Daniel Haller's Lovecraft Trilogy

Why should Roger Corman get all the credit? A great deal of the success and continued popularity of Corman’s Poe adaptations are the art direction and stunning sets that Daniel Haller created on a shoestring budget. After studying at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, Haller cut his teeth on low-budget American International exploitation pictures, most notably a slew of films featuring mobsters, hot rods, and juvenile delinquents. After directing a handful of feature films for American International, he enjoyed a long career as a director of such 1970s television staples such as The Mod Squad, Ironside, and Kojak. But it is his magnificent eye for Gothic detail which keeps his name alive among fans of classic horror films.

Haller’s first foray into the Lovecraft pantheon was his work on Corman’s The Haunted Palace, an unofficial entry in AI’s Poe cycle but owing nothing more than the title to Poe. The story is a fairly faithful adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The Haunted Palace was one of Haller’s last efforts as Art Director, and once again he was able to suggest a Gothic grandeur and opulence in the cavernous interiors he designed for the film.

Two years later Haller made his directorial debut with Die, Monster, Die, (1965) loosely based on Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space. An uneven film, Die, Monster, Die has its moments, with smoke machine fog billowing in front of exterior shots of Berkshire’s Oakley Court, Freda Jackson’s disfigured face hidden behind gossamer bed curtains, and a particularly strange visit to Corbin Witley’s greenhouse. Die, Monster, Die suffers by moving the story location to England, as well as a weak script that bears little resemblance to the source material

Stephen Reinhart (Nick Adams) peruses the Necronomicon.

This can't be good.

Haller fared much better with his final Lovecraft film, 1970’s masterpiece of quasi-satanic schlock, The Dunwich Horror. Lovecraft purists may argue that the story (scripted by future Academy Award winner Curtis Hansen for his adaptation of James Elroy’s complex novel L.A. Confidential) strayed too far afield. What critics often overlook is The Dunwich Horror’s faithfulness to the mythos that Lovecraft created. As always, American International aimed the production squarely at the teen market, filling the screen with psychedelic imagery and cashing in on the late 60s craze for devil worship and the sacrifice of nubile young maidens. Thanks to another great score by Les Baxter, an over-the-top performance from Dean Stockwell, and much livelier direction from Haller, The Dunwich Horror remains a cult favorite among fans of 60s low budget horror features.

The Altar to Yog-Sothoth on Sentinel Hill.

Sadly, Haller has never returned to Art Direction, and with the exception of directing one entry in Rod Serling’s Night Gallery series, never ventured into the horror field again. The Haunted Palace, Die, Monster, Die, and The Dunwich Horror are three vastly different types of movies with varying degrees of success, but until a major league director such as Guillermo del Toro finally comes through with his proposed adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness, Haller’s Lovecraft Trilogy remains some of the best Lovecraft films we have. 

Dean Stockwell as Wilbur Whately invokes Yog-Sothoth.

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

For kids growing up in the US in the 1960s, Saturday night television was a thing of wonder when we were allowed to stay up late with a bowl of popcorn and a bottle of root beer, shivering with anticipation as the minutes kicked down to the start of our local fright show. In my city it was called Scream In and was hosted by a groovy hippie vampire named The Cool Ghoul. Week after week he brought us the best in (mostly Gothic) horror films from the 40s, 50s, and early 60s. We saw our first Hammer films on these programs, low budget shockers such as Francis Coppola’s Dementia-13, dubbed Italian imports, and of course, the Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of mystery and imagination. Few things were scarier to me at that age than the bloodied hand of Barbara Steele rising from her tomb to stalk Vincent Price through the womb-like corridors of Medina Castle in 1961’s Pit and the Pendulum.

British film critic David Robinson accurately pointed out, "As in (Corman’s) House of Usher, the quality of the film is its full-blooded feeling for Gothic horror - storms and lightning, moldering castles and cobwebbed torture chambers, bleeding brides trying to tear the lids from their untimely tombs." Indeed, Pit and the Pendulum is so soaked in Gothic atmosphere that I have probably watched this film on VHS and DVD more than any other. On any rainy Saturday afternoon, sleepless midnight, and of course, the Halloween season, I find myself being drawn back to Castle Medina and the ravings of Vincent Price again and again.

To today’s younger audiences who have grown up with more graphic shockers, Pit and the Pendulum might seem too cheesy to take seriously. I have to admit that if Vincent Price was any more of a ham his performance might be mistaken for Christmas dinner. But when you drill down through the blood and thunder soundtrack by Les Baxter, the lashing rains and crashing waves, Daniel Haller’s art direction which fills the frame with an almost unparalleled Gothic atmosphere (watch for more about this guy in future posts), what we have left is a truly disturbing portrait of a mind on the brink of psychological collapse.

For those not familiar with the plot of Richard Matheson’s adaptation (spoiler alert), Don Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) is the son of Sebastian Medina, one of the Spanish Inquisitions most notorious torturers. At an early age, Nicholas witnessed the death by torture of his Mother and Uncle at the hands of his Father, accusing both of marital infidelities. Here we have what is unofficially known as Wicked Father Syndrome, a motif found in several of Corman’s horror films as well as a staple of 20^th century romantic Gothic fiction. This psychological fissure casts Medina as a true Byronic hero, making him a character to be both feared and pitied. The irony of this childhood trauma is that his own wife, Elizabeth (played by the ever ravishing horror film icon, Barbara Steele) has engaged in adultery with Nicholas’ best friend, Dr. Leon. The core of the plot revolves around an elaborate gaslight wherein Dr. Leon and Elizabeth fake her death, going so far as to bury another woman’s body in Elizabeth’s crypt. Nicholas, and the audience, have been led to believe that Elizabeth is dead, which brings us to the memorable scene of Elizabeth rising from her tomb, very much alive.

If Pit and the Pendulum were to be adapted today, the film would undoubtedly focus on grisly torture effects, much as it did in a 1991 version. With its music, art direction, atmospherics and emotional histrionics, Corman’s 1961 film remains one of Gothic cinema’s major milestones.  

“Neeeecholas!”