By Brian M. Sammons
Annabel Lee and Other Stories of Mystery and Imagination: The Edgar Allan Poe Collection Volume One (2008). Director: George Higham.
Since it’s Poe week here at Innsmouth Free Press, I thought I’d take a break from the tentacled terrors and focus on some far more gothic horrors inspired by a giant of the genre: Edgar Allan Poe. Why cover Poe in an article that always firmly focuses on Lovecraft? Well, HPL was a big fan of Poe’s macabre tales. In fact, before Lovecraft found his own unique and game-changing voice, his early works were pretty much all riffs on the stories of English fantasist Lord Dunsany and American terror titan Poe. That not enough for you?
Okay, how about I just wanted to do something different? Wait, that’s a bit egotistical of me, so how about this – if you were thinking of picking up this DVD sight unseen because you’re a big old Poe-head like me, then you might thank me for saving you some bucks because brothers and sisters, I would bet a signed, 1st-print edition of the Necronomicon that you will not be expecting what you find in this movie.
Namely, that would be puppets.
Yes, Annabel Lee is a short animated movie filled to the brim with puppet goodness. Now, I must say that the stop-motion animation was very well done and it was thoroughly creepy, but I sure as hell wasn’t expecting puppets when I pressed the play button. That’s because there is nary a hint that the feature film in this collection of three shorts based on Poe tales is essentially a Goth version of Robot Chicken. In fact, the only clue that this DVD’s feature is an animated film is a short quote on the back of the box from Rue Morgue Magazine (naturally). So, if you saw this DVD on the internet and picked it up because you’re a fan of Lurker Films’ other DVDs based on the stories of Lovecraft, as I am, then you might be in for a big old surprise. As I don’t like surprises when my cold hard cash is involved, I thought I’d give you all the heads-up.
But does being an animated film automatically make Annabel Lee a bad movie? Hell, no. In fact, I actually quite liked it, with one exception (more on that in a second). I just wish that it was made clearer, as it seems kind of like a bait-and-switch. Whether or not that was the case, there is no denying that the animation was topnotch and even downright nightmarish at times. The music was very creepy and appropriately moody. And the acting…well there wasn’t any, because they were all puppets. Perhaps my biggest gripe with this little slice of terror was the narrator. Now I don’t have a voice for radio, so I’m not going to do anything that requires my lovely speaking voice being recorded for thousands to hear if I can avoid it. That in mind, I must say that the guy they got to read the parts of Poe’s poem should have recognized his own shortcomings before signing on. I don’t want to be mean – really, I don’t – but every time the narration started up, I wanted to hit the mute button. Since this whole movie is creepy scenes set to Poe’s grief-filled poem, when one half of that equation is bad, it really stands out.
As said, Annabel Lee is a short film – as in, 19 minutes short. To help fill up the extra space on the DVD, Lurker Films added two more Poe-fect cinema shorts to it. “The Raven” is an 11-minute one-man-show that, unlike Annabel Lee, has excellent narration provided by one Mr. Michael G. Sayers. Unfortunately, besides a great reading of the complete poem, this film offers nothing new and that’s too bad. Also, if The Simpsons beat you to the punch by a dozen years or more, and did it better than you, then that’s pretty sad. So, if this were an audio book, it would have been great, but as a movie it is merely “meh”. The final short on the disc is a 10-minute Spanish retelling of “The Tell-Tale Heart” that mixes things up slightly, but has a somewhat unsatisfying ending. The acting seems good, but there’s not much more to say about it than that, so I won’t.
The DVD also has a few extras on it. There’s an interview with Annabel Lee director and puppet designer George Higham; a behind-the-scenes look at “The Raven” that is as long as the actual movie it’s about; a short Poe biography that’s basically just a text file; and an interview with Paul Clemens, a self-proclaimed Poe expert, that is pretty good. And…well, that’s it.
So, can I recommend this movie and this DVD? Annabel Lee I can give the thumbs-up to as I dug the visual style immensely, even if the narration was a bit off to me. The DVD as a whole is a slightly different story because all three movies combined only clock up a forty-minute runtime, and twenty minutes of that is taken up by puppets. If that’s worth the price of admission to you, or you’re just a big fan of stop-motion animation, then I say go for it. Otherwise, you might want to give this slice of Poe pie a pass.
Final Verdict: not Lovecraftian, pretty Poe-worthy, kind of short, and definitely not what you would expect.