- Let the cat out of the bag: To reveal a secret, often by mistake.
- Curiosity killed the cat: A warning that being too nosy or asking too many questions can lead to danger.
- Like herding cats: A very difficult or impossible task involving uncooperative people.
- Cat got your tongue: Said to someone silent or unable to speak.
- Copycat: Someone who imitates or copies another person.
- The cat’s whiskers: The best or most excellent thing.
- Look what the cat dragged in: An untidy, messy, or unwelcome arrival.
It seems the world is filled with cat idioms and phrases, yet if studying the works of Edgar Allan Poe, you might think the man suffered a cat-astrophy of epic (storytelling) proportions. If you are from the scientific family of Felidae, in the order of Carnivora, in the kingdom of Animalia (take notes as there will be a quiz after class), and you find yourself in the catacombs of some creepy subterranean tomb, let me just say I wish you the best of luck, and I suggest you do not use the litter box inside the opening of the brick wall the weird laughing guy is erecting! You also might want to heed the same advice if you happen to be on a psychedelic colorful film set with Vincent Price moaning in sunglasses being directed by a neatly dressed Roger Corman, because just like the cat in Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe-inspired 1964 American International Pictures cult classic Tomb of Ligeia, unless you have nine lives to spare, it’s not going to be a purrr-fect landing on all fours (paws for effect)!
By 1960, Roger Corman and company had made a killing (no pun intended) at the box office with their cheap thriller-chiller films, ranging from monstrous giant crabs to gun-toting cowboys to an alien door-to-door vacuum sucker-mucker (don’t ask). However, when presented by James H. Nicholson and Samual Z. Arkoff with the opportunity to make another black-and-white double bill of creature-features made for one-hundred-and-fifty thousand each, quoth the Roger Corman, “Nevermore.'” Instead, he asked to do only one picture, The Fall of the House of Usher, for three hundred thousand, using public domain Poe tales (tails) and in color. Nicholson and Arkoff spoke, “Get thee back into the studio and film on the reusable sets of the Night’s Plutonian shore!” With each Corman/Poe/AIP/Price collaboration making more money than the previous, AIP kept asking for more, but by the time they wanted to open Ligeia’s Tomb as a film, let’s say it wasn’t just Vincent Price who was looking and feeling a little long in the fangs. Corman knew to get financing from AIP, the star of the picture had to be (at a cheap) Price, but Poe’s character was in his late twenties, which even for an actor as great as he was would be hard for Price to pull off in his early fifties. So, Corman said, “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering if we just put on lots and lots and lots of make-up!” Even further, Oscar-winning screenwriter (and graduate of the Corman School of Film) Robert Towne felt Price was miscast; quoth Towne, “I think it would have been better if it had been with a man who didn’t look like a necrophiliac to begin with!” Although Corman feels it is the best cinematically of the Poe adaptations he did, it made the least money of the others and would lead to the last Corman/Poe films in the series (even if not for AIP). Technically sound, with fantastic cinematography by England’s Arthur Grant (Hammer’s The Curse of the Werewolf and The Plague of the Zombies) giving a flair for the gothic, and immense performances by Price and Elizabeth Shepherd, the film lacks the macabre and darkness Poe’s writing delivers, and truthfully, suffers a little by not going far enough into the shadows of weirdness. Overall, the cat came back the very next day with another Corman/Poe adaptation dangling from its jaw, and audiences shooed it away with a dustbroom for biker films and counterculture revolutions. Dig that cat, baby, he’s gone!
Poor Verden Fell. Alas, he has not been feline fine and in hiss-terics, what with his heathenistic, blasphemous, atheist wife Ligeia dying and all (she seems like a keeper). Having buried her in a clear casket, a cat jumps on her grave before she can be buried, seeming to steal her soul, at least from what he can with his eye condition (hence the hippy-dippy sunglasses). While at the graveside he meets dear Rowena, a betrothed woman whom Fell falls (madly) in love with and marries on the morrow! Trying to enjoy their newly humble bliss, strange occurrences take place and seem to be because the cat is possibly possessed by the spirit of Ligeia! Will Fell stop the evil spirit of the wife, or will these hip cats make a paw-sitive meow-ment out of split milk (from the saucer)?
Hairballing your way at a clawsome eighty-one minutes, Corman wanted to change things up a bit by filming in England, which allowed him to shoot outdoors, but because of “tea breaks” by the unions, the film went a little over budget (no cat-itude for a cheap-labor hard-working director). You can find this title, as many of the others, on streaming platforms like Tubi and YouTube, but unlike Poe’s pet projects, this one is free from the bricked walls of the public domain. So, the next time you find yourself venturing into the raven-nouse world of Eddy A. Poe, just make sure you are brave and not a
- scaredy-cat: A person who is easily frightened by miscast older men in bad curly wigs!
