A man discovers that in his former life he was an artist that killed his newlywed wife by painting her soul into an Oval Portrait. The dead wife reappears in the present to haunt and kill him for his crime.
This low-budget is a fairly accurate adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's tale, set during the Civil War. The story involves a young woman haunted by the vengeful spirit of a young bride, whose soul had been trapped for decades within the woman's portrait (painted by her insane husband). The occasionally rich period atmosphere is flattened almost completely by sluggish pacing and an insolvent ending which may lead the viewer to believe the filmmakers have lost a few pages of Poe's original text.