Poe Re-Deranged

By: Pete Gambino

Narrated by: Pat Defusco, John Jackowski, Ang Bey, Craig Hutchings, Kahlil Wyatt, Chris Miller, Amanda Boeckle, Edwin Santiago, Katherine Perry, Taylor Mitchell

Re-Deranged: A Night of Poe is not just a love letter to Poe. This stage play (now radio show) also celebrates the work of director Roger Corman and actor Vincent Price. Throughout the '60s, the duo collaborated on no fewer than six indelible classics of the cult cinema circuit, which today are known to horror fans as part of “Poe Cycle” by American International Pictures (AIP).

Green-lit on minimal schedules and minimal budgets, many of Corman’s Poe adaptations also had to contend with minimal guidance from the source material itself. Readers of Poe can attest to the presence of miasmatic atmospheres and complex character psychologies - but plot? No, Poe’s tales fascinate and frighten because they are motivated by the Imp of the Perverse or an urge for malice that is often illogical and wretchedly irrepressible.

Thus, to bolster the drama enough to meet an appropriate runtime for film audiences, AIP productions often stitched multiple tales together. The “Black Cat” found itself in “The Cask of the Amontillado". “Hop Frog” met “The Masque of the Red Death".

The third acts of both “Ligeia” and “Morella” were pulled from “The Fall of the House of Usher". None of Poe’s works were safe, not even his most famous. “The Raven” as a comedy? Imagine sitting in on that production meeting. Strange yet familiar. Campy yet unsettling. Lit class yet drive-in. Corman’s Frankenstein-like concoctions resulted in a series of box office hits.

As a kid - awake and watching reruns when I shouldn’t have been - AIP's re-imaginings did more to influence my early reading of Poe than my middle school. Still, don’t vote against your local school’s budget. You try to convince Generation Nintendo to pick up a book - especially one that refers to a spider web as gossamer. I mean, come on.

None of this is to say that audiences shouldn’t be encouraged to read Poe. In fact, they must! Thus, a com-Poe-nation page has been included at the end of the script in order for fans to make sense of the monster-mashed and rearranged plots. But in our excitement to dig through symbolism, allusion, and historical context for deeper meaning, we, as educators, sometimes lose sight of the fact that writers wish to entertain.

Stories of Poe reciting “The Raven” as if he were trying to frighten little children prove this. So, have a production meeting and explore the finer points of social commentary present within “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” or the disturbing subtext of “Fall of the House of Usher” but also remember to make use of a rubber skeleton and a creepy Vincent Price sound bite.

These schlocky elements could be the very gateways through which your students, your cast, your crew seek to learn more. And when, one dark and stormy night, one of them reaches for a Poe volume independently, you’ve done them the best service imaginable.

For the “radio” version, I did my best to maintain the spirit of the stage show while also including much more of Poe’s narration. His is the best type of horror - just descriptive enough, just unreliable enough to excite imagination! It’s hard to get his words out of your head. But anyway, why would you want to?

©2020 Pete Gambino (P)2020 The Eagle Theatre