"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.

Raul Garcia, writer, director and animator of animated movies, adapted five great stories of Edgar Allan Poe into five short animated movies, banded together by graveyard conversation between Poe (Stephen Hughes) in a form of raven and Death (Cornelia Funke). Each story uses different animation technique and Sergio de la Puente composed original music which fits perfectly with their mystical atmosphere. In first segment Christopher Lee tells famous "The Fall of the House of Usher", followed by strange but striking computer animation. Second part brings archive footage of legendary Bela Lugosi reading "The Tell-Tale Heart" with black and white animation that feels like negative. "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", narrated by Julian Sands, is done in comic-book style. Guillermo del Toro presents an internal monologue of the prisoner in the Inquisition dungeon, from the story "The Pit and the Pendulum", with video game type of animation. The last story brings "The Masque of the Red Death" in the form of a moving aquarelle and without narration. And just for a brief moment Roger Corman gives voice to Prince Prospero. Considering that all together lasts just a little over one hour, stories are very reduced, so connoisseurs and fans of Edgar Allan Poe might resent them as butchered, while those ignorant of his work could have troubles understanding them, especially last two. But if you read these stories, or at least saw movie adaptations and roughly know what are they about, and if you are not nagger trying to find faults in everything, you'll enjoy magically gloomy and dreary atmosphere of this really extraordinary movie.

8/10