American International Pictures tried to pass The Haunted Palace off as the latest of their Edgar Allan Poe films directed by Roger Corman when in fact it was based on H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Lovecraft gets a credit but plays second fiddle to a “from the poem by” credit for Poe (the title alone derives from Poe’s 1839 poem of the same name in The Fall of the House of Usher) whose name is misspelled “Edgar Allen Poe” twice in the credits. Despite this lowly placement, The Haunted Palace earns its place as the first screen adaptation of Lovecraft’s work, Charles Beaumont taking credit for being the first screenwriter to tackle the “Cthulhu mythos” on the big screen.

The story takes place in 1765, in Lovecraft’s perennial fictional stamping ground of Arkham in Massachusetts where the nervous locals are much concerned by the strange phenomena that surround the old Curwen house that sits on a hill overlooking the town. Their suspicion that the current owner, Joseph Curwen (Vincent Price), is a warlock, are fuelled when a young woman is lured to the palace take part in a ritual staged by Curwen and his mistress Hester Tillinghast (Cathie Merchant). During the ritual, a strange creature, unseen at first, rises from a pit, but whatever Curwen is up tom he has no time to finish it as the locals arrive, drag him out to a tree and burn him alive, sparing Hester on the orders of Ezra Weeden, her former fiancé. Before he dies, Curwen puts a curse on Arkham, promising to return to take his revenge. And that he does, 110 years later in 1875, periodically possessing his great-great-grandson, Charles Dexter Ward (Price again), newly arrived in Arkham with his wife Anne (Debra Paget). The couple are menaced by strange, deformed townspeople and the rest are hostile and frightened of them. They learn from town doctor Marinus Willet (Frank Maxwell) of the black magic book, the Necronomicon, and various bits and pieces taken from Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos (“dreadful rubbish, I know,” he tells them) and of Curwen’s plan to mate human women with the Elder Gods Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth. As Curwen’s spirit tightens its grip of Ward, his fellow warlocks Simon Orme (Lon Chaney Jr) and Jabez Hutchinson (Milton Parsons) also possess their descendants and prepare to carry out Curwen’s grand plan using Anne as their first victim.

Corman piles on the Gothic business as if it’s the first time anyone had ever thought to do it, unleashing constant mists and fogs to engulf Arkham, which is populated by rhubarbing locals who form themselves into the obligatory, if rather under-staffed, torch-wielding mob, as violent thunderstorms rage above gloomy old mansions. And rather good it all is too. Along the way we get to meet Weeden’s mad and deformed son who is used as a murder weapon against his own father, get the briefest glimpse of the frog-like Elder God lurking in the pit and, after the standard issue fiery climax, are left with a cliffhanger as it’s very heavily hinted that Curwen lives on.

The special effects might leave a bit to be desired – the make up effects on the disfigured townspeople never convinces – but it has atmosphere to spare and Arkham itself, realised through a combination of miniatures, matte paintings and forced perspective sets, is a marvellously creepy old place. Make-up effects notwithstanding, a moment when the Wards are menaced by a circling cadre of Arkham’s mutants, who wander off at the peel of an ominous bell is one of the most memorable scenes in any of the Corman/AIP/”Poe” films. There are also copious eerie voices babbling away during the raging storm which are a nicely spine-chilling touch.

The cast is capably headed by Price who is everything you’d expect him to be, switching seamlessly between his Ward and Curwen pulled off with consummate skill. Chaney is on fine form as the green-tinged Simon and Paget makes for a very fetching heroine in what would turn out to be her final big screen appearance – having become a born-again Christian, she largely left acting behind, making only a few television appearances. Elsewhere, Hollywood’s unluckiest man, Elisha Cook Jr, met one of the nastiest of his many on-screen deaths, burned alive by Curwen.

Series regulars director of photography Floyd Crosby and art director Daniel Heller work their customary magic, giving the film a sheen that quite belies its modest budget, even making the soundstage set Arkham feel menacingly real. Les Baxter, often the composer of choice for the series, was absent this time and if you find Baxter’s sometimes inappropriate scores jarring, there’s much to enjoy from Ronald Stein’s work here. The music can get a little bombastic at times, but it works tremendously well in the context of the story, emerging as one of the finest musical offerings to any Corman directed film.

The Haunted Palace was released just two months after the quickie The Terror and a month before the modern-dress science fiction chiller X/X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes. In terms of the “Poe” films, it sits between The Raven (1963, a busy year for Corman) and the marvellous The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and, while it’s not as good as the latter, it more than holds its own. There have been many Lovecraft adaptations in the years since, some excellent (Re-animator (1985), From Beyond (1986)), a good many of them less so, but The Haunted Palace was there before all of them and it got his film “career” off to a flying start. It may not be the first of the Corman Gothics you turn to, but when you do, it should prove more than rewarding.