The Haunting of Morella

You could be mistaken that The Haunting of Morella was a Charles Band movie because it follows a very similar formula of his movies. The acting wasn't very good, often it sounds like they are reading their lines off the page. The movie itself was well directed and storyboarded.

It's not quite soft core porn but it wasn't far from it, very fleshy which really pushed the romance angle of the movie about as far as you can.

There was a bit of an Edgar Allen Poe spirit left in the story but again this movie would be more appreciated by the Band fans. Ultimately it was the script that lacked depth and continuously killed off any development of suspension of disbelief.

Edger Allen Poe gets the Roger Corman treatment in this flick with plenty of naked women and lots of sexual situations. The story involves a witch put to death. 17 years later, her daughter is all grown up and stands to get a good sum of money. Seeing this as the perfect chance to return to life, the mother tries to take over her daughter's body. Film is totally devoid of entertainment, not even all the sex and nudity can help this one out.

Rated R; Violence, Nudity, Sexual Situations.

This movie was a total farce. They used Edgar Allen Poe to get several young women out of their clothes. No different then your typical stupid slasher film. The only difference is that it is based off a short story by Edgar Allen Poe. Don't watch this movie

Morella (Nicole Eggert) is killed in the opening minutes for murder and witchcraft as her husband Gideon (David McCallum) looks on with their infant child. 17 years later, the child Lenora (Eggert again) is all grown up and soon to receive an sizable trust fund on her 18th birthday. But she is also the target of her teacher Coel (Lana Clarkson), who was Morella's accomplice back in the day, and hopes to put her old friend's soul in this new body. Loosely based on Poe's "Morella" short story, this feature runs only 82-minutes (the film ends at 78 minutes) but seems to go on a lot longer than that. Director Jim Wynorski gives the story what every critic of Poe thought it was missing - lots of topless women running around. To be fair, it succeeds on an exploitation level, but you'll never confuse this with a 1960s Corman Poe adaptation. And it is a nice looking production because this is back when Wynorski gave a damn. Eggert was "hot" off CHARLES IN CHARGE at the time so this must have seemed edgy for her. Regardless, she uses an obvious body double during her nude scenes. It is hilarious seeing her and Clarkson on screen as there is over a foot height differential, which leaves Eggert level with Clarkson's chest. Concorde staple Maria Ford has a smaller role as a servant. The film ends with the ridiculous on screen words "I still live!"

I hit puberty in the early 90s, so in other words, I was a horny and hormone-controlled teenager when "Baywatch" first aired on TV, and naturally had a crush on practically every babe that paraded through the screen in a skimpy red bathing suit. Pamela Anderson, evidently, but I was even far more enchanted by two other blond and typically nineties' beauties; - Erika Elaniak and Nicole Eggert. The latter was a cherubic and polished but nonetheless very sexy girl-next-door type. Whoever knew that, before her "Baywatch" period, Eggert had already appeared in a cheap and ultra-sleazy Roger Corman production loosely - VERY loosely - inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's writings? At the beginning of the film, Eggert depicts the fiercely foul-mouthed witch Lenora who gets executed in front of an angry town's mob and her powerlessly staring husband who's holding their few weeks' old baby in his arms. Nearly 18 years later, the baby matured into the gorgeous Nicole Eggert again. Morella is excited to celebrate her birthday and taste adulthood, but little does she know that the voluptuous nanny has been carefully preparing Lenora's reincarnation via the pure body and soul of her daughter.

Roger Corman knows Poe, trust me. He was single-handedly responsible for the absolute greatest Edgar Allan Poe film-adaptations during the early sixties, like "House of Usher", "The Masque of the Red Death", "Premature Burial", etc. If Corman really wanted to make an atmospheric, qualitative and genuinely frightening adaptation of Poe's short story, he certainly could have done so. Instead, he cleared just hired Jim Wynorski ("Chopping Mall", "Transylvania Twist") to direct a cheap but profitable B-movie with a focus on ravishing women, tacky horror, secondhand sets & scenery and boobs, boobs, boobs! 18-year-old Eggert still gets a stand-in for her nude sequences, but Corman regulars Lana Clarkson, Maria Ford and Gail Thackray showcase their bodily assets gratuitously and repeatedly. The sets and stock-footage, like the numerous lightening strikes, are shamelessly edited from much older flicks (you might recognize "The Terror" - 1963) and our producer would still continue to recycle them in later films like "The Haunting of Hell House" - 1999. "The Haunting of Morella" is nevertheless fun and amusing, at least if you don't mind the derivative plot and the dull moments in between the cheesy gore and the nudity.