Through the power of dark magic and malevolence, warlocks seek to do harm and/or destroy the world. At least according to literature and the movies. They also appear in various media and in many forms. These forms include sexy preppies at vampire schools, to horrible Euro-centrists of menacing power. Similarly, they are cunning, crafty, and pure evil. Of course these are only stories. The Haunted Palace (1963) and its relationship to the fictitious inspirations that include Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

Summary of The Haunted Palace

The Beginnings of Terror

In literature and folklore, the warlock is a witch counterpoint for the male gender. The warlock in The Haunted Palace goes by the name of Joseph Curwen (Vincent Price). He is menacing and maniacal. When confronted by a mob of unhappy village-goers, curses the entirety of the lively throng.

“As surely as the village of Arkham has risen up against me, so shall I rise from the dead against the village of Arkham,” Curwen tells the unhappy group of vigilantes. “Each one of you! … all of you and your children and your children’s children shall have just cause to regret the actions of this night. For from this night onward, you shall bear my curse.”

Vincent Price, practically a Gothic horror fixture, like some kind of cobwebbed candelabra, plays both the warlock Curwen and Charles Dexter Ward. Charles Dexter Ward is an amiable counter to the warlock.

Meanwhile, Debra Paget plays his dutiful wife who is disturbed at Price’s change from a caring husband to somebody with a vile attitude of vengeance. Roger Corman, king of shlock, presents a Gothic-fueled amalgamation of horror tropes throughout the film. These include Lon Chaney Jr., phony-looking frogs, foggy streets, webbed hands, and curses from Vincent Price warlocks.

The Curse of The Haunted Palace Lives!

And curse he does. Through his magic, the people of Arkham become abominations of a sort. Some of them truly turn into monsters. In monsterdom, they wait for their time to, again, punish Joseph Curwen. Although, that will truly take years and years to actuate. As the tagline tells us, revenge does not happen overnight: “A warlock’s home is his castle…Forever!”

Still, we should all know not to play games with magic, but warlocks don’t understand this lesson. The villagers come to the conclusion that Curwen has been mating the women of Arkham with terrifying monsters of olde, creating some kind of super race of human-hybrids.

In the end, the villagers burn his Gothic castle down, and they bring him to justice…or is he? With a glint in Vincent Price’s eye, the audience is left unsure.

Relation to “The Haunted Palace” poem

The writers of the film The Haunted Palace (1963) based the movie on an Edgar Allan Poe poem published in 1863. The poem tells the tale of a beautiful palace that is gorgeous and admired.

In stanza one, Poe writes: “In the greenest of our valleys/ By good angels tenanted,/ Once a fair and stately palace—/ Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion,/ It stood there!/ Never seraph spread a pinion/ Over fabric half so fair!”

The palace is a comely locale, and revered for is radiance and angelic presence. However, this all comes to an end.Stanza five describes an image of desolation after a fall from grace.

Poe writes:

“But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.”

The Haunted Palace film captures this idea in a microcosm. As Poe narrates a palace of unforeseen beauty, it seems much larger in verse. In the film, it is really just Vincent Price, Debra Paget, and Lon Chaney ambling around a Gothic set. But the turn from kindly man to maniac is there and yet the palace is always evil.

Relation to Lovecraft’s Short Story

The film also injects some Lovecrafian ideas into the mix through the author’s own story, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Lovecraft’s story tells the tale of the titular Charles Ward as he is taken over by the ancient warlock Curwen. He deals with this issue for digging too deep into the black magic that sent the warlock to his grave.

Much like the film, the warlock is eventually defeated by a horrible monster. Everybody involved is better for it in the end.

Meanwhile, the creature that appears at the end of the film is a Cthulhu doppleganger. It is supposed to be an immense monster of extraordinary power, but does look like a tiny miniature. Nevertheless, the tragedy of madness is far more apparent in this film than say a Lovecraft text, as the characters battle one maniacal maniac in a Corman-style visual extravaganza. Lovecraft uses the tradition of Gothic pacing to illuminate the creeping horror of the warlock’s misdeeds.

Analysis

Thus, The Haunted Palace is a combination of two related authors, if only through their specific disciplines. Poe, who was a progenitor of Gothic horror, and Lovecraft, who was the progenitor of weird fiction. The combination of the two influences is sublime when linked together on screen.

Plotting in The Haunted Palace is two-fold. It is the story of ancient horror and monsters from the dark infecting the population. Yet, it is also the story of revenge, and how no crime can be left unpunished even in death.

Moreover, Lovecraftian horror certainly had a resurgence in recent decades with a large section of the population either becoming familiar with the projections of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft or finally realizing his influence on our culture and media.

For instance, Mandy (2018) has a great sort of cosmic horror influence that infiltrates the film at its very edges. No, monsters don’t explode from the darkness terrifying the characters on screen, but the slow nature of the film speaks to a weird-fiction tradition, and the violence of it emerges supreme. We don’t ever see a monster (biker cenobite maybe), but we can feel the malevolence of something weird going on behind the scenes. Even though the monsters are very much twisted, albeit human.

Certainly, there are a host of other modern-ish films that have made strides in wearing Lovecraft on their sleeves: Event Horizon (1997), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), The Cabin in the Woods (2011), and so forth.

Other films, meanwhile, directly take Lovecraft’s ideas and try to make it their own, such as The Color out of Space (2019), Dagon (2001), and From Beyond (189). All of which walk the line of interpretation of the author’s work for film.

Conclusion

The Haunted Palace is a lovingly-crafted film. One that features a lot of attention to detail. The streets at night appear dangerous, the civilians are mutated, and the villain is both evil and menacing, with an Igor-level assistant as well.

Even the crescendo of the film is dramatic and violent, when the villagers once again storm the castle to destroy the evil within. They start a great fire and are enjoined by devastation as the castle burns to the ground.

It lives exceptionally in the tradition of Poe and Lovecraft.