The voice of Bela Lugosi features in a new animated anthology of classic Edgar Allan Poe stories. Directed by Raul Garcia, Extraordinary Tales contains versions of The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Pit and the Pendulum, each animated in a unique style.
The 70-minute film features the voices of Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Roger Corman, Guillermo del Toro and Julian Sands. Each of the performances were specially recorded for the film with the exception of Bela Lugosi’s for The Tell-Tale Heart, which was recorded in the late 1940s. Lugosi, who toured a dramatic reading of the story in 1947, is thought to have recorded the tale for radio syndication.
Bela Lugosi’s reading of The Tell-Tale Heart
Bela Lugosi starred in four films based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe during his career. The first came in 1932 when he followed up his great success in the 1931 film version of Dracula with Murders in the Rue Morgue. He later co-starred with Boris Karloff in The Black Cat in 1934 and The Raven in 1935. His final film inspired by Poe was The Black Cat in 1941. All four films were produced by Universal Studios. In 1949 he appeared in his final Poe-inspired production, an episode of the Suspense TV series entitled A Cask of Amontillado.
Bela Lugosi in A Cask of Amontillado
Extraordinary Tales will premiere in select theaters and on-demand on October 23rd in the USA.
You can read more about Bela Lugosi’s 1947 dramatic reading tour of The Tell-Tale Heart on the following pages:
The Bela Lugosi Blog 