Writing on 'THE TOMB OF LIGEIA' for Reverse Shot's Halloween Pumpkins

Though Corman never truly felt the lash of negative notices, his strongest critical period as a director was between 1960 and 1964, during which American International Pictures financed his lifelong ambition: to adapt the works of Edgar Allan Poe for the screen. This cycle amounted to eight gothic horror films in five years, and if you think that’s good going, he also directed eleven other films in that period—two of which, Tower of London (1962) and Little Shop of Horrors (1960), are especially enduring—and produced one more, Coppola’s Dementia 13 (1963). All eight of his Poe pictures were decorated by his close collaborator, the art director and alchemist Daniel Haller, and all but one starred Vincent Price, culminating in 1964’s captivating The Tomb of Ligeia.