Spoonatects
Am i the only one who thinks........Average?
Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Bob
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Rectangular_businessman
This UPA short is simply one of the best adaptations of a tale written by Edgar Allan Poe.Most of the adaptations based on any of his works tend to be merely disappointing, capturing only the most pragmatic elements from the source material, but this beautiful done animated short (Which was quite ahead of its time) is able to capture perfectly well the eerie beauty and the macabre tone of the original tale, without all the subtext contained in that story, doing an impressive use of limited animation in order to create the perfect atmosphere that this literary masterpiece deserved.The magnificent voice performance done by James Mason deserves a special mention: It not only fits incredible well with the atmosphere and the story, but also adds new levels of emotion of what is showed to screen, being one of the most memorable qualities from this short, along with the excellent Gothic atmosphere. This short is a must-see.
ackstasis
Taking me completely by surprise, Ted Parmelee's 8-minute cartoon adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's short story, 'The Tell-Tale Heart,' is a faithful, stylish, atmospheric, genuinely unsettling feat of clever animation, creepy sound effects and an excellent voice-over by James Mason. Produced by the UPA (United Productions of America), the film was nominated for a 1954 Best Short Subject Academy Award, and was, in 2001, selected for preservation by the National Film Registry at the United States Library of Congress. I basically stumbled upon this short completely by mistake, and my curiosity was immediately piqued by its being an adaptation of one of Poe's most famous works. Needless to say, I enjoyed it immensely.'The Tell-Tale Heart' is the story of an insane man (who, voiced in the first-person by James Mason, acts as our narrator) who murders his elderly landlord because of his "strange eye" and is driven to madness by the continual hideous beating of the dead man's heart. The murderer himself, speaking from prison, does not acknowledge his own insanity; just like all of us, he considers himself to be quite sane. "What madman would wait – could wait – so patiently for so long?" he asks, of his waiting seven days before killing the old man. "True, I'm nervous. Very, very, dreadfully nervous," he confesses later, but still maintains his own sanity. "But why will you say that I'm mad?" He says this as we watch his hands press against the bars of his cell, the perfectly-chilling end to a film.We never actually see the madman's face, restricted to glimpsing his shadow on the floor and his dirty, gnarled hands. The audience witnesses the events through the warped mind of the murderer, with even ordinary events and objects taking on a surrealistic, twisted, terrifying light. Mason's narration is perfect for the role, his voice lending his character the earnest, desperate, edgy feel of a man at the edge. His character claims to be calm and collected, but within his voice lies a ripple of fear, of a man brought to the very borders of sanity, of one frantically trying to reclaim his bearing on reality. This is a wonderful short film.
José Luis Rivera Mendoza (jluis1984)
United Productions of America, one of the most original and ground-breaking animation studios of the U.S., achieved the peak of their "limited animation" style (an abstract style that champions symbolism over realism) with this short film based on Edgar Allan Poe's famous short story of the same name. With their minimalistic approach to animation and their total dedication to the art, this small company changed American animation forever and the magnitude of its influential was felt many decades after its creation."The Tell-Tale Heart" is the story of a man (voiced by James Mason) consumed by a bizarre and sick obsession with his old landlord's "strange" eye. An obsession that will take the man to murder the old man and hide the body, but the horrors are not finished with that. It's a story of madness and obsession told from the point of view of the madman who calmly retells his story and how he reached that state of insanity.In barely 8 minutes the short film captures the haunting atmosphere of the Gothic novel and Poe's tale of madness becomes vivid with fluid animation and frightening images of chaos reflecting the madman's mind. The limited animation technique used by UPA never found itself more at home that here, where its artistic conception can (and is) explored to its max creating the image of a real painting in movement. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is so beautifully conceived and so perfectly crafted that it feels as if one was truly watching the dark dreams of a psycho.Now, James Mason's voice-work is what truly takes this film from high class art to masterpiece proportions, as basically the film revolves around his first person narrative. Every line is delivered with a deep emotion that conveys the narrator's frightful experience with amazing believability. Writers Bill Scott & Fred Grable, as well as director Ted Parmelee and the rest of UPA's team crafted one of animation's finest films when they did "The Tell-Tale Heart", a very different animated experience.Maybe nowadays UPA's achievements have been overshadowed by the many other studios that had more commercial success, but their influence is not forgotten. This terrific short film is without a doubt a classic of animation and a masterpiece of the horror genre, a film that must be seen at least once. 10/10
Robert Reynolds
This short, nominated for an Oscar, is very atmospheric and quite spooky. It's actually a perfect choice for the limited animation style that UPA frequently used and the choice of James Mason as the narrator was absolutely inspired! It captures the mood, tone and feel of Poe's story perfectly and is an incredible piece of work. Most highly recommended. It was released on one of the Columbia Classics series of videos. It's worth hunting down.
