- A dramatic retelling of the last weeks in the life of poet Edgar Allan Poe with theories about the cause of his mental breakdown and premature death in 1849 Baltimore.
- In late September 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was bound on a trip to New York City. Mysteriously, he was discovered several days later, raving and incoherent, in a Baltimore gutter. For three days he lay delirious in a hospital (renowned for body snatching) and there he died. To this day, the cause of his death remains a mystery. Mixing authentic recreations of Poe's life and last days with terrifying imagery from his stories, THE DEATH OF POE is a cinematic chronicle of the great writer's final journey into madness and fear.—Anonymous
- After a textual montage summarizing Edgar Allan Poe's life, the film begins in late September 1849 with Poe awakening from a hallucination where he is buried alive. He prepares to take a trip to New York City via Baltimore. He discusses his plans to marry his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster, with a stranger taking the same steamboat, who suggests he meet with a few potential investors for his planned magazine 'The Stylus'. Though Poe had intended only to pass through, he agrees to meet the investors who, one by one, turn down his request for funding.
Poe is depicted as having some type of memory loss, offering to pay his boat fare twice after forgetting he had already paid. In Baltimore, he more than once forgets the arrangements he has made at his hotel as his stay in the city is extended. One night, he chooses to dine in a local tavern rather than at the hotel. There, he meets an old friend from his days at West Point. In desperation, he asks his former classmate and the classmate's companion for money to help start a magazine, saying proudly he has already raised $1,000. Poe leaves the tavern to retrieve his prospectus for the magazine. His classmate and friend follow him out where they beat him up to steal the $1,000 he had collected, leaving him in an dirty alley.
An injured and delirious Poe is then found by organizers of a cooping ring. The author, along with several others, are forced to multiple polling locations around Baltimore to place multiple votes for the candidate for mayor. A couple of victims of the scam die amidst the brutality of their captors.
Afterwards, Poe is released and eventually collapses in the street where he is found by a local tavern owner. The man calls for Poe's uncle Henry Herring and Dr. Joseph Snodgrass. The men discuss what to do with the incoherent, half-conscious Poe. Snodgrass assumes that he is drunk and suggests they let him sleep it off (a theory that seems to dispute by showing him early in the film declining offered alcohol several times). Herring becomes more concerned and demands Poe be taken to Washington College Hospital, despite the expense of the establishment.
At the hospital, Dr. John Moran tends to Poe, unable to accurately determine his situation or the cause of his failing health. He muses to his wife, Mrs. Moran, that he does not want to be known as the physician who killed Edgar Allan Poe. Moran denies Poe visitors and his Baltimore cousin, Nielson Poe, is convinced his cousin is about to die. Poe ultimately does die after one final hallucination or perhaps a flashback where he sees his dead wife Virginia Clemm.
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