The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe

A video essay by critic and filmmaker David Cairns examining Roger Corman’s adaptation of 'The Fall of the House of Usher' in relation to Poe’s story.

Based on the idea that drugs have influenced some of our greatest minds (Poe, Baudelaire etc.), this film documents just how influential drug experiences have been on the minds of great writers, poets and thinkers.

The sarcastic account of the assassination of five Spanish politicians between 1870 and 1973 is mixed with the narration of five short stories by Edgar Allan Poe illustrated by five skillful pencil artists. A documentary, a video essay, a collage, a provocative experiment where various pop culture figures and icons perform unexpected cameos. The macabre joke of a jester. Never more.

Upon arriving at the dilapidated estate of his mentor, Dr. Harker finds his former professor, Dr. Usher, radically changed. Instead of the reasoned scholar he once knew, a paranoid man is in his place and he's spiraling into madness.

Anthology film from three European directors based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe: a cruel countess haunted by a ghostly horse, a sadistic young man haunted by his double, and an alcoholic actor haunted by the Devil.

A man takes up residence with a mysterious marquis and is soon persuaded to enter into an asylum for preventative therapy. Things are not what they seem, and the marquis may be even more sinister than what the young man might have predicted.

After a road accident in Hungary, the American honeymooners Joan and Peter and the enigmatic Dr. Werdegast find refuge in the house of the famed architect Hjalmar Poelzig, who shares a dark past with the doctor.

A European prince terrorizes the local peasantry while using his castle as a refuge against the "Red Death" plague that stalks the land.

Convinced that his family is tainted by generations of evil, Roderick Usher is hellbent on stopping his sister Madeline’s wedding to prevent the cursed Usher bloodline from expanding. When her fiancé Philip Winthrop arrives at the crumbling estate to claim his bride, Roderick goes to ruthless—even deadly—lengths to keep them apart.

When a cynical journalist accepts a wager that he won't survive the night in a haunted castle, it unlocks an odyssey of sexual torment, undead vengeance, and a dark seductress who surrenders the gravest of pleasures.

Verden Fell is shattered after the death of his lovely wife. But, after an unexpected encounter with Lady Rowena Trevanion, Fell soon finds himself married again. Nevertheless, his late wife's spirit seems to hang over the dilapidated abbey that Fell shares with his new bride. Lady Rowena senses that something is amiss and, when she investigates, makes a horrifying discovery -- learning that Fell's dead wife is closer than she ever imagined possible.

Nine tales of human cruelty, nine tales of human depravity, nine tales of true horror

When several women are found mutilated and murdered, the Paris police are baffled as to who the killer may be. All evidence points to Dupin, but soon it becomes apparent that it is someone (or something) stronger and deadlier than a human.

A song cycle about love, death, and whiskey. A camera breaks and four friends drink in an interwoven tale spanning seven centuries, with a murderous sister, a treehouse astronomer, a bear, a subway, and the ghost of Thelonious Monk.

A fictionalized account of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe's life, in which the poet is in pursuit of a serial killer whose murders mirror those in the writer's stories.

A washed-up horror novelist arrives in a sleepy town on a book tour, only to stumble into a string of eerie murders. Haunted by dreams of a ghostly girl named V and guided by the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe, he’s drawn into a nightmarish world where fiction and reality blur—and the story he’s chasing leads back to his own buried guilt.

Five tales by Edgar Allan Poe come to life thanks to a pictorical style animation, five tales that exude madness, pestilence, murder and torture.

A mentally unbalanced man is obsessed with the idea that a black cat is possessed. He tortures and kills it. Later, he comes to believe that the cat has returned from the dead to kill him.

Part of a 6-film collection called “Grands Détectives” about famous fictional private detectives.

Three extraordinary tales written by Edgar Allan Poe, the Master of the Grotesque: a man who is dead but is not; a cask of wine and a meditated revenge; and a heart that refuses to stop beating.