Disc Reviews

Tower of London (1962) Blu-ray Review

• 9th Feb 2017

This B movie by Roger Corman, is one of many Vincent Price starred in through the early 1960s is sandwiched in between two other films this relates to, that really bookend Price’s career. Tower of London is in many ways a remake of the 1939 Universal film of the same. In that film Price plays the ill-fated Duke of Clarence who is murdered by Richard of Gloucester, the soon to be crowned King Richard III, drowned in the tower in a butt of Malmsey wine. In the original film Price plays opposite Basil Rathbone who portrays Richard as a ruthless Machiavellian manipulator, murdering his way to power and the crown before meeting his end at the future Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth. Carrying out Richard’s bidding is Boris Karloff as the bald headed and club footed Mord. Later, in 1973 came one of Vincent’s Price’s most beloved films, the British black comedy shocker, Theatre of Blood wherein Price now plays (once again very campy) Edward Lionheart, a passionate and eccentric Shakespearean actor who supposedly commits suicide by being ridiculed by theatre critics. He survives the suicide attempt and murders the 9 critics by carrying out 9 murders inspired by the Bard with one of the murders drowning in his victim in Malmsey wine.

In the 1962 film Price plays the role very different from Rathbone’s interpretation and instead looks closer towards Shakespeare than the original. In 1956 Laurence Olivier enjoyed critical success with his take on Shakespeare’s hunchbacked supposed villainous King in Richard III. For the 1962 Tower of London, it is fair to say that the film is more inspired by Shakespeare rather than being an adaptation. Clarence is killed off quite early on in this film and with each murder Richard is haunted by the ghosts of those he has murdered including the princes in the tower and a physician, namely anyone who gets in his way. With each murder as he reaches for more power the mind of Richard is perceived as mad and getting madder all the time until once again he meets his fate on the Battle of Bosworth Field.

The film was directed by Roger Corman and stars his regular actor. Together they had worked at American International Pictures (AIP) and made several successful low budget adaptations of gothic Edgar Allan Poe stories that to the date of this film had included The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and Tales of Terror (1962). The origins of the making of this film came from Corman’s brother, Gene who suggested going to United Artists and do a Poe-style film but move away from. What better then than a gothic horror version of William Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ and giving Price an opportunity to camp it up. The Corman brothers were were not happy at the studio as they believed a bigger studio meant a bigger budget but this was denied them. Executive producer Edward Small would not allow them to use colour for budget reasons; something they had even been able to do with the Poe films. The shots of the Tower of London itself look dreadful, very clearly cheap models. The battle scene at the end was shot in its entirety in the studio and even used footage of the 1939 film. The end result looks very similar in style and content to the Poe films except it was shot in black and white. It did not perform as well at the box-office as the Poe films exactly for the reason it was not in colour.

An interesting release from Arrow Video that ties in with their releases over the past couple of years of the Poe/Price/AIP films and can be brought into a part of the same series – the Poe films were after all only loosely based off Edgar Allan Poe as this too is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare, so why not. The only extras are a couple of shortish interviews with Roger and Gene Corman. The picture is as expected from the label is very good.

Chris Hick