The Oblong Box (1969) A Flawed piece of Poe-ish Gothic

“Oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! –I dared not –I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!”

These lines from The Fall of the House of Usher could well apply to much of Poe’s output, such was his fascination with being buried alive. The idea of being forced to wait for death, for the air to seep from your lungs into the foetid soil around your coffin, was a common fear of the 19th century to the point where bells would be placed on headstones just in case. Poe mined this fear repeatedly in his output, a powerful evocation of terror that would be drawn on by filmmakers such as Edgar G. Ulmer, Richard Oswald and, most notably, Roger Corman with AIP in the 1960s. The Oblong Box follows in the footsteps of that tremendously popular cycle. 

Gordon Hessler’s film is very different to Poe’s original tale of a man grieving for his lost bride, but it contains many of the elements that made the Corman/Poe cycle such a success; a blood-and-thunder score, the always reliable Vincent Price in the lead and, of course, that premature burial. The script brings a neat twist to the formula, though. Instead of a woman suffering such a fate, here it’s Sir Edward Markham, member of the landed gentry and prisoner of his brother Julian (Price), who has kept him in the attic a la Jane Eyre ever since his disfigurement in an African voodoo ceremony. To fake his own death, Edward is placed in a deathlike trance for revival later. The only thing is, his body is dug up by graverobbers working for Christopher Lee’s sinister Dr. Neuhartt. Believing himself to be betrayed by her associates, Sir Edward dons a crimson hood and decides to take revenge…

The presence of voodoo marks The Oblong Box out as one of the few classic British horrors, along with Plague of the Zombies and Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, to deal with the Empire’s legacy of colonialism. Price’s family are rich because of their colonial plantations, and more than once does he talk about divesting his investments and retiring to the British countryside, although how much of that is caused by genuine sympathy or his considerable guilt for behaviours committed remains to be seen. The angle provides British Guianan actor Harry Baird with a great role as N’Galo the witchdoctor, a character that, for the era at least, sidesteps several clichés of such figures. Never reduced to an exotic object of fear or a clownish buffoon, N’Galo is powerful and self-possessed, easily a match for the white men that fear him.

It’s a pity the rest of the film doesn’t live up to these subversions of formula, largely due to the script’s shapelessness. Having gone through three different writers (including Michael Reeves, who was originally slated to direct before his untimely death), the resulting film has a tightly focused first thirty minutes with Price before he’s yanked abruptly in favour of Sir Edward’s hooded adventures. Those adventures work in fits and starts, including an extremely tense visit to a tavern of ill-repute, but what great momentum Hessler and co. have cooked up in the first thirty minutes ebbs away as the scenes become increasingly disconnected and the poorly written characters (Sally Geeson’s maid, for example) pile up.

Technically, too, it’s far too dark. Whether this is the BFI’s release or John Coquillon’s cinematography I am unsure, but the cinematography, especially on location, is almost incomprehensible at points. This is particularly frustrating during the woodland climax, a scene that needs a clear shot of Sir Edward’s mutilated face for it to really have an impact. We’re a long way from Floyd Crosby’s beautiful Technicolor here, which was at least 50% of the draw for the Corman films. Ultimately, The Oblong Box is a flawed piece of Poeish Gothic whose attempts to update the formula for the post-Night of the Living Dead crowd ultimately collapses under a weak script and muddy photography.

Perhaps the real draw of this release, however, are the special features. There’s an informative commentary by historian Steve Haberman and a video interview with the always-wonderful Victoria Price (daughter of Vincent), but the stars of the show are Prelude and The Pit. The former, directed by Castleton Knight (The Flying Scotsman), is an atmospheric reverie about what it may feel like to be buried alive set the to the music of Rachmaninov, while The Pit is a wonderfully wordless adaptation of the other great Poe image, The Pit and the Pendulum. Combined, their run time is still only a third of The Oblong Box. But in that brief time, they manage to capture the pressing dread Poe was so famous with a palpable intensity. 

Ethan’s Archive – The Oblong Box