The Tell-Tale Heart
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Ernest Morris
Laurence Payne
Adrienne Corri
Dermot Walsh
Selma Vaz Dias
John Scott
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Edgar Allan Poe dreams that he is a crippled librarian named Edgar Marsh. Morbidly sensitive about his disability, he lives in solitude with a housekeeper in his dead mother's house. He spends his evenings in a haze of drugs and dreams lasciviously of encounters with women he ordinarily would not dare approach. A florist's attractive assistant, Betty Clare, moves across the way, and he secretly watches her from his bedroom window and becomes passionately aroused. Although he manages, through a contrived meeting, to arrange a date with her, it soon becomes apparent that she prefers the company of his best friend, Carl Loomis. Insanely jealous, Edgar kills Carl and hides the body under the floorboards of his study. Haunted by the hallucination that he can still hear Carl's heart beating, he cuts the heart from the body and buries it in the nearby woods; but the relentless hammering continues. Betty, meanwhile, has asked the police to investigate Carl's mysterious disappearance. When they question Edgar, he breaks down and confesses to the murder. At this point, Poe awakens from his dream, looks out of his window and sees a young woman--Betty Clare--moving into the house across the way.
Director
Ernest Morris
Cast
Laurence Payne
Adrienne Corri
Dermot Walsh
Selma Vaz Dias
John Scott
John Martin
Annette Carell
David Lander
Rosemary Rotheray
Suzanne Fuller
Yvonne Buckingham
David Courtney
Richard Bennett
Joan Peart
Elizabeth Paget
Frank Thornton
Nada Beall
Pamela Plant
Graham Ashley
Brian Cobby
Madeline Leon
Patsy Smart
Crew
Norman Arnold
Brian Clemens
Tony Crombie
Edward J. Danziger
Harry Lee Danziger
Eldon Howard
W. A. Howell
Bill Le Sage
Derek Parsons
Peter Russell
John S. Smith
Brian Taylor
James Wilson
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Released in Great Britain in January 1963 at 78 min. Union Film Distributors re-released the film in 1964 as The Hidden Room of 1,000 Horrors.
