Edgar Allan Poe's Darkness is featured in the Mortuary of Madness 50 movie box set. Unlike many of these films released on Pendulum Pictures box sets this at least somewhat resembles an actual film with decent cinematography and audible audio. Unfortunately that's about the only positives I can say about this one. The story has a theatre troupe of about 4 people enacting some of Poe's stories. This allows for much pretentious and annoying dialogue. The worst culprit is the main character Rex played by co-writer Adam Smoot. His character is annoying, innovatively foul-mouthed (not as much fun as it sounds) and he tries to affect a gruff voice that only makes his come off as even more painful. His character is meant to be "hard" and intimidating but he just comes off as a scrawny, insecure wuss. He ends up being one of cinema's most loathsome characters.
The other two main characters are a blonde guy who likes bloodletting and the girl in the middle who both men seem interested in but they also seem interested in each. The two "bros" even partake in bloodletting, cutting their arms and sucking each other's blood. Doing this with a chick would be hot, with another dude it's just totally gay. Fortunately that's the extent of the homosexual antics though there's still some pretty strong gay vibes between these two especially after the girl disappears. There's some subplot about the blonde guy being haunted by the ghost of Poe. There's also flashbacks to a really bad and effeminate actor who is supposed to be Poe. These are even more painful than the rest of the movie. There's mostly just dialogue for this films preposterous 90 minutes runtime. It doesn't even cut you a break by having opening credits. There is a bit of gore at the end including severed body parts in a fridge and a well done slit throat. Overall, this is pretentious, bad dialogue heavy, boring and almost completely lacking in tension or atmosphere or anything else you'd want from a supernatural horror film. This isn't the worst thing on these box sets and is more competent and ambitious than most but it's also not something anyone needs to see unless you're a Poe fanatic or masochistic like me and willing to sit through all 200 films on these 50 movie box sets.
