The Oblong Box *** (1969, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Alister Williamson, Hilary Dwyer, Peter Arne, Sally Geeson, Rupert Davies, Michael Balfour, Maxwell Shaw, Harry Baird) – Classic Movie Review 2,832

Vincent Price and Christopher Lee star together for the first time in AIP’s tasty, effective 1969 gothic shocker horror film The Oblong Box.

Vincent Price and Christopher Lee star together for the first time in American International Pictures’ tasty, effective 1969 gothic shocker horror film taking its title from Edgar Allan Poe’s 1844 short story The Oblong Box, but partly based on Poe’s The Premature Burial.

It follows Poe’s themes such as premature burial and masked figures, mixed with the non-Poe theme of voodoo ritual killings, while also combining ideas taken from the Burke and Hare, Jack the Ripper and Phantom of the Opera stories. It is plenty inventive and involved, and involving.

Price plays guilt-ridden Julian Markham, a 1865 Victorian aristocrat who incarcerates his brother Sir Edward (Alister Williamson), disfigured in an African voodoo ceremony, locked in his room in a tower of his house. Sir Edward plots to escape by faking his own death, drugged in a deathlike trance.

Julian finds his ‘dead’ brother, puts him in a coffin (the oblong box) and has Sir Edward buried alive. Julian then marries his young fiancée, Elizabeth (Hilary Dwyer).

Sir Edward is dug up by grave-robbers and delivered to Dr Neuhartt (Lee), who opens the coffin to cut him up but is confronted by the resurrected Sir Edward. He blackmails Neuhartt into sheltering him, conceals his face behind a crimson velvet hood and embarks on a killing vengeance spree.

Producer Gordon Hessler assumed the director’s chair when Michael Reeves died suddenly during pre-production and made a number of substantial changes to Lawrence Huntington’s original screenplay. And when Huntington also died just as shooting began, Christopher Wicking was called in for more substantial re-writing. They re-worked the script to incorporate the theme of imperial exploitation of native peoples in Africa, which led to the film being banned in Texas.

Michael Reeves is uncredited for his original treatment of the screenplay.

Hessler assembles all the gruesome horrors in fine style, the screenplay by Huntington and Wicking (additional dialogue) is busy and involving, the acting is suitably ripe and juicy (particularly Price’s of course), and John Coquillon’s Eastmancolor cinematography is stylish. Sadly though, Price and Lee share only one scene.

Also in the cast are Peter Arne, Rupert Davies, Michael Balfour, Maxwell Shaw, Harry Baird, Carl Rigg, Geoffrey James, Sally Geeson, Ivor Dean, Colin Jeavons and Martin Wyldeck.

Australian-born character actor Alister Williamson (17 June 1918 – 19 May 1999) has most screen time as the disfigured Sir Edward Markham in his only leading role of his career, but his voice was judged unsuitable and he dubbed by another actor, while his face is covered under a red velvet hood for most of the film until the climatic unmasking, with makeup done by Jimmy Evans. Williamson returned in a supporting role in Price’s The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971).

The film was successful and ushered in a series of follow-up AIP horror movies, including Scream and Scream Again and Cry of the Banshee.

Price, Davies and Dwyer had recently appeared in Michael Reeves’s Witchfinder General. The original script had the Markham brothers as twins, both played by Price.

It had to wait till 1970 Price and Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to star together – in Scream and Scream Again – and then it was for the one and only time.

After shooting Witchfinder General, Michael Reeves was at work on the adaptation of The Oblong Box and taking tablets to help him sleep. His cleaning lady found him dead in his Knightsbridge bedroom on the morning of 11 February 1969, aged 25.

Witchfinder General had been extraordinarily successful for AIP, who co-financed it with British company Tigon, so they were quick to produced this follow-up, but without Tigon, and it was also very successful. Budget: £70,000 or $175,000. Box office: $1.02 million (US and Canada).

Hessler said that AIP insisted he use Hilary Dwyer, who they ‘introduced’ in Witchfinder General: ‘They liked her and must have thought she was star material or something like that.’

Hilary Dwyer (6 May 1945 – 30 March 2020) had a successful film, stage and TV career in the late Sixties and Seventies and then became a successful business woman and film producer.

The cast are Vincent Price as Julian Markham, Christopher Lee as Doctor Neuhartt, Rupert Davies as Kemp Uta Levka as Heidi, Sally Geeson as Sally, Alister Williamson as Sir Edward Markham, Peter Arne as Trench, Hilary Dwyer as Elizabeth, Maxwell Shaw as Hackett, Carl Rigg as Norton, Harry Baird as N’Galo, Godfrey James as Weller, John Barrie as Franklin, Ivor Dean as Hawthorne, Danny Daniels as Witchdoctor, Michael Balfour as Ruddock, Hira Talfrey as Martha, John Wentworth as Parson, Colin Jeavons as Doctor, Martin Wyldeck as Constable, and Zeph Gladstone as Trench’s Girl.

The Oblong Box is directed by Gordon Hessler, runs 96 minutes, 94 minutes or 91 minutes, is made by American International Pictures, is distributed by Anglo-EMI Film Distributors and Warner-Pathé, is written by Lawrence Huntington and Christopher Wicking, based on The Oblong Box by Edgar Allan Poe, is produced by Gordon Hessler, is shot in Eastmancolor by John Coquillon, is scored by Harry Robinson, and designed by George Provis.

It is shot at Shepperton Studios.

Release date: 11 June 1969 (US).

The MGM DVD is the complete uncut version running 96 minutes. VHS releases in the US were cut to 94 minutes and in the UK to 91 minutes.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,832

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