Definitively Uncanny: The Oblong Box (1969)

My dear readers, while I take great pride in securing my abode against various ailments and elements, there are certain chores that I’m afraid my constitution cannot quite weather and at times I imagine the most efficient solution is securing the services of a professional. To provide but one example, I recently dispatched a team of laborers to take a sizable bust of my great Aunt Zelda Hauntedhouse from the ancestral gallery and relocate it to the “breakfast nook” where her stern gaze can be appreciated by both ancestral celebrators and casual dayspring diners. And yet many days after describing their task I still find it to be flagrantly unfulfilled. Instead, the whole lot of them are lallygagging about, eyes rudely rolled up in their skulls and muttering something about “her eminent return.” The whole business has proven to me that tired yet sagacious old saying about doing things yourself if you prefer to see them done properly.

Edward initially struggles to express his gratitude

Sir Edward Markham (Alister Williamson) is intimately familiar with the various disappointments associated with hiring others to do one’s bidding. The poor fellow has been indefinitely confined to his bedchambers by his brother Julian (Vincent Price). Apparently, the brothers Markham did some disservice to the native residents of Africa and Edward has fallen victim to a punitive voodoo curse that has mangled his appearance and done very little to improve his temper. Not wanting to spend all of his remaining days a prisoner in his own home, Edward concocts an elaborate scheme to feign his death and to have his body recovered from the grave so that he may live out the rest of his years a free and increasingly deranged man. However, recovering his body becomes a bit more difficult than anyone originally imagined and one of Edward’s co-conspirators, being a very practical sort of fellow, decides to abandon the whole scheme, leaving Edward to be buried alive.

Medical science comes to the rescue in the form of Dr. Newhartt (Christopher Lee), a doctor with a distinctly Georgian era attitude about cadavers and how they might be acquired for research purposes, who accidentally excavates Edward. Despite being saved from an untimely demise, Edward remains focused on his unhappiness with the illicit services he had retained and goes about seeking his satisfaction with the men who left him to subterranean suffocation. Not wanting to attract any undue attention to his deformity, he blends in seamlessly amongst the London rabble by parading about in resplendent dress clothes and a bright crimson fabric mask. While he does manage to catch up with a number of his former employees, few of them are capable of making good on their previous arrangement and the method Edward uses to settle his debts provides much fresh material for Dr. Newhartt’s research.

Cheerily bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the Edgar Allan Poe story form which it takes its title, The Oblong Box sees Vincent Price, that wondrous and devoted steward of horror, in one of his most disturbing roles. Even moviegoers who only possess a passing familiarity with the man’s work will know of this formidable thespian’s talent for portraying characters who live on the very margins of sanity. And so it is with mouth slightly agape that I witnessed him playing a doting fiancé to a healthy, living woman. His scenes with his wife-to-be are most appalling, with their attempts at warm familiarity and light banter rendering this traditionally diabolical performer virtually unrecognizable. The docile chastity of their embraces is one of the most uneasy spectacles I have witnessed in recent memory. Due to the company of his betrothed, there are no haunted stares or lugubrious monologues and the man does not do a spot of lurking for the whole blighted picture.

The uncanny, as old Sigmund once noted, is the experience of seeing the familiar made unfamiliar. I believe I can say without reservation that Vincent Price’s performance in this film is the very definition of the uncanny.

The Oblong Box runs 96 minutes and is rated R for some violence and sexual content.