The Cask of Amontillado, by Edgar Allan Poe

What better way to cap a Halloween Scare Fest than with a strange murder confession from Edgar Allan Poe, as B.J. Harrison brings us “The Cask of Amontillado,” a tale of murder by wine. Or rather, the promise of wine.

As you may remember, this was the first story B.J. recorded for The Classic Tales Podcast. If you still have your old audio copy, it should be fun to compare it to today’s production so you can see how far B.J. has come.

“The Cask of Amontillado” is one of Poe’s most popular stories, published in 1846 in the magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, which was at the time, the most widely read magazine. Many critics consider this a ‘perfect’ story. It may well be the perfect crime, unless the whomever Monrtesor is telling this story to goes to the authorities!

In looking around the web for interesting takes on this story, I ran into two different productions. One of them is a rap song, evidently produced to get school kids introduced to the story and some of the vocabulary. If you are a teacher, it may just come in handy.

The other is a little YouTube video of a half an hour movie based on the story. It is quite well done. I particularly enjoyed Montresor’s southern gentleman accent. Give it a look, and see what you think.

I’m still not quite sure what exactly Fortunato (most unhappy name) did to get what he suffered at the hands of Montresor, but I wonder if he deserved it.

If you enjoyed this story, do yourself a favor and pick up The Edgar Allan Poe Collection today!