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With: Vincent Price, Sebastian Cabot, Brett Halsey, Beverly Garland, Richard Denning, Mari Blanchard, Abraham Sofaer, Jacqueline deWit, Joyce Taylor, Edith Evanson, Floyd Simmons, Gene Roth
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Written by: Robert E. Kent, based on stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Directed by: Sidney Salkow
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MPAA Rating: NR
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Running Time: 120
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Date: 10/30/1963
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Hawthorne in My Side
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Roger Corman was not involved in this Vincent Price-starrer, an anthology based on tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and it certainly lacks his touch. It's too long, at 2 full hours, to be good "B" movie entertainment, it's not much of a horror movie, and the storytelling is too sloppy and haphazard to really stick. Despite the title, Twice-Told Tales, only the first story, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," about an aged scientist who discovers the fountain of youth, can be found in Hawthorne's collection of the same name. The second tale, "Rappaccini's Daughter" tells the story of a university student (Brett Halsey) who falls in love with a strange and beautiful woman (Joyce Taylor); unfortunately, she has been raised among poisonous plants, and is now poisonous herself. Price plays her unsympathetic scientist father. The third tale is actually based on one of Hawthorne's best-known novels, The House of the Seven Gables, and hacks it up pretty badly. There were so many other creepy short Hawthorne tales that would have fit here, so it's curious why they would have attempted something so ambitious. (Plus, Price already starred in a much better feature adaptation of the novel, released in 1940.) Kino Lorber released a special edition Blu-ray in 2022, including a commentary track by film historians Richard Harland Smith and Perry Martin, a "Trailers from Hell" episode with Mick Garris, and other trailers.
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