Director: Sidney Salkow
Year: 1963
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology
Plot:
Bound together in one package, three stories from writer Nathaniel Hawthorne are presented in one collection.
Review:
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment-Dining together, two friends start in on his long-deceased wife and his desire to see her again. As he continues on into the night, they notice her crypt disturbed during a thunderstorm and investigate, venturing into her tomb. Finding a water vein that drips onto it, they find that it preserves eternal youth, only for there to be grave consequences. This is a frustratingly uneven segment. There's a lot to love with its Gothic atmosphere on display, from the raging thunderstorm that opens it, which sets the mood for this almost perfectly, to the way the tomb looks, and its overall layout all provide a general Gothic ambiance and feeling. Perhaps the best is the standout shock scene that occurs when the discovery of its effects wears off, and one turns around to see a bride standing as a skeleton wearing the dress, where just a moment before was seen to be fully viewed as a human, before crumbling to dust. The segment hits a low point, though, when it concerns the endless prattling on about love and marriage. It just goes on and becomes somewhat irritating, especially the amount of time that's devoted to that issue. The positives, though, outweigh the negatives.
Rappacini's Daughter-Moving into a new house, a man finds that his neighbor lives alone with her father and tries to be friends. When she constantly backs away from his advances, he tries to understand why she is so fearful of others, only to be stonewalled at every turn. When he finally discovers the true reason for their condition, he races to stop them before it is too late. This is an extremely disappointing segment that really should've been much better than it actually is. One of the main flaws is that there's very little action to it. There's a pattern of a meeting she blows off cryptically, his investigation into the family, followed by another meeting, starting off the same cycle, and it gets rather boring. There are also a few questions that go unanswered in it. There's little that's said about how the surgery worked that gave her the condition in the first place, or even how the poison managed not to kill her to begin with. It does a rather poor job explaining these, along with a couple of others in here as well. Despite this, there's some good to be had. The effectiveness of the poison is well-done, conveyed through several nice scenes where the power is demonstrated to great effect, and there's some real suspense to be had when we know but he doesn't, and the potential is there as the premise to this is nice, but it's shot down due to the focus on the lame love story, and overall becomes a huge missed opportunity.
The House of the 7 Gables-Returning to his home, a man immediately causes a stir between the women in his life over the supposed family curse. Laughing it off as mere superstition, he goes about in search of a long-lost treasure that will help him with his gambling debts, to her utter contempt. As events occur within the house that lead them to believe something is wrong, he goes about trying to do whatever is possible to rid the curse upon the family and find the treasure before it affects him as well. This is another mixed segment that had some good points and bad ones, but it's a much stronger segment and is its best one overall. One of the best aspects is the fact that this one feels like it's an actual segment, as there's a much more thought-out and complete aspect to this one, missing from the others. The story is really strong and actually has some strength to it, managing to break free of its clichéd trappings and deliver some nice thrills, including some really nifty floating action early on and throughout the middle segment as well. The house has an appropriately creepy feel, inspired by the Gothic classics and working just as well as any other entry here, with some rather impressive and spectacular showings from the finale. As the house begins to crumble, as per usual, a fantastic shock scene erupts from the painting that is simply incredibly delivered, and there's the rush as the search-and-rescue carries on while the house still crumbles, and upon exiting, the house is singularly destroyed once and for all in a classic shot that is far better than anything else attempted with that style. The story here and the attempts of the film to play off them are where it scores best, and almost all those scenes score nicely. It's just simply hurt by a clichéd and completely unsurprising romance angle that develops, which can't be too hard to guess, is set up to come out exactly like it anyway, and just drags the segment, and the film as a whole, out much longer than needed. Otherwise, there are enough positives here to lift the segment up anyway.
Overview: ****/5
A surprisingly good Anthology entry, this one comes across much better than expected, with quite a lot to enjoy in the segments and not too many detrimental factors keeping it down. Those with an appreciation for this era of the genre, who are hardcore fans of anthologies or the creative crew, will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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