Edgar Allan Poe meets Jules Verne meets Vincent Price

Now Playing: War-Gods of the Deep (aka City in the Sea) (1965)

Pros: Great production design, sets and costumes; Excellent cinematography.
Cons: The romantic leads are badly miscast; Comic relief featuring Herbert the rooster misfires; Underwater action scenes are overlong and plodding.

Special note: This post is part of the Vincent Price blogathon intrepidly hosted by Gill and Barry at the Realweegiemidget Reviews and Cinematic Catharsis blogs. Check it out for more priceless Price reviews and tributes than you can shake an Edgar Allan Poe tome at!

Allow me to make a bold statement. If in Vincent Price's lengthy film career, his only appearances in the horror genre had been the handful of Edgar Allan Poe-inspired films for American International Pictures (AIP), he would still be regarded as one of the great horror stars.

But fortunately, horror fans can choose from a treasure trove of memorably chilling and sometimes campy (in a good way) performances, from the early Universal days of The Invisible Man Returns (1940), to his horror break-out role as Prof. Jarrod in House of Wax (1952), to the sci-fi horrors of The Fly (1958) and The Return of the Fly (1959), to the high camp of the Willam Castle films (House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, 1959), and the even higher camp of his roles as Dr. Phibes (The Abominable Dr. Phibes, 1971; Dr. Phibes Rises Again, 1972) and Edward Lionheart, the hammy and deadly Shakespearean Actor in Theater of Blood (1973).

Even in the lesser known, less successful horror films (The Mad Magician, 1955; Diary of a Madman, 1963; Twice-Told Tales, 1963; Cry of the Banshee, 1970, etc.), Price’s presence lent them a modicum of dignity and distinctiveness. Price had his work cut out for him in War-Gods of the Deep (aka City in the Sea), a film that came towards the tail end of AIP’s fixation on Poe as a marketing ploy, and one that really didn’t do the brand any favors.

With some of the AIP Poe films, the connection with the author’s works is tenuous at best. Previously, the company had slapped the title of a short poem, The Haunted Palace (1963), on an adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft novella, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. And The Raven (1963) was a campy fantasy-comedy that was completely antithetical to the somber tone of the famous poem.

In the case of War-Gods/City in the Sea, the producers decided to establish the film’s Poe credentials and set the mood by having Price recite select lines from the poem after the titles sequence (and at a couple of other points in the film). At the outset, things look promisingly spooky and atmospheric: it’s a dark and windy night, and a body has washed up on a rugged stretch of the Cornish seacoast.

"I'm just going out for a bit of fresh air, I'll be - Whoops! WHHAAAAAAA-A-a-a-a-a-h-h-h..."
KER-PLUNK!

A visiting American mining engineer, Ben Harris (Tab Hunter), helps the locals retrieve the body. When they identify it as Penrose, a lawyer staying at the nearby hotel (a converted mansion perched precariously atop a cliff), Ben elects to hike up to the place to let the proprietors know.

He meets the beautiful daughter of the hotel’s owner, Jill Tregillis (Susan Hart), and in turn is introduced to an eccentric artist staying at the mansion, Harold Tufnell-Jones (David Tomlinson). Harold’s constant companion is Herbert the rooster.

When Ben and Jill go to take a look at Penrose’s room, they hear noises inside. Ben surprises an otherworldly intruder who hurls some bric-a-brac at him and then escapes out a window.

Between the superstitious locals and Tufnell-Jones, Ben learns that the hotel and nearby village are the epicenter of strange happenings: weird lights seen in sea, the soundings of eerie ghost bells, mysterious disappearances, and bodies periodically washing up on shore.

Later that night, the strangeness escalates as Jill is grabbed by the intruder and the two disappear through a hidden door off of the study. Ben hears the commotion and in the darkness and confusion, mistakes Harold for the intruder.

Ben discovers seaweed on the floor and immediately concludes that Jill has been taken. With the help of Herbert the rooster, they discover the secret passageway and take off in pursuit (with Herbert along for the ride in a basket).

They descend into a large cavern, at the end of which is a whirlpool. Ben steps out onto a rock ledge to get a better look and promptly loses his footing. When Harold reaches out to help, all three are sucked into the swirling water.

"When the innkeeper said they had a hot tub, I wasn't expecting this!"

The whirlpool delivers them to the underwater lair of an imperious mystery man known as the Captain (Vincent Price), where they are taken prisoner. Gradually, the Captain’s story is revealed: He and his band of not-so-merry men were notorious smugglers who, while fleeing from the authorities, stumbled upon an immense, ancient underwater city and made it their new home.

Like Atlantis, the city was built by an ancient civilization and eventually overtaken by the sea. The last remnants of that civilization have devolved into primitive gill-men who are most at home in the water, but who can also maneuver on land.

The Captain and his crew have been there for longer than they can remember. Air, heat and energy are delivered by immense pumps powered by a nearby underwater volcano. The Captain has convinced himself and his crew that the peculiar mix of atmosphere in their lair has suspended the aging process -- but if they were to expose themselves to the UV light on the surface, they would die of old age in seconds.

However, the volcano has become much more active, causing violent tremors, and the pumps are failing. The Captain has been sending gill-men to the surface to scavenge for scientific books, equipment, even people -- anything that might help in figuring out how to stop the volcano from erupting. When, after a recent raid of the hotel, the Captain discovered a sketch of Jill that Harold had made, he became convinced she was his long-lost wife, and had a gill-man kidnap her.

"Ah, the volcano's really boiling over now -- anybody wanna make s'mores?"

The Captain learns that Ben is an engineer, and gives him an absurdly short period of time -- a matter of hours -- to figure out how to save the city, or be drowned like the others who have outlived their usefulness. The landlubbers have their work cut out for them: find a way back to the surface before the volcano blows or the Captain decides they’re expendable. A rebellious member of the Captain’s gang and a doddering old clergyman who had been kidnapped decades before may hold the keys to their freedom.

Thanks to the early 1900s setting, the period costumes, and the gorgeous “Colorscope” widescreen cinematography, War-Gods, especially at the beginning, looks like a worthy successor to AIP’s Roger Corman-directed Poe pictures. There’s a tongue-in-cheek homage to House of Usher, as a decrepit man-servant at the old hotel escorts Ben by candlelight to see Julia. As thunder sounds in the background and they pause at the door to the study, the servant ominously warns Ben about the weird artist guest who has brought “the beast” with him. The beast turns out to be Herbert the rooster. Yikes!

From there, the film immediately doubles down on the “comic” relief. After introductions, Harold proudly shows Ben a full-length self portrait he’s done. Ben takes note of the acronym next to the artist’s signature:

Ben: “Harold Tuffnel-Jones, FRA. Oh, Fellow of the Royal Academy?”
Harold: “Not actually. Founder of the Roosters Association, very selective.”

And that's one of the high points of the alleged comedy. Louis M. Heyward, then head of AIP’s London-based division, was responsible for the questionable comic relief. In an interview with film historian Tom Weaver (Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes: Interviews with Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers of the 1940s through 1960s, McFarland, 1991), Heyward remembered getting a call from War-God's English producer (George Willoughby), saying that the script was “impossible” and they couldn’t possibly shoot it.

Heyward’s boss Sam Arkoff told him to fix the situation, and he ended up traveling to AIP’s studios in England to referee between feuding co-producers Dan Haller and Willoughby. His ultimate solution was to rework the screenplay and add Herbert the rooster:

“The one thing I felt was missing was humor, and that’s where the chicken appeared. There was no chicken in the script, so I wrote it along with the David Tomlinson character. Tomlinson was enjoying great vogue at the time because he had just done Mary Poppins (1964) for Disney. At the point when the English producer saw that I had written in a chicken, and knew that whatever I wrote was going in, he quit -- he said, ‘I don’t do chicken pictures!’ And Dan Haller took over the reins.” [Weaver, p. 160]

Herbert the rooster hitches a ride with Harold inside the Jules-Vernesque diving suit.

One can certainly sympathize with Willoughby. While Tomlinson was a talented actor, his character’s relationship with Herbert is a tiresome distraction from the action, and a direct steal of Hans’ Gertrude the duck in 20th Century Fox’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).

While Poe’s poem may have furnished the title, the film’s real tribute is to Jules Verne. When Ben and Harold race through the secret passageway and find themselves in a huge underground cavern with stalactites, stalagmites, treacherously narrow stone bridges and a dizzying whirlpool, it feels like a scaled-down version of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Then, when they end up in the Captain’s underwater lair, with its 19th century costumes and steampunk paraphernalia, there’s a definite Captain Nemo vibe going on.

It’s in the sets and production design that War-Gods really excels. Heyward credited producer Dan Haller with coming up with some “awfully good” sets. [Ibid.] They provide an impressive otherworldly backdrop and make the film seem far more expensive than it was. Colossal statuary of ancient man-beast hybrids and hieroglyphics running the length of the walls create a phantasmagorical mix of ancient Egypt, Babylonia and some Lovecraftian temple of the Elder Gods.

Stephen Dade’s excellent widescreen cinematography also contributes to the sumptuous, decadent feel. Splashes of color from costumes, sets and the Captain’s steampunk equipment punctuate the deep shadows of the underwater realm. The photography is on par with the very best of the Roger Corman-directed Poe pictures.

"Dang it! I told you we were going to be late for the new Survior auditions!"

Unfortunately, the top-notch production values can’t compensate for the mediocre script or miscast actors. Vincent Price is of course the anchor for this ostensible Poe picture, but his character lacks the tragic depth of some of his other Poe roles, and he’s reduced to looking alternately imperious and pensive and barking orders at his men and the captives.

Tab Hunter and Susan Hart look fine in their roles, but at various points Hunter looks like he’s about to burst out laughing, and Hart comes off like a high school thespian reading her lines for the first time. Tab and Susan had previously appeared in Ride the Wild Surf (1964), a “teen” beach comedy from Columbia Pictures. One wonders what combination of chance circumstances and wheeling-dealing ended up scooping up two insouciant, all-American heartthrobs from the beaches of Hawaii and dumping them into the middle of an atmospheric, Gothic horror-fantasy.

David Tomlinson was still basking in the glow of a signature role in Mary Poppins when he was tapped for War-Gods. Despite his comedic talents, he flounders like a fish out of water in a role that was grafted, like a parasitical suckerfish, onto the production at the last minute.

"Will she be all right? I told her this wasn't a surf picture, but noooo, she had to try out her new board!"

The guiding hand of legendary director Jacques Tourneur should have been a big plus for War-Gods. There are flashes of the old Tourneur touch, such as Ben’s first encounter with the intruder at the hotel, in which the gill-man sticks to the shadows and we see only enough to get an impression of a bizarre, otherworldly creature. However, when the story switches to the underwater city, the action and suspense largely grind to a halt and are replaced by static shots of the Captain telling his backstory and the landlubber captives furtively conspiring with disgruntled underlings to escape.

AHOY MATEY, SPOILERS AHEAD! (SORT OF)

The climactic action that does take place is all underwater. The chase and fight with the gill-men is certainly ambitious, a sort of Creature from the Black Lagoon meets Thunderball. But the sequence is ponderous and poorly edited. The frequent intercutting of the action with close-ups of actors’ faces inside their Jules-Vernesqe diving helmets serves more to slow things down than to clarify who’s doing what to whom.

Worst of all, in the one sequence in which the gill-men finally get some healthy screen time (“Alright Mr. Tourneur, I’m ready for my close-up…”), the compromise between an effective-looking creature suit and one giving the stunt-men sufficient underwater maneuverability is starkly obvious. These are pretty poor cousins of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and a disappointing payoff for viewers wanting thrilling action and scary monsters after sitting through dull stretches of exposition.

"The Krusty Krab? Go straight past the volcano for about a half a league, then turn
right at Poseidon's Palace. You can't miss it!"

This was Jacques Tourneur’s last film. While only in his early ‘60s, the industry had moved on, and according the Heyward, he was more than happy to get one more opportunity to practice his craft:

“Jacques was, again, at the nadir of his career, but he wanted to direct another picture or two. He was overly agreeable, and there was a sadness to that. At AIP, it was the same with directors as with actors. If you were a young director, AIP was giving you a chance; if you were an old director, your career was on its way down and we inherited you. You were usually afraid to fight because it would influence the next picture. But face Jacques with a technical problem and he would come up with answers. He knew his craft and his media.” [Weaver, p. 161]

On the other hand, Vincent Price was not done by a long shot. According to Price’s daughter Victoria, this film and an even greater stinker, House of 1000 Dolls (shot in Madrid in 1967), soured him on AIP. But Vincent had too many interests and too many irons in the fire to let a few cheesy B pictures get him down:

“Although my father was in despair about the sorry run of films he was being forced to make, at the same time he was in the most visible and popular era of his career. As an actor in his mid-fifties, he did not take his growing appeal for granted, and from judging the Miss American Pageant to appearing as Grand Marshall of the Santa Claus Parade in Hollywood, he brought grace and charm to every event with which he was associated.” [Victoria Price, Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography, St. Martin’s, 1999, p. 260]

War-Gods doesn’t come close to scraping the bottom of the barrel the way House of 1000 Dolls did. It’s an ambitious sci-fi-horror-fantasy that at least looks more expensive than its budget. But it’s done in by a weak script made even weaker by forced comic relief, and a couple of egregiously miscast romantic leads.

It appeals more for its curiosity factor: as Jacques Tourneur’s last feature film, and as that AIP Poe film that everyone forgets. But hey, if you really like chickens, this one might be right up your alley!

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, The City in the Sea

Where to find it: try here for the DVD; or stream it (for now) on Youtube.

The House of the Seven Gables: Special Book Report Edition

Universal Pictures, 1940. Directed by Joe May.

Now that my wife and I have made one last daring grocery run (for awhile at least) and are hunkering down in self-imposed isolation with our stash of supplies, the comfortable home routines -- reading, writing, watching movies, painting, playing games -- are more important than ever in keeping us reasonably sane.

Fortunately we’ve both been retired for a couple of years, so we’re not having to learn a lot of new tricks to keep ourselves busy. And of course all the little home projects that had been sitting quietly in the corner are now staring us in the face and saying, “you have no more excuses.”

The other day I decided to tackle the project crying out loudest to be done: the Great Spring Cleaning and Ritual Purging of unused, unneeded stuff. Careful not to stir up so much dust that my coughing and sneezing would set off alarm bells, I got going on my remorseless purge.

I was so thorough that I discovered boxes hidden behind other boxes that hadn’t been moved in years. To my amazement, I found a box of old school papers from my junior high and high school days. It got me wondering -- who would have saved this stuff in the first place (I wasn’t the best of students to say the least), and how did I not manage to throw it all out ages ago?

My curiosity got the better of me, and I spent quite some time shuffling through yellowed pages that made me feel like I was 104 instead of … whatever. But lo and behold, I ran across an old book report on Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables that was preternaturally perfect for the Classic Literature on Film Blogathon (graciously hosted by Paul at Silver Screen Classics).

Perfect because I remember basing it on my memories of the Vincent Price movie I’d seen on the late show rather than the book itself, which I had brought home only to find a couple of days later that my dog had chewed it up along with a shoe and several Playboys that I’d hidden under the bed. The rest of my “research” for the report consisted of asking various family members about things in the film that confused me.

So, for what it’s worth, here is a 13-year-old’s perspective on classic literature on film from an alternate universe long, long ago and far away.

To capture the spirit of a simpler time and a simpler me, I decided not to correct any mistakes (except to add a few editor’s notes and screencaps from the film to provide additional context and clarifications). So, take everything that follows with a grain of salt. Or maybe a whole shaker.

One final warning. Spoilers abound, if you can make out what the 13-year-old me was trying to say. Spoilers or not, proceed at your own caution.

Book Report: The House of the Seven Gabels by Nathanel Hawthorn
By [Name Redacted]

Nathanel Hawthorn was an author born a long time ago when people mainly lived on the east coast and lived in log cabins and hunted bears and stuff. He wrote romantisism-type books. My mom really likes those kinds of books, but she hides them because my dad thinks their junk. I hide my horror comics because otherwise both my dad and my mom will throw them away.

His best known book is The Scary Letter, about a girl named Ester Primm who walks around with a big letter A pasted to her forehead and people make fun of her and stuff. He also wrote something called Twice Baked Tales. I don’t know much about it, exsept that it was made into a movie with my favorite horror star Vincent Price. I never saw it, but my friend Jerry saw it at the drive-in and said it sucked.

Another author who lived around the same time was Washington Erving, who joined the Philthydelphia ‘76ers and fought the redcoats during the Revolutionery War and then wrote some cool stories about a headless horseman and Jack The Ripper Van Winkel. I really wanted to do the report on The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Horror, but since somebody else checked it out, I guess House of the Severed Seven Gabels will do.

I asked my mom and dad if they had red the book, but they hadn’t. My dad said that it might be up my ally anyway, because he thought it might be about a haunted house or something. I was exsited since The Haunting is one of my all-time favorite movies ever, where the people stay in the creepy old haunted house and the one lady thinks she’s holding the hand of her friend in the dark but it turns out to be a ghost.

The Turner House, built in 1668 in Salem, MA, was the
inspiration for the Seven Gables house. (Photo: 1915)

It turns out the House of the Seven Gabels isn’t very scary. There’s a lot of talking but not much happens. There’s no nosy ghosts trying to break down doors like in The Haunting. And the house doesn’t look like much. The Munsters and the Addams Family houses are way cooler. [Editor’s note: at this point as I was rushing to get the report done, I abandoned all pretense that I had read the book and was desperately trying to describe the movie from memory. Needless to say, this did not earn any bonus points with my English teacher.]

The people in the story wear old-time cloths and talk real formal, but parts of it seem like it could happen in real life, like the one guy doing really mean things to his brother and getting him locked up and stuff. Like, my brother steals and breaks stuff of mine all the time, and when I try to get back at him, I’m the one who gets in trouble.

The two brothers live in this big old house with their dad who looks like he’s about 102 years old. Their names are Jeff and Cliff Pinchum. [Ed. - George Sanders as Jaffrey Pyncheon and Vincent Price as Clifford.] There’s also a cousin living there whose too poor to live on her own. Her name is Hapsiba. [Margaret Lindsay as Hepzibah].

Jeff is snooty and all about money, and Cliff is like this musican who plays on this tiny piano and sings songs. He wants his dad to sell the house so he can run off with his cousin to New York and sell his music or something.

Clifford plays the harpsichord in the house for Hepzibah. Say that three times real fast!

I kind of got confused about the cousin thing, because I thought you weren’t supposed to marry your cousin. When I asked my dad, he said that back in those days, there weren’t that many elagibel people to marry, so a lot of people married their cousins. He also said that mom’s family was mostly cousins who married each other. When mom heard that, she threw her Good Housekeeping at him.

At first the old dad wants to sell the house really bad, because he’s broke and the house is supposed to be cursed because his ansester got the land by accusing the owner, Mr. Mall, of whichcraft. After the ansester built the house he didn’t get to enjoy it much because he died from the curse. There’s a legend that he hid a lot of gold somewhere in the house before he croaked.

Jeff gets his dad to change his mind about selling because he wants to look for the gold. So then Cliff gets really mad because that means he can’t go to New York. The old man and him start yelling at each other, and then the old man grabs his throat and keels over, clunking his head on the desk as he goes down.

"It's okay Hepzibah, I was just helping Jaffrey adjust his tie."

Jeff comes into the room and then goes all Columbo on his brother, acusing him of murder. This gets Cliff all mad because he never even touched the old man, but he almost strangles Jeff instead. A bunch of townies and old biddies outside happen to be watching through an open window, and this does Cliff no good at all. I could relat a lot to this, since my brother does this to me all the time.

I asked my mom why so many nosy people would stand around an old house like that. She said that back in the old days, before there was any TV or even radio, people entertaned themselves by peeking in everybody’s windows and then blabbing about what they saw like it was Johnny Carson or something.

So then Cliff gets a speedy trial that we learned in Government class is everybody’s right. The trial is so speedy that the jury doesn’t even have to deliberat, they just pronounse him guilty, which I guess is their right to. So Cliff gets sent off to the pentitentury penatenatry state pen, and Hapsiba goes from being happy to being real sad.

Jeff thinks he’s in the catburg’s seat, but then gets a big surprize when he finds out the old man gave Hapsiba the house before he died. She throws him out and then closes all the shudders in the house and then sits around mopping for like the next 20 years.

This is where the story gets real hard to figure out. Cliff becomes friends with Mat [Ed. - Dick Foran as Matthew Maule] who is in jail with him. It turns out Mat is the desendent of the guy the Pinchums stole the land from and who cursed everybody, but they act like its no big deal.

"False accusations of witchcraft, land theft, curses... aw, what the heck,
let's let bygones be bygones..."

Mat gets out of jail and then goes and rents a room from Hapsiba at the Gabels house, exsept he uses a different last name, I guess because he doesn’t want to scare anybody. Mat is into a lot of stuff, like he’s one of those old-time photografers whose got one of those cameras that’s bigger than a TV set, and when he takes a picture the people have to sit there for two hours and not move.

He is also an abolishinist abolitstinist anti-slavery guy who meets with a bunch of other towns people to figure out how to help the slaves escape. So all in all he’s a pretty good guy.

Even with Mat paying rent and everything, Hapsiba opens up a store in her house to get more money. For some reason all the town busybuddies put her down for it, kind of like if she opened one of those shops with the funny pipes and incest sticks like the one at the mall that all the hippies go to.

Jaffrey wonders where he's going to get toilet paper and
hand sanitizer after Hepzibah tells him the store's all out.

Hapsiba calls it a cent store, which I figure is like a doller store because back in those days you could buy a lot more with a penny. Since he’s really, really old, I asked my grandpa how much a penny could buy back in those days, but he started talking about comminists and something called the federel reserve and how money isn’t worth the paper its printed on, so he didn’t really answer my question.

Anyway, the governer finaly comutates Cliff’s sentence and he gets out of jail and moves back in to the old Pinchum house. Mat is still trying to help the runaway slaves, but he doesn’t realize that one of the other rich anti-slavery guys has given their money to Jeff to invest, but that turns out not to be not such a good idea because Jeff is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg as my grandpa likes to say.

Mat starts telling everbody that Cliff is tearing up the house looking for the hidden gold, and Jeff gets the idea that he can get his brother comitted to the looney bin for tearing the house down, or something like that. There’s a lot of banging going on around the house, but Hapsiba finds out its Mat doing all the pounding, not Cliff. She’s really mad and tries to throw Mat out, but Cliff tells her it’s all right and its part of a plan to get back at Jeff, which I didn’t get at all.

Jeff shows up at the house to tell Cliff that he’s looney toons and he’s going to have him comitted, and Cliff tells his brother that he can have the house if he signs a paper saying that Cliff didn’t kill his dad. Then the guy who gave Jeff all the anti-slavery group’s money shows up, shouting about needing the money back. Jeff says he doesn’t have it, and the guy is so bummed he turns around and shoots himself.

Jaffrey chokes up when he realizes there's no hidden
treasure and no toilet paper.

Since nobody else saw what happened, Hapsiba starts calling Jeff a murderor, and then Jeff changes his toon and agrees to sign Cliff’s paper so long as they don’t accuse him of murder. When Cliff tells him that there was never any gold and it was all a trick that Cliff and Mat Mall pulled on him, he grabs his neck just like the old man and drops dead, probably from the curse, or maybe a heart attack, or maybe both.

So then Cliff and Hapsiba get married, and Matt marries the pretty girl Feebe [Ed. - Nan Grey as Phoebe Pyncheon] that Hapsiba hired to help her run the store, and they leave town in a fancy carriege.

The story was slow and confusing in places and not scary at all, but there was still some stuff you could learn from it. Like a speedy trial isn’t a good thing if you’re always getting blamed for the bad stuff your brother does. And in the old days before TV, people entertaned themselves by saying mean things about other people. And a penny could buy a lot more than today. And turnalot is fair pay. For my next report, I hope to learn a lot more about headless horsemen and that Sleepy Horror thing. 

The End.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, circa 1860s

[Editor’s postscript. Of course, there are risks in trying to pass off descriptions of movie adaptations for the real thing in book reports. In their lengthy analysis of the film, Tom Weaver and Michael and John Brunas note that “As is invariably the case when Hollywood undertakes to film a classic story, changes were required for the sake of dramatic interest. The Hawthorne novel is set up quite differently from the Universal film: Most of the action seen in this film transpired before the novel’s page one.” [Weaver, et. al., Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946, 2nd Edition, McFarland, 2007. p. 224.]

The novel starts out with Clifford, a broken man after all the years in jail, coming back to the house and finding Hepzibah has become a gloomy old spinster. Jaffrey shows up and threatens to institutionalize Clifford if he doesn’t reveal all he knows about the valuable land grant documents that are hidden in the house.

Also, the whole side plot of Matthew Maule/Holgrave being involved with the abolitionist cause and Jaffrey’s theft of their money leading to his downfall was absent in the book, being the brainchild of screenwriters Lester Cole and Harold Greene.

Weaver and the Brunases are on the whole complimentary of the film, observing that “Universal’s changes made for a tidy, streamlined drama with more incident and less wordy detours than Hawthorne’s original.” They also describe the acting of the leads, Price, Sanders and Lindsay as “first rate”: Sanders is a “dark, brooding cloud that hangs portentously over the heads of the other characters”; Lindsay is “ingenuous, intelligent and appealing”; and Price is “exuberant and impulsive -- but with more than a trace of repressed bitterness seething beneath the surface.” [Ibid., pp. 224 - 225]

My reaction, after watching the film for the first time in decades, is that the film, with its prim, nineteenth century setting and costumes, slow pace, and mannered acting, seems even older than its 1940 release date would indicate. One reason might be that House was directed by a traditional, old school veteran, Joe May (born Joseph Otto Mandel), a silent film pioneer who helped found the German film industry and who fled his native Austria when the Nazis took over. His lifelong discomfort with the English language and dictatorial style apparently did not endear him to a lot of folks in Hollywood, and House would be one of the last films he directed.

Clifford hits rock bottom when he realizes he has
to share a double bill with Black Friday.

Interestingly, although the film was relatively costly for Universal and had higher than average production values, the studio showed little faith in it, releasing it at the bottom of a double bill with Black Friday, a gangster pic with horror elements starring Universal’s very bankable stars, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. [Weaver, et al., p. 228]

One wonders if Universal's execs thought they might get a two-fer: a borderline prestige picture -- an historical romance drama -- that could also be marketed to the faithful horror crowd (One of the film's taglines: "AN ANCIENT HOUSE! A MURDER SECRET! A HIDDEN TREASURE!")

What they and audiences ended up with was a film that was neither here nor there. Although the screenwriters' idea of fleshing out the novel's backstory to make it the centerpiece of the film was clever, House of the Seven Gables still falls flat in many areas. The house is an interesting architectural oddity, but it might as well be any old colonial manse, as it lacks any sort of dark, forbidding atmosphere. The "mystery" centers on the old cliche of hidden treasure, and prosaic treasure at that -- old land grant documents. And the best the curse can do is to have a couple of old men (who were probably already susceptible to heart attacks) clutch at their throats and die.

What's left are some good performances by a varied cast of leads and colorful character actors, and a production that nicely captures the mannerisms and fashions of Hawthorne's day.

Although critics of the time were mostly kind to it, and fans at IMDb have given it a very high rating, to me, The House of the Seven Gables strays too far from its source to be a good adaptation, lacks the energy to be a truly interesting historical drama, and hedges on too many opportunities to be an intriguing thriller.

The House of the Seven Gables is available for rental or purchase here.