The Oblong Box (1969)

Day 9 of Sobriety

This could be described as the entry in Roger Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe cycle of films that wasn’t actually directed by Roger Corman. Perhaps that is why I found a little lackluster compared to the other films that I have seen in the cycle (so far House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Haunted Palace, and The Masque of the Red Death—and most of the other titles are waiting on my shelf). But having said that, the actual director, Gordon Hessler, has made a fair number of good films, including The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), and (ahem) Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978). He also directed another Vincent Price film, Cry of the Banshee (1970), which I haven’t seen yet, but am looking forward to.

 

Apparently Hessler stepped in to replace Michael Reeves (of Witchfinder General fame) when Reeves became unavailable due to illness. I wonder what The Oblong Box would have been like if it had been directed by Reeves? We’ll never know.

 

All of that is not to say that The Oblong Box is a bad movie—not at all. It has Vincent Price and Christopher Lee in it—how could it be?! I enjoyed it well enough; it just didn’t quite reach the gothic fever pitch that the other Corman-Poe movies I’ve seen did.

 

The movie focuses on the plight of a masked protagonist—an aristocrat whose face was disfigured in a “Voodoo ritual” in Africa as a punishment for a crime committed against the native population. The depiction of the Voodoo ritual opens the film and is shot from the perspective of the victim. It’s pretty intense. However, that punishment was imposed on him unjustly, and now, back in England, he is seeking revenge on those who wronged him. Vincent Price plays the masked man’s brother, who has kept him secretly imprisoned in his house due to feelings of guilt and shame. Christopher Lee plays a doctor who is engaged in illegal medical research on stolen corpses.

 

The plot is quite complex, and involves a cocktail of macabre themes: voodoo, grave-robbing, premature burial, murder, and (as is often the case with such gothic chillers) very dark forms of karma and retribution. One thing I personally found quite intriguing was the way that the masked protagonist is treated by the general populace when he ventures out into urban London (at least I think it was London). Despite his alarming appearance, he is able to engage in a tryst with one of his brother’s servants. In one scene he is dragged by drunks to a tavern/brothel where he has an encounter with a prostitute. In my newly sober state, the chaotic tavern scene stirred some thoughts and memories. Primarily envy, I suppose. Everyone in the scene is roaring drunk—the staff, the customers, the prostitutes, the punters, and they are having a whale of a time. But the delirium in which they are abandoning themselves to the cacophony and revelry of the moment, blotting out all thoughts of tomorrow also seemed uncomfortably familiar.