The Haunted Palace

H.P. Lovecraft’s first official American feature adaptation was a match that could only be made in horror writer’s heaven. Even though The Haunted Palace’s opening credits barely acknowledge HPL’s contribution, it teamed him with the author he most revered, his boyhood idol Edgar Allan Poe.

In 1963, American International Pictures (AIP) had just about exhausted their lucrative Poe Cycle, a group of now classic films that include The House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Masque of the Red Death. Wanting to mine the untapped vein of Lovecraft stories, director Roger Corman decided to adapt The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, but for obvious box office reasons the studio insisted it be titled after Poe’s poem, “The Haunted Palace.”