A pretty good animated anthology of Edgar Allen Poe stories. Raul Garcia directs them all, but they are done in different styles (though the skeleton of all of them is CGI similar to earlier GKids release The Painting). Four of the five tales are greatest hits Poe stories: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Masque of the Red Death. The other is the less well known The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. There's also a wraparound segment with a crow visiting the cemetery statues of some of Poe's famous heroines. The Fall of the House of Usher is a tad weak - I didn't like the character designs and it moves too quickly (I did like the narration by Christopher Lee). The rest are better. The Tell-Tale Heart is narrated by a resurrected Bela Lugosi - well, they found an old record with his recording of the story, anyway. It's cool. Guillermo del Toro provides excellent narration on The Pit and the Pendulum. My favorite was probably The Masque of the Red Death, which has a gorgeous, painterly color palate. It also dispenses with the narration and is mostly silent (would have been even better if the one spoken line in the short had been dropped altogether, but I guess props are due since the one line is uttered by none other than Roger Corman). Sergio de la Puente's score is good if overused sometimes. It's particularly great during The Masque of the Red Death segment.
Review of Extraordinary Tales
