Actor Christopher Lee hosts this series of 13 Edgar Allen Poe's short stories. "The Fall of the House of Usher" A traveler arrives at the Usher mansion to visit his old friend, Roderick Usher. Upon arriving, however, he discovers that Roderick and his sister, Madeline, have been afflicted with a mysterious malady: Roderick's senses have become painfully acute, while Madeline has become nearly catatonic. That evening, Roderick tells his guest of an old Usher family curse: any time there has been more than one Usher child, all of the siblings have gone insane and died horrible deaths. As the days wear on, the effects of the curse reach their terrifying climax.
Actor Christopher Lee hosts this series of 13 Edgar Allen Poe's short stories. "The Oval Portrait" On a dark and rainy night, a traveler find shelter in a chateau. As she rests in a room, the traveler notices the walls are covered with several intriguing paintings. She discovers a book describing the paintings and their history. As she continues to read the book, she grows more and more entranced as she reads until he is suddenly startled. In a dark corner glows the face of a beautiful woman. With a sigh of relief she realizes she is only looking at an oval portrait but one so life-like and beautiful that he can barely take her eyes off of it. As the traveler continues to read, the tragic and uncanny tale of the woman in the oval portrait unfolds. A young woman has married an obsessive painter who is so enraptured with his art and capturing the soul of his wife in his painting, that he neglects everything else. Desperate for his affection, she obediently sits in silent pose for weeks at a time, Finally the painter realizes that he has captured his brides very soul in his painting, only to discover that she is dead and decayed.
Actor Christopher Lee hosts this series of 13 Edgar Allen Poe's short stories. This story is about a man that is planning to marry his cousin Berenice. He man falls into times where he loses the outside world because he is so focused elsewhere. Berenice has beautiful teeth that he becomes focused on. As she deteriorates from an unnamed disease he becomes more focused until he finds a box with her teeth and a poem about visiting the grave of my beloved.
Actor Christopher Lee hosts this series of 13 Edgar Allen Poe's short stories. The Black Cat, short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in The Saturday Evening Post in August 1843 and included in the collection Tales by Edgar Allen Poe (1845). The story’s main character is an animal lover who, as he descends into alcoholism and perverse violence, begins mistreating his wife and his black cat Pluto. When Pluto attacks him in self-defense one night, he seizes the cat in a fury, cuts out one of its eyes, and hangs it. That night a fire destroys his house, leaving him in dire poverty. He finds a new house, and inside that house a stray cat with only one eye, the wife and husband move in and he adopts the cat in order to redeem his house. Soon he begins to loathe the cat. In a fit of rage attempts to kill the cat with an ax. His wife stops him, and he kills her instead. He buries the body in the wall of a basement. When police investigate the missing person and search the house, they can hear something in the wall, when they knock down the wall they discover the cat on top of his dead wife's head.