The Haunted Palace

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The Haunted Palace ★★½ 1963

Price plays both a 17th-century warlock burned at the stake and a descendant who returns to the family dungeon and gets possessed by the mutant-breeding forebearer. The movie has its own identity crisis, with title and ambience from Poe but story from H.P. Lovecraft's “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.” Respectable but rootless chills. 87m/C VHS, DVD . Vincent Price, Debra Paget, Lon Chaney Jr., Frank Maxwell, Leo Gordon, Elisha Cook Jr., John Dierkes, Barboura Morris, Bruno VeSota; D: Roger Corman; W: Charles Beaumont, Floyd Crosby; M: Ronald Stein.