Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque I

From the mysterious marriage in "Morella", to the satirical and secretive vistas of "The Man That Was Used Up", or the depressed Roderick Usher, the reader is facing the first volume of E. A. Poe's tales. Teeming with melancholy and vampirism, verging on the sanity's uttermost rim, Poe's characters often fall victims to supernatural happenings. Men wishing for their wife's deaths, doppelgangers and hollow men, or bargains with the Devil – all these elements reveal the need for Poe's protagonists to discuss, mock, and curse their (ab)normal predicaments. E. A. Poe's immortal heritage in the horror genre is unquestionable and if the reader is not quite familiar with the atmosphere depicted, they could always give Roger Corman's movies from the Poe cycle a try: "House of Usher" (1960), "Pit and the Pendulum" (1961), "The Tomb of Ligeia" (1964) – all starring Vincent Price. -