So much average

Fantastic!

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This was another one of Vincent Price's movies that I just only now have had the fortune chance of watching."The Tomb of Ligeia" was a very slow paced story that seemed somewhat incoherent. Granted, I haven't read the Poe story, so how true the movie was to the book I have no idea.The characters were somewhat devoid of characteristics, personalities and appeal, and most were ones that you hardly took a liking to."The Tomb of Ligeia" is definitely not the best of movies that rose in the horror genre in the mid 1960s, and it is hardly one of the more outstanding of Vincent Price movies.

I wanted to get more familiar with horror movies from the 60's and I couldn't find a better reason than Edgar Allan Poe adaptions. It is a decision I am glad to have taken, because I am now familiar with Vincent Price and Roger Corman. I was mesmerized by Vincent Price playing Verden Fell, I thought he was so smooth, so elegant in his portrayal of the character yet he gave off vibes of tragedy and sadness that was pretty intriguing and immersing. But he also gave a vibe of brutishness that felt like it was well hidden beneath his elegant and well-spoken exterior. Verden Fell is a deliciously mysterious and complex character. I have not read the short-story yet, but I feel the story was adapted pretty well. It was dark, poetic, romantic and tragic. It felt like Poe. With the horror of the story slowly unfolding as the movie progresses. I gotta say, Roger Corman did a good job introducing the characters first then slowly set out the plot which I feel made the impact of the story stronger. Also quite a story! It makes me wonder what horrors went inside the head of Edgar Allan Poe. The great, dark poet.Director: Roger Corman; writers: Robert Towne and Paul Mayersberg; based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Ligeia"; Year of release: 1964; Starring: Vincent Price and Elizabeth Shepherd; themes: Jealousy, possessiveness and obsession. I must also mention Elizabeth Shepherd as Rowena Trevanion/Ligeia, I felt she played her characters pretty well. She was both vulnerable but still without being such a damsel-in-distress as Rowena. There was adequate reason for Rowena to be curious about her husband's odd behavior. Which made for an interesting drama between the two main characters. She also portrayed Ligeia with a strange fury yet authority you could see why a character such as Verden would be under her control. Verden was an intelligent yet torn man, torn between two worlds: that of Ligeia and the one he is trying to live in. Ligeia sounds like a cruel woman, putting a spell upon Verden before she died. Which is by the way a reflection of man's jealousy and possessive nature. Ligeia might have gone but she held so dearly onto Verden she did such a cruel thing. It can also be a representation of man's refusal to move on with his life, after the loss of a dear one.I have not read the short story yet, but I have read some of Poe's stories and I gotta say it is a memorable adaption that is full of gloom, dread and tragedy. 9/10

This being the last adaptation by Corman of one of Poe's stories it surely wasn't a memorable closure. For me it remained way below the level of the first two adaptations "The House of Usher" and "Pit and the Pendulum". Still it was better than "The Raven" and I would say on the same level as "The Haunting Palace". Yes The tomb of Ligeia is actually more about visuals and a few nightmarish scenes starring a black cat than telling an interesting story. Also the characters remained largely underdeveloped. Vincent Price as noble man Verden Fell not being able to forget his deceased wife Ligeia also fell quite flat. With him wearing dark glasses in most of the scenes it almost seemed he was someone from the future having traveled through a time machine. Elizabeth Shepherd beautiful as she was playing both deceased (Ligeia) and new wife (Rowena) of Verden, does not do much else than running and screaming in here. The way Rowena fell in 'love' with Verden was one of the most unconvincing I have ever seen.

The Tomb of Ligeia was yet another in the long line of Corman horror flicks with Vincent Price. This one aimed for a sumptuous Gothic romance look despite a low budget and mostly pulled it off. The production design work was surprisingly sharp for a B-picture. Everything has a nice murky gloom to it, nice and creepy, very goth. All of the usual story tropes appear here: Price as a brooding widower, unable to let go of his dead wife, and unwilling to believe wife #2 when she claims wife #1 has returned as something... unnatural! Dusty, unused staircases, locked rooms never to be opened, screams in the dead of night etc. abound and it all seems terribly clichéd forty years later, but the atmosphere of gloom and dread carries through to the modern viewer and the results are fairly entertaining. The script tends a bit toward the hysterical, and some of the performances get overcooked, but this is nothing too unusual for the time and genre. Worth a look.