Crew
Director – Jim Wynorski, Screenplay – R.J. Robertson, Based on the Short Story Morella (1835) by Edgar Allan Poe, Producer – Roger Corman, Photography – Zoran Hochstatter, Music – Chuck Cirino & Frederic Ensign Teetel, Special Effects – Greg Landerer, Makeup Effects – Die-Aktion Inc. (Dean Jones, Starr Jones & Jane Talman), Production Design – Gary Randall. Production Company – Concorde-New Horizons.
Cast
Nicole Eggert (Morella Locke/Lenore Locke), David McCallum (Gideon Locke), Lana Clarkson (Coel Deveraux), Christopher Halstead (Guy Chapman), Maria Ford (Diane), Jonathan Farwell (Dr. Gault), John O’Leary (Quintis), Brewster Gould (Miles Archer), Gail Harris (Ilsa), Clement von Franckenstein (Judge Brock), R.J. Robertson (Reverend Ward), Debbie Dutch (Serving Girl)
Plot
Morella Locke is burned at the stake accused of witchcraft. Seventeen years later, her husband Gideon has become blind and has slumped into a bad state. Their daughter Lenore is about to come of age and inherit her mother’s estate. The governess Coel Deveraux pushes Lenore together with the handsome lawyer Guy Chapman. At the same time, Miss Deveraux is determined to conduct a series of occult rites and human sacrifices that will incarnate Morella’s spirit inside Lenore’s body, as well as bring her corpse back to life.
The Haunting of Morella was one of a spate of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that underwent a mini-revival around 1988-91. This fad also included The House of Usher (1989), Luigi Cozzi’s The Black Cat (1990), George Romero and Dario Argento’s Poe anthology Two Evil Eyes (1990), Fred Olen Ray’s Haunting Fear (1991) and Stuart Gordon’s The Pit and the Pendulum (1991), as well as two different versions of The Masque of the Red Death (1989) and Masque of Red Death (1989). As with The Haunting of Morella, several of these were produced by Roger Corman who had directed the classic Vincent Price-starring series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptation in the 1960s beginning with The House of Usher (1960).
Morella (1835) is one of Poe’s short stories. In the story, the narrator has a wife Morella who has researched arcane topics but is ill and dies during childbirth. As the child grows up, the husband notices a disturbing resemblance between mother and daughter and eventually realises that mother has reincarnated in the daughter’s body. Morella had previously been filmed as the first episode of Roger Corman’s Poe anthology Tales of Terror (1962).
When it comes to The Haunting of Morella, the Poe story is treated as the barest of bones. Morella the mother (Nicole Eggert) dies in the opening scenes but is now burned alive as a witch rather than dies in childbirth. We do get a flashback later on where we see her at her arcane studies. The bulk of the story is about the daughter (also Nicole Eggert) being occasionally taken over by the mother’s spirit. In an aspect that doesn’t exist in Poe, there is another whole plot where this is due to witchcraft rites being enacted by governess Lana Clarkson. Rather confusingly, at the same time as Morella is incarnating in the daughter’s body, Lana Clarkson is also conducting human sacrifice rites to resurrect Morella’s corpse from the dead. Possibly this is because the original story of the daughter’s possession, which runs to only 2100 words (about five pages) in the Poe original, didn’t carry enough weight on its own, but it ends up with a confusing duplicate plot.
The Haunting of Morella is also a Jim Wynorski film (see below for Jim Wynorski’s other genre films). As with any Wynorski film, this means plenty of opportunities for girls to get their tops off. We see a servant girl (Debbie Dutch) bathing before getting her throat slit. Lana Clarkson’s governess is also a lesbian who bathes in a grotto beneath the graveyard with servant girl Maria Ford. Local girl Gail Harris has a liaison with a guy before being taken away by Lana Clarkson for a nude sacrificial ritual. And there are love scenes between Nicole Eggert and handsome Christopher Halstead.
However, this breathy upfront erotica is a far cry from the mood of dread and despair that we get in Edgar Allan Poe’s writing, or even Roger Corman’s Poe films. Poe never addresses sexuality period – the most he ever gets is writing poems mourning his lost love Lenore. By very dint of The Haunting of Morella being made as a Jim Wynorski film and one made on a typical Corman low-budget of the Concorde-New Horizons era, and tricked out with cheap effects, it kills everything that is essentially Poe that there is to the story.
Jim Wynorski’s other genre films are:- The Lost Empire (1983), Chopping Mall (1986), Deathstalker II (1987), Not Of This Earth (1988), The Return of Swamp Thing (1989), Transylvania Twist (1989), Sorority House Massacre II (1990), Sorority House Massacre 3/Hard to Die/Tower of Terror (1990), 976-Evil II (1991), Scream Queen Hot Tub Party (1991), Munchie (1992), Ghoulies IV (1993), Dinosaur Island (1994), Munchie Strikes Back (1994), Sorceress (1995), The Wasp Woman (1995), Vampirella (1996), The Pandora Project (1998), Storm Trooper (1998), The Bare Wench Project (1999), Desert Thunder (1999), Bare Wench Project 2: Scared Topless (2000), Crash Point Zero/Extreme Limits (2000), Raptor (2001), Thy Neighbor’s Wife/Poison (2001), The Bare Wench Project 3: Nymphs of Mystery Mountain (2002), Gale Force (2002), Project Viper (2002), Bare Wench Project Uncensored (2003), Cheerleader Massacre (2003), More Mercy (2003), The Curse of the Komodo (2004), Gargoyle (2004), The Thing Below (2004), Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade (2005), Bare Wench: The Final Chapter (2005), Komodo vs Cobra (2005), Sub Zero (2005), The Witches of Breastwick (2005), The Witches of Breastwick 2 (2005), A.I. Assault/Shockwave (2006), Cry of the Winged Serpent (2006), Bone Eater (2007), The Breastford Wives (2007), House on Hooter Hill (2007), Cleavagefield (2009), Fire From Below (2009), Vampire in Vegas (2009), Monster Cruise (2010), Dinocroc vs Supergator (2010), The Hills Have Thighs (2010), Camel Spiders (2011), Gila (2012), Piranhaconda (2012), Hypnotika (2013), Scared Topless (2013), Sexually Bugged (2014), Shark Babes (2014), Water Wars (2014), Scared Topless (2015), A Doggone Christmas (2016), Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre (2016), Cobragator (2018), Attack of the 50 Foot CamGirl (2022), Bigfoot or Bust (2022), Giantess Battle Attack (2022) , Killbots (2023) and Dinogator (2024).
Trailer here