Extraordinary Tales

source: Extraordinary Tales

You get Poe as animated as ever could be a pun, some might wanna make watching this. Seriously though: Poe interpreted by different artists and therefor different styles is a mixed bag as could be expected. First of all you have to like animation and horror to even think about watching this. If not you may want to stay clear of this, which also has a lot of Horror talent at voicing department. The different animation styles can also be viewed as a curse (no pun intended) or a blessing. Some might have wanted one style throughout the whole thing, I personally like the change and the different approaches. But it's important you know before deciding to watch this. Especially if it's not your thing. Depending on your knowledge of Poe, you will have a different degree of information concerning the plots of the stories. Whatever that will do to your viewing pleasure

Raul Garcia, a writer, director and animator of animated movies, adapted five great stories of Edgar Allan Poe into five short animated movies, banded together by graveyard conversation between Poe (Stephen Hughes) in a form of a raven and Death (Cornelia Funke). Each story uses different animation technique and Sergio de la Puente composed original music which fits perfectly with their mystical atmosphere. In the first segment, Christopher Lee tells famous "The Fall of the House of Usher", followed by strange but striking computer animation. The second part brings archive footage of legendary Bela Lugosi reading "The Tell-Tale Heart" with black and white animation that feels like a negative. "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", narrated by Julian Sands, is done in comic-book style. Guillermo del Toro presents an internal monologue of the prisoner in the Inquisition dungeon, from the story "The Pit and the Pendulum", with video game type of animation. The last story brings "The Masque of the Red Death" in the form of a moving aquarelle and without narration. And, just for a brief moment, Roger Corman gives voice to Prince Prospero. Considering that all together lasts just a little over one hour, stories are very reduced, so connoisseurs and fans of Edgar Allan Poe might resent them as butchered, while those ignorant of his work could have troubles understanding them, especially last two. But if you read these stories, or at least saw movie adaptations and roughly know what are they about, and if you are not nagger trying to find faults in everything, you'll enjoy the magically gloomy and dreary atmosphere of this really extraordinary movie. 8/10

Of the animated horror movies I've been trying to hunt down in the last few years, this one takes the cake as my personal favorite and most pleasant surprise. I'd been saying for the longest time: "Why stretch out a whole Poe story to a feature-length snore or cheese-fest? The man wrote short stories! Make an anthology already!" Low and behold, that's what they did. Beyond adapting these stories to perfection visually, the whole movie is a love-letter to Poe, what with all the background references and the voice talents being that of horror-elite, showing their respect for the man who helped invent their genres of choice. There are only two gripes I have with the film and that's some of the animation in the Pit and the Pendulum bit (the rest of the movie stylizes it's budgeted animation so it looks good even with all the resources the creators have) and the introductory cards and credits for each sequence, which can take you out of the movie. Besides that it's a must see Poe-lovers and animated horror fans.

I really enjoyed this. The style of the animation varied in each tale but had in common an antiquated look and feel which I'm guessing was intentional to fit the period and mood of these five great tales by Edgar Allan Poe. Everything from scenes incorporating amazing background colors, textures and layering to the stark 2D black-and-white presentation of The Tell-Tale Heart. Pretty decent soundtrack too. The five adapted stories were: The Fall Of The House Of Usher (narrated by Christopher Lee); The Tell-Tale Heart (narrated by Bela Lugosi); The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar (narrated by Julian Sands); The Pit And The Pendulum (narrated by Guillermo Del Toro); and The Masque Of The Red Death (with Roger Corman in the role of Prince Prospero). One of Poe's most famous tales, The Raven, was not included but in between each tale were short segments featuring a raven embodied by the still living spirit of Poe who has conversations with a non- traditional manifestation of Death. All of which added up to a very enjoyable side story that also set the mood nicely throughout. You would almost expect a film like this to have come up with some way to include Vincent Price as one of the narrators...it doesn't and yet his likeness was used as a character in one of the stories and I thought that was a nice touch. This is one I'll be revisiting.

An interesting anthology of Edgar Poe short stories. The best part is that they use different forms of animation for each story. They all add a special feeling to each story. The one from Tell tale Heart is pretty hard to watch, but it very artistic and is fine for such a short animation, it is also extra creepy because of it and it fits well with the old recording of Bela Lugosi. I liked the comic books style animation of The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, it gave it a very vintage feeling. All in all a great collection. Doesn't really feel like horror animation though. I think it is even suitable for children from a certain age to introduce them to literature.

The idea of an animated anthology of macabre Edgar Allan Poe tales, presented in different visual aesthetics, seems great on paper. But the promising concept suffers somewhat in the execution. Despite the diverse "looks" of the animated segments, the animation is all of a similarly limited CGI variety. The film's biggest weakness is the framing device, which involves the spirit of Poe in the body of a raven having an introspective conversation with the spirit of Death in a cemetery full of statuary. The animation in the cemetery scenes is particularly lackluster (almost like flattened objects in a three-dimensional space), the voice work is uninspired, and the whole thing is set in the bright daylight, which is a curious choice for an anthology of such dark tales. Luckily, the Poe stories themselves are appropriately atmospheric, once they get going. The movie tells five classic Edgar Allan Poe tales. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is narrated brilliantly by British horror icon Christopher Lee. The animation is fluid and designed with a stylized, quasi-geometric, "carved-out-of-wood" quality. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is accompanied by a seemingly ancient audio recording of the great Bela Lugosi ("Dracula"), and presented in a stark black and white style inspired by the work of comic artist Alberto Breccia. Incorporating long-dead horror icon Lugosi is a cool touch, but the muffled audio seems too quiet and detached from the animation. "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (with the voice of Julian Sands) has a comic book aesthetic. "The Pit and the Pendulum", set during the Spanish Inquisition, is narrated by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, and the animation approximates a photo-realistic video game. The medieval tale, "The Masque of the Red Death", is told solely through its imagery (no narration), and has a watercolor aesthetic. The stories are dark and eerie, and occasionally gruesome. Some use Poe's original words, some paraphrase within Poe's narrative, and one uses no words at all. Edgar Allan Poe's short stories are well-served in the anthology format, and stylized animation captures Poe's eerie atmosphere better than live-action ever could. This movie seems like a match made in heaven, but the animation is not entirely satisfying and the cemetery framework is a drag. Still, you can't go wrong with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and "Extraordinary Tales" (2013) would be a nice introduction to Poe's classic stories for modern audiences.

A pretty good animated anthology of Edgar Allen Poe stories. Raul Garcia directs them all, but they are done in different styles (though the skeleton of all of them is CGI similar to earlier GKids release The Painting). Four of the five tales are greatest hits Poe stories: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Masque of the Red Death. The other is the less well known The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. There's also a wraparound segment with a crow visiting the cemetery statues of some of Poe's famous heroines. The Fall of the House of Usher is a tad weak - I didn't like the character designs and it moves too quickly (I did like the narration by Christopher Lee). The rest are better. The Tell-Tale Heart is narrated by a resurrected Bela Lugosi - well, they found an old record with his recording of the story, anyway. It's cool. Guillermo del Toro provides excellent narration on The Pit and the Pendulum. My favorite was probably The Masque of the Red Death, which has a gorgeous, painterly color palate. It also dispenses with the narration and is mostly silent (would have been even better if the one spoken line in the short had been dropped altogether, but I guess props are due since the one line is uttered by none other than Roger Corman). Sergio de la Puente's score is good if overused sometimes. It's particularly great during The Masque of the Red Death segment.

When it comes to horror films, I like the old ones with actors like Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, etc. I am not at all a fan of the ones like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc. I am a fan of Edgar Allen Poe. When I saw this title and that it was based on Poe's stories as well as having Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi, I had to watch it. This is a series of 5 individual stories. It is not one continuous movie. Each story is narrated by a different person and each one has its own animation style. The first one is The House of Usher narrated by Christopher Lee. I was immediately enthralled. My heart was pounding a bit harder and I was holding my breath just a bit throughout the whole first story. I really liked the animation style they used. The choice of Christopher Lee was perfect. He did an amazing job of telling the story and the story was written well. The whole thing was so good, that I was ready to give this a 10 rating. The second was The Tell-Tale Heart. This one had Bela Lugosi doing the narration. Another reviewer pointed out that they used an old recording of Bela Lugosi and that you can hear the scratches. I agree with this reviewer that this was also perfect. If they had cleaned up the recording it just would not have been as good. I was not as pleased with the animation on this story. However, at this point I was still ready to give this a 10 rating. The third story is The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar which was narrated by Julian Sands. I liked their choice of narrator and I was pleased with the animation for this story. I thought that the story was well written and everything flowed well. A 10 rating was still available at this point. The fourth story was The Pit and the Pendulum. The Pit and the Pendulum story I remember was the one with Vincent Price, so I was really quite surprised by this one. Perhaps it has just been way too long since I saw the Vincent Price movie but I did not recognize this version of the story. However, the animation and the narration was done well. I feel that the choice of narrator was good. Because I was a bit confused by this version of the story (and perhaps this is actually more true to Poe's story), I down-rated it to a 9 1/2. Then came the final story. The Masque of the Red Death. This was supposed to be narrated by Roger Corman, but he actually only said one line. The entire thing was just animated story without any actual narration. I felt quite lost throughout this one. I liked the animation, but I felt that it would have been a lot better if they actually had a story for the narrator to narrate. Throughout the entire movie, there were short bits where Death and Poe were talking. I again agree with one of the other reviewers that they should have chosen a different actor to do the voice of Poe. The conversation between Death and Poe was okay, but nothing really gripping. Because of the lack of any story narration in the 5th story and because they could have done better with the conversation between Death and Poe, I ended up giving this an 8/10. It's too bad, because for a great deal of this movie, I was ready to give it a 10.

The works of Edgar Allan Poe are nothing if not macabre. In his work, one finds an element of romance and fantasy, almost a love letter to the release of grief that death provides. This is the connecting thread with which writer/director Raul Garcia (The Missing Lynx, Animarathon) ties together five short animated adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe short stories in the new(ish) film Extraordinary Tales. Each short film is stunningly realized in a different aesthetic and each is deserving of high praise. In putting them together as a collection though, to be experienced concurrently, Garcia has attempted to unite the tales with a superficial thread that falls short of being much more than an interruption of each disparate but beautiful love letter to Poe's work. Extraordinary Tales opens on a collection of statues in a cemetery in a style that seems to be a thrilling symbiosis of painted backdrop and stop motion papier mâché animation. A raven, serving as Poe himself and voiced by Stephen Hughes, enters the scene only to be confronted by...