The Tell-Tale Heart - 1960

When I was in middle school or somewhere there about we read Edgar Allen Poe in class. I remember The Raven more than I remember The Tell-Tale Heart, but I did remember the basics of this movie before embarking on it in the Pure Terror boxset.

I started this up and it's really crummy black and white footage, but somehow that fits the aesthetic and the movie captures an atmosphere for sure. I don't remember exactly how the story went, but in the movie we start with the main character Edgar suffering from delusion and seeing his floorboards move in a pulsing heartbeat fashion. Then we flashback and watch how he got here.

Edgar is dating Betty and thinks she is cheating on him. He watches her with his friend Carl and pretty soon he is after Carl to kill him. Edgar kills Carl and buries him under the floor of his home. Thinking he got away with it but having a guilty conscience, soon enough Edgar begins to be bothered by normal sounds, and once they go away, he begins to be haunted by something even worse: The faint sound of a beating heart, coming from the floorboards, getting ever louder and louder...

This film version of the book captures an atmosphere, and it works. That's the shortcut of the review. It's a bit slow, after all it is from the 60's, but it is better than average in that regard. The acting is fine, and there is little to be an effect, but later the sequences of the sounds and the sequences surrounding the heart are cool. When all is said and done I'd catalogue it as a worthy film version, which is saying something when you take into consideration the fantastic source material.

I give this one 4 stars.