Happy Hallowe’en month, O hallowed time too for honoring Italian heritage, and a merry tide of Samhain to all my dear readers! May Osiris, Isis, Proserpina, and Persephone protect us and our loved ones, those here and departed. Should there be any eldritch gods vast or roving round, especially in benighted seasons, pray we elude their malice.

Now, all you goths and ghouls, vamps and beasties, ghosts and goblins, cherished enthusiasts of the weird and morbid, how about we celebrate Autumn and the descent of Winter with some spooky folklore, stories, books, and movies, hmm? What say you to reading some criticism and blog articles about Art, Film, Literature, and Philosophy? Pull up a chair of velvet by the hearth, so to speak, and please permit me here to share with you my personal review of a movie I think is worth your time, particularly in the jack-o’-lantern hours of October: Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace (1963), starring Vincent Price, based on and inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. And because of our self-indulgent society’s growing obsession with the silver screen and artificial intelligence these days, please allow me to use this opportunity and this movie to help me reflect on the haunting fiber of Film and its excrementitious effects on Art and Humanity.

Possible spoilers ahead.

I feel as if Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace (1963) combined too many things into one. Too many themes seemed to manifest in this movie, a movie that is unbalanced. Much of the movie felt languid, and I would say that its prevailing mood was foggy, mysterious. Nevertheless, there is a disturbed motion pulling events along in the story, a kind of randomness or incongruity, merging the plot with details that seemed unwarranted or incompatible.

The acting, lighting, Gothic sets, costumes, and makeup: these were all amusing. I’m impressed by its colors. The score was spooky and exciting. The shadow- and camerawork were intriguing. The Haunted Palace is a fun horror movie that is comfortable to watch.

Decadent elements in the movie caught my attention: the New England creepiness and decrepitude, curses, recurrence and regression, deformities and ill-breeding, art with an influence on the living, obsession with the dead, and atavism.

The Haunted Palace subtly displays its more sci-fi elements (e.g., a sense of weirdness, mind-control, the metaphysical, hybridism and mutation, and the extraterrestrial thing).

In contemplation of the movie’s motifs of madness, Death, inheritance, possession, repetition, dangerous artwork, familial and societal collapse, I thought about the decadence of modern-day USA and the weirdness of the film industries in not only our falling civilization but also the rest of the globe, of which I am not, I admit, an expert, but I see it as a world in decline.

Modern society has long been haunted by machines. Computers, robots, artificial intelligence: are their alien presences not unraveling Human expression? Have they not confused the definition of Art? Like in Corman’s movie, the artificial has power over reality; in the movie, it was a painting and a book that were somehow dangerous; for us, it is the automaton—Life imitating Apparatus!

Film is Science and stage-magic, fine for entertainment, but it is not Art. Motion pictures, unlike Art, have an inherent dependence on excessive motion, electronic guidance, chemistry, and illusion. Besides, just to be operated, motion pictures rely on an excess of contrivances and applications. Like in The Haunted Palace, is there an unnatural presence lurking within? Could it be the substances of film mutating their own fabric, a riot against their own designs?

Film, photography too, sees something and disintegrates it; moreover, the mechanisms of cinema deform themselves and reality unto falsehood. Film is not exactly a recording but a replacement. Movies are as deformed as the cursed townsfolk in Corman’s The Haunted Palace. Though film has the conformity and actuality of a mirror, film objectifies and simulates and distorts the captured subject or participant; but a movie never can hold the hands of Faith nor of Truth. Film only creates falsity.

Corman’s film depicts outside forces invading and seeking possession. In film as a whole, a different kind of power struggle is happening: there are too many people, companies, complex devices (cameras, television sets, etc.), and computer influences (e.g., CGI and AI) involved overall in the creation and/or playing of a movie, thereby imposing its wills, attacking Beauty, and degrading any artistry. But a true work of Art has only one artist: the artist’s piece but expresses only itself yet also bears only the one vision, the phantasma, of the original artist.

So, to escape the mediocrity of movies, turn to Literature. Read Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Haunted Palace,” which is, in my view, a haunting, poignant poem depicting a fallen empire, and whose cynicism, lavishness, and eeriness help us recognize Poe as a grandfather of the Decadence movement; said poem can be found in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a superb work of dark Romanticism at the roots of the Decadence movement. I also recommend H. P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which carries, I believe, a small detail or two of the Decadent.

You may recall that I have written about the genre of dark Romanticism before in a previous article. For those curious about what else I’ve said about Poe’s work, I would recommend my article “Reflecting on Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Island of the Fay’; Florid Musings on Fantasy.”

If you enjoyed what you have read here, do read the other articles I have contributed to the DMR Books blog. Also, if you have read any of my writings, please leave a review of them, as that would be a noble kindness, and it would be highly appreciated.

MATTHEW PUNGITORE is the author of “The Tale of Marius the Avenging Imp” (DMR Books, Samhain Sorceries, 2022); “To a Dead Soul in Morbid Love” (Cirsova Magazine, Fall 2023); “Wychyrst Tower” (Cirsova, Winter 2021); The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers and other stories; and more.