The Big Picture If you're excited about Bridgerton Season 3 but missing The Fall of the House of Usher, craving a darker take on the period romance, you could do much worse than an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation for a mix of fear and feelings. Despite being known for his darker tales, at his core, Poe was a romantic who wrote as many sonnets as he did scary stories, and he was someone who knew the cocktail of love and grief as a powerful destructive force.
The Tomb of Ligeia NR Vincent Price stars as a widower haunted by the memory of his late wife, Ligeia, who believed she could transcend death. Overcome by her presence, he remarries, only to find himself and his new wife terrorized by the possibility that Ligeia's spirit still lingers. The film's strongest element is undoubtedly the relationship between Rowena and Verden. At the time of production, Corman thought Price was too old to play the romantic lead and too well-known for being a creepy, kooky character actor. But if his performance as Roderick Usher showed us anything, it's that Price is excellent at making the audience root for the weird ones.
When grief consumes Verden, as whatever's left of Ligeia takes him and the entire abbey with them, you almost feel like it's unfair. That more could've been done to help Verden if he had just allowed himself to be helped, or if people looked at him with genuine concern at his deteriorating mental state rather than confusion or suspicion. But death isn't fair, neither are the forces of grief and anguish.