THE TELL-TALE HEART (1960)

An offsceen voice introduces an odd semi-musical tone accompanied by the thumping of a heartbeat and warns us that, if we're squeamish, we may want to close our eyes when we hear those sounds. Next, we see a man (Lawrence Payne) walking nervously through a house, hearing an amplified thumping—he smashes a metronome on a piano, then sees a square of rug on the floor throb up and down, which sets him to screaming. Cut to Edgar Allen Poe (also Payne) in his rooms on the Rue Morgue in Paris woken from this nightmare by his friend (Dermot Walsh); Poe takes a calming snort of cocaine and heads to his writing desk, apparently to write out this nightmare. The rest of the movie is the story of Edgar Marsh (yes, Lawrence Payne), a shy and lonely librarian with a limp whose drab life is shaken up when a lovely young woman named Betty (Adrienne Corri) moves in to an apartment across the street from him. He spies on her from his window and pays an awkward visit to her at the flower shop where she works. His only friend Carl (Dermot Walsh) encourages him to be more forthright with the young lady, and he takes that advice; soon, they are dating and Edgar actually seems to be happy, but he is oblivious to the fact that, when Betty and Carl meet, sparks fly. One night, while looking out his window, Edgar sees the two in a passionate embrace and something snaps. The next evening when Carl visits, Edgar goes crazy and beats the shit out of him with a poker, killing him and hiding the body under the floorboards beneath his piano. Ah, now those familiar with the title short story by Poe know where this is going: Edgar begins hearing the beating of Carl's dead heart—the movie's opening sequence is repeated here—and even opening up the floor, ripping out Carl's heart and burying it outside doesn't make the sound go away. Meanwhile, Betty gets suspicious and reports Carl as a missing person, though the police aren't inclined to worry as he is known to be a free soul who might leave town for days. But when the police inspector finds out that Carl was last seen in the company of Edgar, he gets suspicious.

This movie hadn't even been on my radar before I came across it during a random search for "classic horror" on Amazon Prime Video. Made in England in 1960 (but not released in the States until 1962), it seems to be striving for the feel of Roger Corman's Poe films but only one of those films (HOUSE OF USHER) had been released before this movie; it's much less glossy than the Corman movies, or even the British Hammer films of the era so the timing feels more like coincidence. The opening plays out strangely: the character played by Payne is clearly referred to as Poe, but in the story proper, he is called Edgar Marsh. By the end, we know that the central narrative is Poe's dream, though there is a clever little kicker at the end, but the opening clearly confused some critics who think referring to the story as a dream is a spoiler. If you're actually paying attention to the first five minutes, it's not a spoiler, though by the time you get to the end of this 80-minute movie, you may have forgotten the frame story and be surprised by the dream ending. The acting is solid all around. All three leads were somewhat familiar to me: Payne (pictured) from THE CRAWLING EYE, Corri as Patrick Magee's wife in CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and Walsh from "Matakitas Is Coming," a particularly creepy episode of the 60s British anthology show Journey to the Unknown. For a 1960 movie, it's got a couple of surprisingly graphic moments, one involving the title heart and another when one of the characters falls to his death from a staircase. For classic horror fans, this is a treat. [Amazon Video]