"Extraordinary Tales" is an animated film which consists of five Edgar Allen Poe stories and the notion of such an animated project sounds very exciting. I was also excited because the reviews I read on this were rather positive. Imagine my surprise when the film began and the computer graphics looked as if they were created back in the late 1990s! In fact, almost any video game you'd buy today would look nicer. The characters are sometimes blocky, there is little fluidity and the film just looks cheap at the beginning of the picture. The quality, unfortunately, was generally this poor throughout.

Perhaps the praise for this is because a lot of people love Poe. Additionally, several amazingly good actors provide voices for the characters...such as Christopher Lee, Roger Corman, Guillermo del Toro and even, oddly, Bela Lugosi (using archival a rather archaic archival recording). But with these talents and this writer, it should have been magnificent....not an ugly mess of an animated film that looks as if some first-year film students created it. Each of the five stories is animated very differently in style...but all are rather lacking, though the fifth story at least was interesting when it came to the animation style. I cannot ignore the glaring ugliness of the CGI and only focus on the stories and voice actors. For my time, I'd much rather just listen to audio records of the stories by these voice actors.

This just debuted on DVD from Netflix...don't say I didn't warn you.

It was fun to see a series of animators and directors put their mark on some of the most recognizable Poe stories. First of all, each animation technique is quite unique and good fun. They are not for the faint of heart, some of the images being quite graphic. Last night Guillermo del Toro won the Academy Award for best director and best movie. I was surprised to see that name in the credits for one of the films, but it certainly gave them credibility. And, to get an old narration of Bela Lugosi to do the Tell-Tale Heart was really interesting. I found the best of these to be the last: 'The Masque of the Red Death." I''m quite glad I had an opportunity to see this, considering I had never heard of it.

An interesting anthology of Edgar Poe short stories.

The best part is that they use different forms of animation for each story. They all add a special feeling to each story. The one from Tell tale Heart is pretty hard to watch, but it very artistic and is fine for such a short animation, it is also extra creepy because of it and it fits well with the old recording of Bela Lugosi.

I liked the comic books style animation of The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, it gave it a very vintage feeling.

All in all a great collection. Doesn't really feel like horror animation though. I think it is even suitable for children from a certain age to introduce them to literature.