The Tomb Of Ligeia (1964) is the last film in Roger Corman and Vincent Price’s Edgar Allan Poe cycle. According to Vincent Price’s daughter, Victoria Price, The Tomb Of Ligeia was Vincent Price’s favorite film in the series. Partly this was because Vincent Price plays a romantic lead rather than a villain but also because the film made use of actual exterior locations in Britain.
The Tomb Of Ligeia, written by Robert Towne, is also different from the other films in the series for a number of reasons. Chief among them is that the film is rooted in the perspective of a female character. Rowena (Elizabeth Shepherd) is rendered as a classic Gothic heroine. Rowena is virtuous, inquisitive and self-reliant. It’s she who solves the mystery surrounding Ligeia (also Shepherd) and her death.
Corman, for his part, is at the top of his game as a director. He skillfully juxtaposes the interior scenes shot on sound-stages with the exterior location shots of a ruined castle. The interiors are lit with blues and yellows contrasting with the deep greens and blue skies of the exteriors. The spaces themselves are also dressed differently. The interiors are cluttered with ancient Egyptian artifacts while the exterior spaces are decidedly British.
This contrast reflects Price’s character’s dual nature. He is English but his interests in the supernatural draw him to the ancient world. He is a man more at home in antiquity than at the fox hunt. He is a creature of indoor spaces while Rowena is a woman of the moors and the rolling English hills. The two characters balancing each other; one drawn to death and the other to life.
The Tomb Of Ligeia, being a Roger Corman production, is never not fun. The film may present these complex visual themes but it remains firmly a drive-in movie spectacle. To that end the film is chock full of jump scares, vibrant colors, and spooky atmosphere. Corman, by this point, has fine turned his bag of tricks and delivers a masterfully macabre feature film.
