Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Lancoor A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Hitchcoc The pacing of this story, with its wonderful rises and falls, similar to a heartbeat, makes this a masterwork. Jame's Mason narrates and leads us on a terrifying tale of murder and obsession. A man, a boarder, becomes fixated on the eye of an old man with whose he lives. It becomes so dominant in his life, he resolves to kill the old man to rid himself of the eye. There are incredibly eerie clips leading from one event to the other. Music and Mason's voice carry us through this familiar tale. It is really a series of still shots that make this really work well. This is a masterpiece of concision. It is not like most of the short features of its day.

Rectangular_businessman This UPA short is simply one of the best adaptations of a tale written by Edgar Allan Poe.Most of the adaptations based on any of his works tend to be merely disappointing, capturing only the most pragmatic elements from the source material, but this beautiful done animated short (Which was quite ahead of its time) is able to capture perfectly well the eerie beauty and the macabre tone of the original tale, without all the subtext contained in that story, doing an impressive use of limited animation in order to create the perfect atmosphere that this literary masterpiece deserved.The magnificent voice performance done by James Mason deserves a special mention: It not only fits incredible well with the atmosphere and the story, but also adds new levels of emotion of what is showed to screen, being one of the most memorable qualities from this short, along with the excellent Gothic atmosphere. This short is a must-see.

bbowman-7 I saw this short back in 1953 when I was just a kid. Had nightmares about it for a long time after. I haven't seen it since and have always wondered why. Was there some reason it was taken out of circulation? The mood and atmosphere with the juxtaposition of UPA animation (cartoons in those days-mostly associated with Mr.Magoo and Gerald McBoing Boing.) and thriller-style mood piece was groundbreaking. Since then I've been a fan of Poe's and especially that story. If anyone knows where it is or how I might see it again I'd love to know where I could get a copy. Anyone? Pleeeez? Is there other thriller-type animation out there? (No I'm not talking about Scooby Doo!)

tostinati An English teacher whose taste I generally respected despised this film. As a word person, she was no doubt bothered by the compression and elimination of so much of Poe's carefully wrought language.But she overlooked one thing, in my estimation. Poe said everything in a short story should be toward one effect, and certainly, there has been no better attempt on film to achieve the kind of formal and emotional control Poe suggested was the story teller's goal than this animated short. She should have appreciated that. The control of tone, light and color palette here is complete; the actors are hand-crafted; the voices and music are expertly orchestrated as in great radio drama; best of all, nothing extraneous or distracting seeps through at any point. (We clearly see only one face during this short. We never see the narrator, but see all that happens through a subjective camera.) While there is a ton of ham bone melodrama and story padding in Corman's Poe films, this film achieves just the right pitch, delicate and disturbing, maintains it, and then finishes simply. In today's context, UPA's Tell-Tale seems slightly dry, if not downright academic; Corman's films evoke not only Hollywood, with all that means, but low budget film making and drive-in culture as well.I believe Poe would have appreciated UPA's effort and encouraged them to try others, like Cask of Amontillado and Masque. Given the chance, I think he'd have liked to tell Corman to just quit it.10 stars. One of the great cartoons, ever.