Studio: United Productions of America (UPA)
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Short Synopsis
A man narrates his story, insisting all the while that he is not mad. He lives in the same house as an old man, whom he says he loved and who never wronged him. But the old man has a pale, filmy "vulture" eye, and the narrator becomes obsessed with it. Every night for a week he creeps into the old man's room at midnight, opening the door and a lantern a crack at a time, until on the eighth night the eye is open. He kills the old man, cuts up the body and hides it under the floorboards. The police arrive, having heard a scream, and the narrator welcomes them calmly, even placing his chair over the spot where the body lies. But as they talk he begins to hear a sound, low, dull and quick, which grows louder and louder: the old man's heart beating under the floor. Unable to bear it, he screams his confession. The narrator is never seen; the camera takes his point of view throughout, and the film is told through his voice and the shifting, haunted rooms around him.
Why It Matters
- The design is the story. Paul Julian's surreal, Dalí-like backgrounds of empty rooms, patterned floors and looming shadows replace characters with atmosphere, and James Mason's controlled, cracking narration does the rest. Stillness and implication make it more frightening than any movement could.
- It was UPA's most ambitious attempt to show that animation could be serious adult art, not just comedy, and it is often cited as the first animated film to be given an "X" (adults only) rating by the British Board of Film Censors. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject.
Notes and Trivia
- It follows Poe's story closely, using his language in Mason's narration.
- See also: Rooty Toot Toot (1951).