EXTRAORDINARY TALES
(directed by Raul Garcia, 2015)
***+ (out of 5)
.
> Edgar Allen Poe- animated? That is a really great idea!
. This visually striking animated compilation of five Edgar Allen Poe stories included: ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, and ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’.
. Featuring narration by Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi and Julian Sands, each short film is directed by accomplished Disney animator Raul Garcia, but animated in a slightly different style- an effective device.
. Each segment held some fascination, although the nearly wordless final tale, ‘The Mask of Red Death’, seemed somehow lesser. Too bad the device created to tie the stories together fell so flat. Garcia crafted a framework where Poe himself has been transformed into a talking raven who carries on a conversation with a statue of a female Death in a spooky graveyard. She points out how obsessed Poe was with death his entire, rather brief life, urging him to let go and come to her cold embrace. This device sounds good, isn’t. It just falls, lifeless. But most of the segments are very cool indeed.
– There is some beautiful design, and a lot of talent obviously went into this moody anthology.
*
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