The Haunting of Morella

1990
R
1h 22m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Loosely based on the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, a witch is sent to death, only to try & return from the grave, seventeen years later, to possess her daughter's adult body.Loosely based on the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, a witch is sent to death, only to try & return from the grave, seventeen years later, to possess her daughter's adult body.Loosely based on the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, a witch is sent to death, only to try & return from the grave, seventeen years later, to possess her daughter's adult body.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

4.5/10

1.1K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
Deborah Dutch said in an interview that it was freezing on set when she filmed her bath scene. When she got out of the tub for her death, they covered her entire body with fake blood. Then she had to lay on a cold cement floor in a pool of the blood for an hour while they filmed from different angles. She was shivering and her teeth were chattering, but she tried not to move or she'd ruin the shot. After they finished, she had to stand in the tub again while some of the guys on the crew rinsed blood off her with buckets of warm water because they didn't want her tracking the sticky goo across the studio. She joked that it was a good thing she wasn't shy at that point. Then she put on a robe and hurried to a shower where she stood in the warm water for a long, long time.

Goofs
At 61 minutes when Diane appears at the pool, she is wearing the sort of skimpy underwear which would not have been available until well into the 20th century.

Quotes
Gideon: I still cannot bring myself to utter that name.

Connections
Featured in Katarina's Nightmare Theater: The Haunting of Morella (2015)

User reviews22

Review

Featured review

4/10

Poverty row Poe

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!"