MEESTER CRUZ'S

Horror Movie Poster/Trailer Project

For this project, you will create a movie poster or video trailer to advertise the release of one of E.A.Poe's short stories as a film remake.  Choose any one of the stories below to read & learn.  Then, consider the most dramatic features of the story to highlight in your advertisement.   Use a poster board with pictures & text or create a 1 to 2 minute video to show your work.  You may work alone or with 1 or 2 partners.  Presentations will open in theater 1120 on .

​

Summaries of Edgar Allen Poe’s Short Stories

Read the short summary of Poe’s stories, and choose one to read.

"The Cask of Amontillado"                    A story of revenge                   Read "The Cask of Amontillado"

The narrator in this story vows revenge upon a man named Fortunato. He takes advantage of Fortunato's ego and lures him down into the recesses of an underground vault to taste a rare wine, a cask of Amontillado.  "He had a weak point --this Fortunato --although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine."

"The Gold Bug"                                  A search for pirate treasure                Read "The Gold Bug" 

If Poe lived today, he could have been a hacker. In this story, two friends and a servant go on a hunt for the fabled buried treasure of Captain Kidd. Through his character named William Legrand, Poe explains how to decode an encrypted message. With Poe's technique, you could actually hack certain encrypyed messages! Besides being a great "Sherlock Holmes" type adventure story, it gives an insight into Poe's intelligence.

"The Masque of the Red Death"      The horror of the plague     Read "The Masque of the Red Death"

The "Red Death" is a plague which has killed off half of the population. Prince Prospero gathers a thousand people from the knights and royalty. They seal themselves off from the rest of the world in an extensive castle, in an attempt to separate themselves from the horrible conditions on the outside. But, can they escape the Red Death?

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"         A detective story       Read "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

Poe invented the detective story with this tale. The main character is C. Auguste Dupin, a sleuth that solves crimes by deduction. Two women have been brutally murdered and it appears that there was no way in or out of the room where the murders took place. How does Dupin figure it out? Who killed the women? (They didn't kill each other)  A reporter asked Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1894 if he had been influenced by the work of Edgar Allan Poe. The creator of Sherlock Holmes replied, "Oh, immensely! His detective is the best detective in fiction."

"The Pit and the Pendulum"                  A torture chamber               Read "The Pit and the Pendulum"

Another of Poe's more popular works. It's the story of a man's attempt to survive in a torture chamber during the Spanish Inquisition, one of the most deadly inquisitions in history. This isn't really a horror story. It's more of a suspenseful thriller. If you had been sentenced to death in a torture chamber, what would you do? and what's in the Pit?

"The Premature Burial"                     About being buried alive            Read "The Premature Burial"

Given the title of this story, its already obvious what it's about. It's definitely a scary story. Poe makes you feel like you are there. Read this story carefully because there is also an important lesson to be learned.  "It may be asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs- the stifling fumes from the damp earth, the clinging to the death garments, the rigid embrace of the narrow house, the blackness of the absolute Night, the silence like a sea that overwhelms..."