The Tell-Tale Heart (1953)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

How sad is this?

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A madman (voiced by James Mason) tells his tale of murder, and how a strange beating sound haunted him afterward.The animation of this short is pretty decent and fits the material well without being too grisly. But, of course, the real joy is in the narration. When it comes to telling a story so well-known and often repeated, it pays to get just the right voice. And James Mason is the one for that (though Vincent Price would also work).I remember this story being longer. Now, that might be my memory or it might be that they abridged it. But I have fond memories of the first time I ever heard the story in an elementary class. (I don't believe I actually read Poe's work until later.) The tape I heard was not Mason, but I wish it had been.

This is an animated short. There's not a lot of movement in the short--it's mostly these dark sinister paintings and it's all narrated by James Mason. It's all seen through the eyes of a madman. He lives with an older man who he can't stand. So he decides to kill him. He succeeds but he goes even crazier.Very eerie and spooky. It was rightfully nominated for an Oscar for Best Short and is in the National Film Registry. Supposedly this was shot in 3-D (which would account for some of the strange camera angles) but there's no proof that it was released in that format. It doesn't matter though--it works great in 2-D. The short has a constant air of madness and depression about it and Mason's narration perfectly fits what we're watching. It's not the entire short story but it works. Well worth seeing. Not really for kids--especially small ones.

Taking me completely by surprise, Ted Parmelee's 8-minute cartoon adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's short story, 'The Tell-Tale Heart,' is a faithful, stylish, atmospheric, genuinely unsettling feat of clever animation, creepy sound effects and an excellent voice-over by James Mason. Produced by the UPA (United Productions of America), the film was nominated for a 1954 Best Short Subject Academy Award, and was, in 2001, selected for preservation by the National Film Registry at the United States Library of Congress. I basically stumbled upon this short completely by mistake, and my curiosity was immediately piqued by its being an adaptation of one of Poe's most famous works. Needless to say, I enjoyed it immensely.'The Tell-Tale Heart' is the story of an insane man (who, voiced in the first-person by James Mason, acts as our narrator) who murders his elderly landlord because of his "strange eye" and is driven to madness by the continual hideous beating of the dead man's heart. The murderer himself, speaking from prison, does not acknowledge his own insanity; just like all of us, he considers himself to be quite sane. "What madman would wait – could wait – so patiently for so long?" he asks, of his waiting seven days before killing the old man. "True, I'm nervous. Very, very, dreadfully nervous," he confesses later, but still maintains his own sanity. "But why will you say that I'm mad?" He says this as we watch his hands press against the bars of his cell, the perfectly-chilling end to a film.We never actually see the madman's face, restricted to glimpsing his shadow on the floor and his dirty, gnarled hands. The audience witnesses the events through the warped mind of the murderer, with even ordinary events and objects taking on a surrealistic, twisted, terrifying light. Mason's narration is perfect for the role, his voice lending his character the earnest, desperate, edgy feel of a man at the edge. His character claims to be calm and collected, but within his voice lies a ripple of fear, of a man brought to the very borders of sanity, of one frantically trying to reclaim his bearing on reality. This is a wonderful short film.

This short, nominated for an Oscar, is very atmospheric and quite spooky. It's actually a perfect choice for the limited animation style that UPA frequently used and the choice of James Mason as the narrator was absolutely inspired! It captures the mood, tone and feel of Poe's story perfectly and is an incredible piece of work. Most highly recommended. It was released on one of the Columbia Classics series of videos. It's worth hunting down.