"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"- Dr. Carl Heidegger (Sebastian Cabot) and Alex Medbourne (Vincent Price) have been friends for decades. Now in their senior years the two men are just as close as they were when they were younger. Carl still mourns the death of his fiancé, Sylvia (Mari Blanchard). She died suddenly on the day they were to be married. 38 years later, on the anniversary of what would have been Carl’s wedding day, a storm rages and lightning strikes the door of Sylvia’s crypt. When they check for damage, they find that Sylvia’s body has been preserved and looks as young as the day she died. Carl learns that water dripping from the roof of the tomb onto the coffin has properties that can not only restore youth but when he injects it into Sylvia, it brings her back from the dead.
"Rappaccini's Daughter"- Giovanni Guasconti (Brett Halsey) is a student at the medical school in Padua. From the balcony off his apartment, he can look into the garden of the house next door. In the garden he sees a beautiful young woman, Beatrice Rappaccini (Joyce Taylor). He falls in love with her, and she falls in love with him. Beatrice is the daughter of Giacomo Rappaccini (Vincent Price). Giacomo’s wife left him when Beatrice was young. Giacomo has an exotic poisonous plant in his garden. He uses the juice from the plant to make a serum that he injects into his daughter. The serum keeps Beatrice alive but makes her skin poisonous and will kill anything she touches. When Giovanni realizes that Beatrice is in love and would rather kill herself than be the way she is, he decides to make Giovanni the same as Beatrice so they can be together.
“The House of the Seven Gables”- After being away seventeen years Gerald Pyncheon (Vincent Price) returns to his childhood home with his wife Alice (Beverly Garland). The house is plagued by a 150-year-old curse. At that time, the Pyncheon patriarch stole the land belonging to Mathew Maulle (Floyd Simmons) after accusing him as being a witch and having him hanged. Before dying, Maulle put a curse on the house, and since then all male members of the family died violently. Knowing that there is a family vault hidden somewhere in the house, Gerald has returned to try to find it.
“Twice Told Tales” was released in 1963 and was directed by Sidney Salkow. It is an omnibus anthology series of three stories based on the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The title of the film is from his 1837 story collection. The book title came from a line in William Shakespeare’s “The Life and Death of King John” and “The Odyssey” by Homer. The only story that was actually in “Twice Told Tales” was "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment". “Rappaccini's Daughter” was from his 1846 collection “Mosses from an Old Manse” and “The House of the Seven Gables” was a full novel first published in 1851.
The film is about two hours long. People complain about the length of the movie. Some found it dull and long, but I believe you need that time to flesh out Hawthorne’s stories enough for them to be cohesive. Cutting out too much of any of them would result in leaving out important aspects of the various plots. Of course, many changes were made to the stories to the point where most of them resemble very little of Hawthorne’s original work. Perhaps the best way to enjoy them is in chunks. Taken one story at a time they don’t seem quite as tedious.
All of the stories feature Vincent Price as the lead character. Price also starred in the 1940 version of “House of the Seven Gables”.