If you've ever read a horror novel, surely you've picked up on a tale or two from Edgar Allan Poe. And even if you’re not the literary type, his stories have been the basis for numerous movies and television shows so somewhere along the line you've crossed paths with his work. I was always a bit of a fan, generally being psychologically wowed by as many of his lesser known works as I was more recognizable titles like "The Tell-Tale Heart" or "The Cask of Amontillado." As a matter of fact, in my younger days I had a teacher who had an unusual eye for the macabre and loved challenging her student's imaginations in very odd ways. My favorite example of this was when she had us all read the following passage from "The Masque of the Red Death", which described the layout of the palace. She then asked us to draw a representation of what we had read. Nearly every drawing was different, no surprise there, but none of us could figure out how the layout could have actually worked.

This was a part of Poe's genius, in that he could so richly describe something that cannot exist, yet make it so real as to build it in the mind's eye. The passage is as follows. (Go ahead, get some paper and give it a try… ) :

"There were seven --an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke's love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue --and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange --the fifth with white --the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet --a deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that protected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all."

Like most movies or TV shows based on the written word of brilliant authors, there is always a hit and miss proposition as to the quality of the finished product. Take for example "Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination", which delivered 11 dramatizations of Poe's work. The series, which was created back in 1995, was hosted by the great Christopher Lee and took Poe's stories and brought them to life. Or I should say… embellished versions of his work. The episodes presented in this series (which are listed below), come in a varying degree of quality.

Most of the problems with these episodes do not come from any acting problems on the part of the various casts (except on a couple of cases), but more so the stories as they are presented. A few of them were re-written to the point that they were barely recognizable from their original source material. In some cases it worked, such as with the episode "The Pit and the Pendulum", but in others the changes worked to the detriment of the story. There also seemed to be a bit of a budgetary problem, which made the overall productions seem kind of cheap. They were also shot on video, which doesn’t help in the least.

BFS Entertainment is releasing 4-disc DVD set of "Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination" this month, which includes all 11 episode as well as an additional episode which presents a biographical look at the author's life. It's a fairly nice set, and in production lives up to what I expect from BFS. It's just that this particular series seems a little bit lackluster in comparison. In the past, their releases have been stellar. Most are British import shows that we never get to see here in the States. Most notably, they were responsible for getting the awesome "Sharpe Series" with Sean Bean out on DVD.

While I can recommend this series to obsessive fans of Poe's work, I'm not sure that it will appeal to the average viewer.

Episodes:
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Oval Portrait
Berenice
The Black Cat
Ligeia
The Cask of Amontillado
Mr. Valdemar
The Tell-Tale Heart
Morella
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Masque of the Red Death, Parts 1 & 2

Extras: Biographical Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe
Specifications: Full Screen
Studio: BFS Entertainment
Release Date: 9/19/2006
Region 1
MPAA Rating: NR
Website

We'll give Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Mystery and Imagination a C+.