Look out for the Skeletal Hand or the Poisoned Hand!

***This is a companion to a 2015 review of Twice-Told Tales (1963 ***

 "I have no intention of honoring the chair with my corpse." - Gerald Pyncheon (Vincent Price), House of Seven Gables

With dialogue like that how could I not enjoy Twice-Told Tales (1963), an anthology of Hawthorne stories colored with Corman strokes, obviously influenced by Corman and Price successes before the production, given the horror flavor and allowed for the main star to sink his teeth into three characters less than morally upright. I still think the third is perhaps the most "Evil Price" we all know and love of the horror icon, because his Gerald Pyncheon is out to gain financial strength (after squandering a fortune) throughout whatever means are necessary, including burying his beautiful wife alive (Beverly Garland, actually a Corman actress, so that sort of ties this anthology to the great (and cheap) director), stabbing his sister (Jacqueline deWit; I know her from the memorable Twilight Zone classic, "Time Enough at Last" as Meredith's vicious wife) in the head, and looking to take the map he eventually finds in order to secure land in Maine if available. I think the tragic romance of the second tale, where Price's bitter father of Joyce Taylor decided to poison her body so she would have a death touch, feeling that the world of sin should not be near her, so blinded by the hate for the wife who left him for another man that he failed to see the effects such a reaction would have on his daughter. So when a young man going to college and hiring a room nearby theirs enters the picture, Brett Halsey, Price can't anticipate the complications that eventually ensue. That an imperfected antidote from Abraham Sofaer isn't the answer to the poison touch Halsey would hope, Taylor isn't willing to remain alone without him, and Price is left to realize his fatal error and enact penalty also on himself. And the first tale--about two older gents gathering for a birthday drink of whiskey, locating an actual youth spring, the doctor, played by Sebastian Cabot, realizes could bring back a woman he dearly loved and never got to wed, with Price, his buddy, urging him not to--ends as tragically as the the next two tales, as a revelation about Price and Mari Blanchard had been kept from Cabot resulting in unforeseen consequences. These tales are full of romantic entanglements--such as Denning and Garland at the Seven Gables falling love as their ancestors once did 150 years prior--and the obvious horrors that come with bad decisions derived from betrayal, lust, wickedness, and greed. Lots of desire and misguided response to unexpected developments almost always result in death. Price being choked by a skeletal hand reaching from a whole behind a bleeding portrait could be seen as very campy, and Hawthorne fans might even grimace at the image while fans of "The House on Haunted Hill" (1958) might appreciate it. The House of the Seven Gables crumbling is definitely a Corman callback. I always enjoy this. I haven't watched it since 2015, though. Glad Turner Classics showed it this month.