The Haunted Palace is a 1963 gothic fantasy horror film released by American International Pictures, starring Vincent Price, Lon Chaney Jr. and Debra Paget (in her final film), in a story about a village held in the grip of a dead necromancer.

Directed by Roger Corman, it is one of his series of eight films based largely on the works of American author Edgar Allan Poe.

Although marketed as "Edgar Allan Poe's The Haunted Palace", the film actually derives its plot from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a novella by H. P.

In 1765, the inhabitants of Arkham, Massachusetts, are suspicious of the strange phenomena surrounding the grand "palace" that overlooks the town.

Before being burned alive, Curwen puts a curse on Arkham and its inhabitants and their descendants, promising to rise from the grave to take his revenge.

In 1875, 110 years later, Curwen's great-great-grandson, Charles Dexter Ward, and his wife Anne arrive in Arkham after inheriting the palace.

Curwen's plan was to mate mortal women with these beings in order to create a race of super-humans, which led to the deformities.

Producer and director Roger Corman, best known for his Poe horror film series for American International Pictures, originally envisioned the project when making The Premature Burial for Pathe.

Pathe sold its interest in The Premature Burial to AIP and the Lovecraft story would be made by Corman for that studio.

Both the front of the palace and the underground dungeon later appeared in Corman's The Terror, which was shot on sets from other AIP films.

This was Corman's first film to use the then new zoom lens, which created issues as more light than normal had to be used on the set.

[7] After the 18th-century portion of the story, Vincent Price recites lines 41 through 44 of the final stanza of the eponymous poem: "And travelers now within that valley though the red-litten windows see vast forms that move fantastically to a discordant melody," and the film ends with lines 45 through 48: "...While, like a ghastly rapid river, through the pale door, a hideous throng rush out forever and laugh – But smile no more."

[Lovecraft's] obsession with the past is clearly presented, and in a heartfelt passage at the end of the film, so is his belief that mankind is a minor species adrift in a malevolent universe.

Roger Corman did an admirable job as the first American feature-film director to stake out some cinematic high ground for the cosmos-crushing adaptations of [H. P. Lovecraft] to follow.