That was an excellent one.

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

There actually WAS an "Oblong Box" story by Poe, and in the time honored tradition of these things, it has nothing to do with the story in this movie. This non-Coreman Poe looks a lot closer to Poe than AIP, with it's lingering gore and flashes of nipple. The Hammer style Blood, both highly fake and gratuitous, is really odd to see today. These great stars appearing in films happy to go low to appeal to the crowd. Anyway, the sad thing about "Oblong Box" is that, like many a Hammer film, it starts promisingly enough, with some fine photography and nicely staged widescreen shots and a promising premise. As Price exits the story, however, things get absurd and tedious fast. By the time the silly shocker ending rolls around you are likely to have lost interest. Price's butler is played by the guy who went on to be one of the Murderers in Polanski's great "MacBeth", nice to see him again.

Disfigured in an African ritual, Edward is kept, "protected", by his brother Julian by being kept chained up in attic. He fakes his death to escape from Julian and another man is killed to take Edward's place in the "oblong box". Film looks like a low-key, photographed stageplay, a well-dressed period piece having little to do with Poe's short story, besides the title box. This is one of those films to watch primarily to enjoy the cast, lush settings and photography, hooded killers, throat-slicings, and a couple of good scares along the way, even if it has little if anything to do with Poe, just don't get one's hopes too high up. It does have a good unmasking scene, and genuinely creepy twist-ending, which still stood out in my mind years after I had last seen this film. Favourite line: "I'll only do my prowling at night."

Despite triumphant placarding in the movie's posters, Edgar Allan Poe never wrote a story called "The Oblong Box". Poe did write a quasi-essay titled "The Premature Burial", which no doubt heavily influenced "Murder by the Clock" (1931), but has precious little to do with "The Oblong Box". Its real inspiration comes from Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" via Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Body Snatcher". I'm gladly that neither of these fine writers were associated with this "ridiculous" (to quote Christopher Lee) movie. Just about all the characters are presented as a bunch of morons who not only act stupidly but totally inconsistently. Oddly, the actors all play their roles straight, even when entertaining the craziest of notions. As if this were not bad enough, the plot wanders all over the place. Potentially interesting threads are introduced, only to be quickly dropped in favor of some new, irrelevant sidelight. Director Gordon Hessler spends so much time setting up these extra scenes (like the tavern episode) that we grow weary of the whole charade long before the merciful end titles. [

Gordon Hessler's "The Oblong Box" of 1969 starring the great Vincent Price is a creepy, and excellent Horror tale with a great atmosphere. The movie, whose cast also includes another great horror icon, Christopher Lee, is only loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story of the same name, a fact that, in my opinion, does not downsize the quality of this eerie and obscure film. "The Oblong Box" combines all kinds of elements a fan of Gothic Horror cinema could desire: Voodoo, disfigurement, premature burial, and of course a constant eerie atmosphere and a bunch of bloody murders.In 18th century England, Sir Julian Markham (Vincent Price) keeps his brother Edward (Aliester Williamson) locked in a chamber in the tower of his mansion. Edward had been disfigured during a voodoo ceremony in Africa, and since gone completely insane. With some help, however, Edward manages to fake his own death in order to flee his prison, using methods which include a premature burial...Vincent Price is my favorite actor of all-time and his performance is, as always, superb, and no other actor would have fit in his role as Price does. Christopher Lee also delivers a great performance as a body-snatching doctor, a role in which he once again proves that his reputation as a horror icon is more than justified. The cast furthermore includes the beautiful Hillary Dwyer, who had already starred besides Price in Michael Reeves' masterpiece "Witchfinder General" in 1968, and who would play besides Price again in 1970, in "Cry Of The Banshee", also directed by Gordon Hessler, in the female lead.An excellently written and directed and superbly acted movie, "The Oblong Box" is a film which fans of Gothic Horror can't afford to miss. "Witchfinder General" director Michael Reeves was originally considered to direct the film, but died before the shooting began, and although I have utmost respect for this promising director, who sadly passed away at such a young age, I must say that I cannot imagine anyone to do a better job directing "The Oblong Box" than Hessler did. An excellent little tale of terror, "The Oblong Box" is a must-see for every Horror-fan. 9/10