It must be quite a draw, making a film based on Edgar Allan Poe. The psychology of his tales of terror is compelling and modern filmmaking offers endless possibilities. I wasn’t looking for anything too heavy, so I watched Requiem for the Damned. Vignette movies are like a box of chocolates (I’m sure you know how the rest of it goes). This particular feature doesn’t seem to have had a theatrical release, perhaps because it is an independent film made by students and faculty at the Douglas Education Center. The opening credits cite the Allegheny Image Factory, and when I think of Pittsburgh and horror my mind eventually wanders to George Romero. The Douglas Education Center began as a business school south of Pittsburgh and it offers training in filmmaking. And that seems to explain this particular film.
Five vignettes are taken from Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Only “The Black Cat” is set in Poe’s period and it is heavily CGI. The rest are modernized versions of ideas inspired by Poe rather than following his plots. “Usher” uses Poe’s characters and an introduced illegitimate son, to present the Usher curse—the unfeeling business practices that brought the Ushers wealth have made theirs a haunted estate. “Tell-Tale” has a modern urban legend feel as a guy starts seeing his ex-girlfriend’s broken heart everywhere he goes. “Rue Morgue” is a lesbian revenge story involving an improvised gorilla suit. “Pit” is a post-apocalyptic vision with almost no dialog and a somewhat confusing resolution.
Horror anthologies seldom work. Like edited volumes in the book world, they lack coherence. Poe insisted that short stories should be single-sitting forms so that mood could be maintained. Putting five together, each with different directors, writers, and styles, makes for a disjointed viewing experience. A couple of the segments, “Black Cat,” and “Pit,” seemed to drag a bit. The former because you already know the story and the CGI was so abstract that it interfered with the telling and the latter because you really don’t know what’s going on. The visuals are impressive, but story seems to have been sacrificed. I was looking for something not too heavy and I did find that. I also learned about a place where filmmaking is taught and you don’t have to have connections to get in. Who knows? Perhaps in another life I might’ve gone that direction. I tend to follow Poe.
