By Maria Mitchell
The Haunted Palace (soundtrack). Composed and conducted by Ronald Stein, 1963.
Ronald Stein was a severely underrated composer in film scoring. The Haunted Palace was one film that showcased his talent for powerful, Gothic music charged with musically sophisticated menace. The main theme of the Palace score plays as a nightmarish waltz, a true danse macabre in its blend of malice and elegance. Palace was one of the many Poe vehicles of American International Pictures but it is outstanding amongst many of its peers, such as The Raven and The Pit and the Pendulum. For marketing reasons, director Roger Corman heralded the film as being based on the poem The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allen Poe, but it was H.P. Lovecraft that stole the show.
The film is loosely based on Lovecraft’s novella, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and opens with sorcerer Joseph Curwen (Vincent Price) being dragged from his palace dedicated to nefarious black arts by the people of Arkham and burned at the stake. He vows revenge as Stein’s score swells with chilling brass and woodwinds piping his death theme. This theme will reenter the picture again and again to announce Curwen’s lingering presence. A pressence that seems ingrained in the very mortar of the palace walls. This theme becomes an auditory interpretation of Curwen’s spectral influence. The film flashes forward over a century and follows Ward after he has just inherited Curwen’s crumbling old palace from his family’s attorney. He and his wife journey to Arkham to inspect the property and receive a very chilling reception from the townspeople as Ward is a dead ringer for Curwen. The descendants of the townspeople who killed Curwen know their retribution has come.
It isn’t long before Curwen starts making his presence felt by Ward. Ward finds himself staring a great deal into Curwen’s portrait hanging in the foyer and it isn’t long before the abyss pictured in that gilt frame looks back. One cue that is so musically simple, since over two thirds of its running time is percussion, yet still chillingly effective, is when Ward and his wife prepare to depart the palace and head back for Boston. Ward knows he must escape before his resolution crumbles, but he is duped by the palace’s caretaker (a supporter of Curwen’s sorcery played by Lon Chaney Jr.) into wasting precious time in waiting for a receipt for the caretaker’s services. While Ward waits, the cue begins with a soft tapping of a snare drum. It rises in volume. Vincent Price’s onscreen tortured expression is augmented by the pulsing beat as he powerlessly glides to the portrait and loses himself to that abyss. This music creates tension worthy of “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The effectiveness of this cue highlights a peculiar point concerning music written for movies: music doesn’t have to be complicated in orchestration or even melody in order to be effective. This cue makes no use of the elegant main waltz theme of Palace’s score and it’s still one of the most effective moments in the score.
The Wards do not go back to Boston. A different heart now beats within Ward – Curwen’s. He’s determined to carry on the work his execution prevented him from finishing over a century before. The music continues to descend into a whirlwind of malevolence that fills the screen with the menace of Curwen’s hatred for mankind and his determination to wipe them out by creating a heterogeneous menagerie of human/Old One hybrid creatures that will initiate the destruction.
While H.P. Lovecraft probably wouldn’t have agreed with all the changes made to his novella in this film, it’s likely no film interpretation would have pleased him, anyhow, since Lovecraft intensely detested film and music. Even though the connection to Poe is a slight one, the theme of the palace being a character in and of itself rings a very Poe chord because this theme evokes an echo of “Fall of the House of Usher”, which is why this movie is a clever blend of Lovecraft and Poe influence. HPL’s novella gave the filmmakers the skeleton of the story, but it was Poe’s poem that gave the film an extra note of amorphous menace. This is fitting since Lovecraft believed fervently that Poe was the greatest American writer and it’s wonderful to see both of their works harmonized together in this brooding film. Stein’s score does an admirable job keeping the sound of both writers resonant.
The Haunted Palace soundtrack is available through Amazon.com.