from my conscious mind for the next 40 years until I ran across a 2002 breakdown of it in Jonathan Rigby’s ENGLISH GOTHIC: A CENTURY OF HORROR CINEMA. This really made me want to see the film again but I didn’t have the opportunity as there were no video versions of it available in America at that time. When it finally did show up, it was in a cheap public domain copy which looked even worse than the one I’d remembered from 1965 so I promptly forgot about it. Fast forward another 20 years and I came across this DVD and decided to try it.
It was well worth it. This Pegasus Entertainment disc from 2011 was a revelation. What had been murky before emerges on this DVD as crisp and atmospheric black & white photography. The soundtrack, while not lush and orchestral like a Hammer film, was very effective in enhancing the tension of what was happening onscreen. While a number of liberties were taken with Edgar Allan Poe’s story, the period setting and the mental disintegration of the central character (whose name is Edgar) were perfectly in keeping with the mood that Poe was trying to convey.
A shy and awkward librarian (Laurence Payne) meets a young woman (Adrienne Corri) who has moved in across the street from him. He is able to watch her a la REAR WINDOW and quickly falls in love. He then asks his good friend Carl (Dermot Walsh) the best way to court her. Unfortunately she and Carl fall in love and after Edgar watches them spend the night together he goes berserk and kills his friend and then buries him beneath the floor in his sitting room. Soon he begins to hear Carl’s heart beating over and over even after he removes it and buries it in the yard.
Those familiar with the Poe story know the rest. It’s pretty much the same here except that Edgar dies a horrible death only to discover that it was all a nightmare. The movie ends a la DEAD OF NIGHT with the girl arriving ready to move in. Laurence Payne gives a virtuoso performance as the tormented Edgar with able support from Adrienne Corri. The frankness of the bedroom scene along with the truly brutal death of Carl and Edgar’s gruesome end must have been quite shocking in 1960. A remarkable B movie that still has the power to disturb and should be better known than it is.
The Capsule Critic 