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Movies like The Tell-Tale Heart

Key Features:
Psychological horror, Madness, Guilt, Paranoia, Unreliable narrator, Murder, Book adaptation, Classic literature, Animation, Obsession, Doomsday, Existential dread
Tone:
serious, stylized, dramatic
Target Audience:
Horror fans, Animation enthusiasts, Literature buffs, Art house aficionados
Emotional Arc:
Intrigue → Dread → Anxiety

The Tell-Tale Heart

1953-12-17
The Tell-Tale Heart Poster - Find Similar Movies

One of the most discussed and imaginative cartoons of any era. It tells the famous Edgar Allan Poe story of the deranged boarder who had to kill his landlord, not for greed, but because he possessed an "evil eye." The killer is never seen but his presence is felt by the use light-and-shadow to give the impression of impending disaster.

Genres
Animation, Horror, Crime
Cast
James Mason
Crew
Ted Parmelee, Bill Scott, Fred Grable
Rating
7.259(85 votes)
The Tell-Tale HeartThe Tell-Tale Heart
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Tell-Tale
Tell-Tale(2009)
5.343

A man's recently transplanted heart leads him on a frantic search to find the donor's killer before a similar fate befalls him.



Extraordinary Tales
6.424

Five tales by Edgar Allan Poe come to life thanks to a pictorical style animation, five tales that exude madness, pestilence, murder and torture.



Two Evil Eyes
6.116

A duo of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations about a greedy wife's attempt to embezzle her dying husband's fortune, and a sleazy reporter's adoption of a strange black cat.



Tales of Terror
6.6

Three stories adapted from the work of Edgar Allen Poe: 1) A man and his daughter are reunited, but the blame for the death of his wife hangs over them, unresolved. 2) A derelict challenges the local wine-tasting champion to a competition, but finds the man's attention to his wife worthy of more dramatic action. 3) A man dying and in great pain agrees to be hypnotized at the moment of death, with unexpected consequences.



Spirits of the Dead

Anthology film from three European directors based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe: a cruel countess haunted by a ghostly horse, a sadistic young man haunted by his double, and an alcoholic actor haunted by the Devil.



Tales That Witness Madness

Dr. Tremayne is an enigmatic psychiatrist running an asylum that houses four very special cases. Visited by his colleague Nicholas, Tremayne explains his amazing and controversial theories as to why each of the four patients went mad.



Mad God
Mad God(2021)
6.876

A figure known as "The Assassin" descends from the heavens into a nightmarish pit full of monsters, titans, and cruelty.



Twixt
Twixt(2011)
5.074

A washed-up horror novelist arrives in a sleepy town on a book tour, only to stumble into a string of eerie murders. Haunted by dreams of a ghostly girl named V and guided by the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe, he’s drawn into a nightmarish world where fiction and reality blur—and the story he’s chasing leads back to his own buried guilt.



Batman: The Killing Joke

As Batman hunts for the escaped Joker, the Clown Prince of Crime attacks the Gordon family to prove a diabolical point mirroring his own fall into madness.



The Hand
The Hand(1981)
5.9

Jon Lansdale is a comic book artist who loses his right hand in a car accident. The hand was not found at the scene of the accident, but it soon returns by itself to follow Jon around, and murder those who anger him.



Buster's Mal Heart
6.1

An eccentric mountain man on the run from the local sheriff recalls the mysterious events that brought him to his present fugitive state.



Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

Jack is born with his heart frozen solid on the coldest day in history. A wise midwife saves him by replacing it with a cuckoo clock. Now Jack must abide by three rules to keep his mechanical heart safe: never touch the clock's hands, master his anger, and never fall in love. He tries his best, but when he meets a girl named Acacia he falls in love, threatening the delicate balance of his artificial heart.



Stopmotion
6.182

Ella Blake, a stop-motion animator struggling to control her demons after the loss of her overbearing mother, embarks upon the creation of a film that becomes the battleground for her sanity. As Ella’s mind starts to fracture, the characters in her project take on a life of their own.



Angel Heart
7.1

A down-and-out Brooklyn detective is hired to track down a singer on an odyssey that will take him through the desperate streets of Harlem, the smoke-filled jazz clubs of New Orleans, and the swamps of Louisiana and its seedy underworld of voodoo.



Anatomy of a Murder
7.843

Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.



The Voices
6.2

A mentally unhinged factory worker must decide whether to listen to his talking cat and become a killer, or follow his dog's advice to keep striving for normalcy.



The Raven
The Raven(2012)
6.3

A fictionalized account of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe's life, in which the poet is in pursuit of a serial killer whose murders mirror those in the writer's stories.



The Heart of the World

Pure fantasia, a race to save the world from a fatal heart attack, juxtaposed against a love rivalry between two brothers - a mortician and an actor playing Christ - for the heart of a scientist studying the earth's core.



Fear(s) of the Dark

Several scary black-and-white animated segments in different styles appeal to our fear(s) of the dark.



M
M(1951)
6.305

Remake of the 1931 Fritz Lang original. In the city, someone is murdering children. The Police search is so intense, it is disturbing the 'normal' criminals, and the local hoods decide to help find the murderer as quickly as possible.



The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer

Set at the turn of the century, this is the tale of Ellen Rimbauer who just received this mysterious mansion as a wedding gift from her new husband...



Anomalisa
Anomalisa(2015)
7.105

An inspirational speaker becomes reinvigorated after meeting a lively woman who shakes up his mundane existence.



The House
The House(2022)
7

Across different eras, a poor family, an anxious developer and a fed-up landlady become tied to the same mysterious house in this animated dark comedy.



Schizoid
Schizoid(1980)
5.19

When Dr. Pieter Fales' patients start receiving ominous letters and getting murdered by an unknown black-clad assailant, he and his daughter both come under suspicion.



The Tomb of Ligeia
6.3

Verden Fell is shattered after the death of his lovely wife. But, after an unexpected encounter with Lady Rowena Trevanion, Fell soon finds himself married again. Nevertheless, his late wife's spirit seems to hang over the dilapidated abbey that Fell shares with his new bride. Lady Rowena senses that something is amiss and, when she investigates, makes a horrifying discovery -- learning that Fell's dead wife is closer than she ever imagined possible.



Arctic Heart
4.8

A timid young grad student madly in love with her scientist boss offers her body to his research.



Lonely Hearts
6.04

In the late 1940s, a murderous couple known as the 'The Lonely Hearts Killers' kills close to a dozen people. Two detectives try to nab the duo who find their targets via the personals in the paper.



Home Movie
4.875

Reverend David Poe and his psychiatrist wife trade hectic New York life for an idyllic rural farmhouse; the perfect place for 10 year old twins Jack & Emily to run, play and imagine. Documenting this lifestyle change, David decides to film every holiday and special family event. To the Poe's horror their home movies reveal an increasing malice and evil within their children.



Doodlebug
Doodlebug(1997)
6.5

There's something in his apartment. A man looking for an insect-like thing devolves into a bout of insanity as his subconscious mind begins to strangle his waking one.



The Evil Within
5.7

The sadistic tale of a lonely, mentally handicapped boy who befriends his reflection in an antique mirror. This demonic creature orders him to go on a murderous rampage to kill the people he loves most.



Dementia 13
5.5

A scheming widow hatches a bold plan to acquire her late husband's inheritance, unaware that she is being targeted by an ax murderer who lurks in the family's estate.



The Institute
4.261

In 19th century Baltimore, Isabel Porter, a girl stricken with grief from her parents' untimely death, voluntarily checks herself into the Rosewood Institute. Subjected to bizarre and increasingly violent pseudo-scientific experiments in personality modification, brainwashing and mind control, she must escape the clutches of the Rosewood and exact her revenge, or else be forever lost.



Franz Kafka's a Country Doctor

A hapless country doctor describes with breathless urgency a night-time summons to attend a young patient. Events soon take on a surreal aspect as "unearthly horses" transport him instantaneously to the bedside. The doctor, preoccupied with personal distractions and grievances against those he is employed to care for, fails to find what is revealed to be a vile, fatal wound. He is humiliated by the villagers, who are "always expecting the impossible from the doctor," and doomed to an endless return trip, losing everything.



Cat's Eye
Cat's Eye(1985)
6.7

Three short stories linked by a stray cat that roams from one tale to the next, in this creepy triptych that begins as Dick tries to quit smoking by any means necessary. Next, we meet Johnny, an adulterous man who's forced by his lover's husband onto a building's hazardous ledge. Finally, Amanda is threatened by an evil gnome who throws suspicion on the family cat.



Raven's Hollow
5.358

West Point cadet Edgar Allan Poe and four other cadets on a training exercise in upstate New York are drawn by a gruesome discovery into a forgotten community where they find a township guarding a frightening secret.



Neighbours
7.6

In this Oscar-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower.



The Pit and the Pendulum

Set during the height of Spanish Inquisition. The beautiful and kind-hearted Maria is arrested as a witch when she inadvertently cries out in horror at the public whipping of a child. As Maria’s husband Antonio tries to save her, Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, determines to punish Maria with torture for the desire she inflames in him. Loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story.



A Detective Story
7.174

A private detective is hired to find the elusive computer hacker "Trinity." Part of the Animatrix collection of animated shorts in the Matrix universe.



Night of the Animated Dead

An animated retelling of ‘Night of the Living Dead’, in which a group of people in a rural farmhouse struggle to survive the threat of bloodthirsty zombies.



Nise: The Heart of Madness

After being released from prison, Dr. Nise da Silveira is back at work in a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro where she refuses to employ the new and violent electroshock in the treatment of schizophrenics. Ridiculed by doctors, she is forced to take on the abandoned Sector for Occupational Therapy, where she would start a revolution through paintings, animals and love.



The Horror Show
5.3

Vowing revenge on the detective who apprehended him, serial killer "Meat Cleaver" Max Jenke returns from beyond the grave to launch a whole new reign of terror.



Don't Hug Me I'm Scared 2

Step back into the imaginative and frankly terrifying world of Becky & Joe with Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. In this episode: Some things change over Time.



Ruben Brandt, Collector

Psychotherapist Ruben Brandt becomes the most wanted criminal in the world when he and four of his patients steal paintings from the world's most renowned museums and art collections.



The Caveman's Valentine

Romulus, a misunderstood musician turned recluse hiding from personal demons in a New York City cave, finds the frozen body of a young drifter in a tree. The authorities, including his police officer daughter, claim the death is accidental. Romulus is convinced the man was murdered by a prominent art photographer but how can he prove he's right when everyone thinks he's insane?



Christmas Carol: The Movie

Animated version of the classic Charles Dickens story. Warned by the ghost of his old business partner Marley that his sins would lead to punishment in the afterlife, the cruel and greedy Scrooge is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future to show him how the course of his life led him to where he is - and where it will lead if he doesn't change his ways.



The Pied Piper
7.4

A darkly brilliant stop-motion adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin about a plague of rats that punish townsfolk corrupt with greed. One of Czechoslovakia's most ambitious animation projects of the 1980s, notable for its unusual dark art direction, innovative animation techniques and use of a fictitious language.



Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

A disturbing puppet short exploring the concept of creativity.



Saw: Rebirth
5.414

This animated comic goes back in time to explore the events that spurred the transformation of mild-mannered John Kramer into the monstrous Jigsaw.



Dr. Caligari
5.8

Mrs. Van Houten has shown signs of losing touch with reality, and her husband discusses possible treatment with Dr. Caligari, who says Mrs. Van Houten has a disease of the libido.



Tales of the Black Freighter

A mariner survives an attack from the dreaded pirates of the Black Freighter, but his struggle to return home to warn it has a horrific cost.



ME!ME!ME!
ME!ME!ME!(2014)
7.929

An anime-obsessed young man fantasizes about his favorite voluptuous heroines, but his sex-addled dream quickly transforms into a nightmare which threatens to consume him.



Felidae
Felidae(1994)
6.7

A domestic house cat named Francis investigates the grisly feline murders taking place in his new neighborhood.



Puppet Master
5.8

After being contacted by their mysterious former colleague, four psychics arrive at a secluded hotel where they are stalked by a group of murderous puppets.



Terrifier
Terrifier(2011)
6.113

After witnessing a brutal murder on Halloween night, a young woman becomes the next target of a maniacal entity.



The Red Inn
6.8

A group of travelers, including a monk, stay in a lonely inn in the mountains. The host confesses the monk his habit of serving poisoned soup to the guests, to rob their possessions and to bury them in the backyard.



Alice in Wonderland

On a golden afternoon, wildly curious young Alice tumbles into the burrow and enters the merry, madcap world of Wonderland full of whimsical escapades.



Lunacy
Lunacy(2005)
6.754

A man takes up residence with a mysterious marquis and is soon persuaded to enter into an asylum for preventative therapy. Things are not what they seem, and the marquis may be even more sinister than what the young man might have predicted.



The Spine of Night
5.935

When ancient dark magic falls into sinister hands and unleashes ages of suffering onto mankind, a group of heroes from different eras and cultures must band together in order to defeat it at all costs.



Tales of the Night
7.3

Six exotic fables, each unfold in a unique locale, from Tibet, to medieval Europe, an Aztec kingdom, the African plains, and even the Land of the Dead.



Re-Animator
7.048

Conducting clandestine experiments within the morgue at Miskatonic University, scientist Herbert West reveals to a fellow graduate student his groundbreaking work concerning the re-animation of fresh corpses.



I Lost My Body
7.487

A story of Naoufel, a young man who is in love with Gabrielle. In another part of town, a severed hand escapes from a dissection lab, determined to find its body again.



Carne
Carne(1991)
6.798

After a dreadful incident coupled with an ungovernable paroxysm of violence, a butcher will fall into a downward spiral that will burn to the ground whatever dignity still remained in him.



Film
Film(1965)
6.951

A man attempts to evade observation by an all-seeing eye.



Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic

Dante journeys through the nine circles of Hell -- limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud and treachery -- in search of his true love, Beatrice. An animated version of the video game of the same name.



Heart of Glass
6.484

A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.



Vincent
Vincent(1982)
7.9

Young Vincent Malloy dreams of being just like Vincent Price and loses himself in macabre daydreams that annoy his mother.



The King and the Mockingbird

A young shepherdess and a chimneysweep plan to get married and escape the clutches of a tyrannical king in love with her, assisted by the guile of a cheeky mockingbird, the king's archenemy.



Blind Vaysha
7.112

From the moment she was born, Vaysha was a very special girl. With her left eye she can only see into the past, and with her right she can only see the future. The past is familiar and safe, the future is sinister and threatening. The present is a blind spot. In captivating parabolic imagery, the award-winning animation artist Theodore Ushev illustrates the world through Vaysha’s eyes.



Alma
Alma(2009)
6.928

Alma, a little girl, skips through the snow covered streets of a small town. Her attention is caught by a strange doll in an antique toy shop window. Fascinated, Alma decides to enter.



The Pale Blue Eye
6.812

West Point, New York, 1830. When a cadet at the burgeoning military academy is found hanged with his heart cut out, the top brass summons former New York City constable Augustus Landor to investigate. While attempting to solve this grisly mystery, the reluctant detective engages the help of one of the cadets: a strange but brilliant young fellow by the name of Edgar Allan Poe.



The Red Inn
5.443

A group of travelers, including a monk, stay in a lonely inn in the mountains. The host confesses the monk his habit of serving poisoned soup to the guests, to rob their possessions and to bury them in the backyard. The story unfolds as the monk tries to save the guest's lives without violating the holy secrecy of the confession.



Dimensions of Dialogue

Three surreal depictions of failures of communication that occur on all levels of human society.



Anamorph
Anamorph(2007)
5.1

A psychological thriller based on the concept of anamorphosis, a painting technique that manipulates the laws of perspective to create two competing images on a single canvas.



Eyes Without a Face

Dr. Génessier is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane, who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise, kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Génessier removes their faces and attempts to graft them on to Christiane's.



Nosferatu
Nosferatu(2024)
6.692

A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.



Twice-Told Tales
6.2

3 horror stories based on the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the 1st story titled "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", Heidegger attempts to restore the youth of three elderly friends. In "Rappaccini's Daughter", a demented father is innoculating his daughter with poison so she may never leave her garden of poisonous plants. In the final story "The House of the Seven Gables", The Pyncheon family suffers from a hundred year old curse and while in the midst of arguing over inheritance, a stranger arrives.



Asylum
Asylum(2005)
5.9

A woman becomes very curious about one of her psychiatrist husband's inmates, a man who was found guilty in the murder and disfigurement of his former wife.



Zing
Zing(2011)
7.4

Day in, day out, Mr. Grimm is busy with his job as the Reaper, harvesting people's lives. One day, his monotonous existence is interrupted by the door bell. It's a little girl. She wants her cat back. Little does she know that she's the next life on Mr. Grimm's list.



Quasi
Quasi(2023)
5.145

A hapless hunchback who only yearns for love, finds himself in the middle of a murderous feud between the Pope and the King of France when each orders the hunchback to kill the other.



Nightmare Castle
5.352

A sadistic count tortures and murders his unfaithful wife and her lover, then removes their hearts from their bodies. Years later, the count remarries and the new wife experiences nightmares and hauntings.



The Jester
7.486

The Jester is the titular main antagonist of the horror/thriller analogy short films of the same name. He is an enigmatic and malevolent being who enjoys inducing suffering to individuals he comes across who don't appreciate his own tricks or break the rules of Halloween.



Heart of Midnight
5.6

A young woman who is getting back on her feet after a mental breakdown, Carol Rivers discovers that her late uncle has left her a rundown nightclub. Carol decides to renovate the venue, but, in the process, uncovers dark secrets about the club and her dead relative. After a series of disturbing events, Carol becomes increasingly unstable, but she finds some measure of comfort in Sharpe, an enigmatic older detective.



Ed Gein
Ed Gein(2000)
5.346

The true story of Edward Gein, the farmer whose horrific crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs. This is the first film to Gein's tormented upbringing, his adored but domineering mother, and the 1957 arrest uncovered the most bizarre series of murders America has ever seen



Vertigo
Vertigo(1958)
8.155

A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.



Scissors
Scissors(1991)
4.975

A woman trying to recover from a sexual attack is locked in a posh apartment with a corpse of the very man she's been dreaming would murder her. She tries to hang on to reality when objects around her seem to come to life.



The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

An American writer living in Rome witnesses an attempted murder that is connected to an ongoing killing spree in the city and conducts his own investigation, despite he and his girlfriend being targeted by the killer.



Batman: Gotham by Gaslight

In an alternative Victorian Age Gotham City, Batman begins his war on crime while he investigates a new series of murders by Jack the Ripper.



The Oblong Box
5.7

Evil lurks in the gloomy house at Markham Manor where a deranged Sir Edward is the chained prisoner of his brother Julian. When Sir Edward escapes, he embarks on a monstrous killing spree, determined to seek revenge on all those whom he feels have double-crossed him.



Night of the Dark Full Moon

A man investigates the grisly crimes that occurred in a former insane asylum, unsettling the locals who all seem to have something to hide.



Trilogy of Terror
6.2

A horror anthology containing three stories: a female college professor is aggressively pursued by one of her students; a prudish brunette determines that her free-spirited blonde sister is evil; and a woman's night turns upside down after she purchases an ancient Zuni fetish doll.



Heart of a Dog
6.538

Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.



1922
1922(2017)
5.938

A simple yet proud rancher conspires to murder his wife for financial gain, convincing his teenage son to participate.



Parasomnia
4.985

Laura Baxter is a young woman, literally a "sleeping beauty," who suffers from a medical condition called "parasomnia." A childhood accident victim, she is actually sleeping her life away, awakening briefly on rare occasions. Art student Danny Sloan falls in love with her, unaware that her hospital neighbor, a terrifying mass murderer and mesmerist named Byron Volpe has other, more sinister plans.



Belladonna of Sadness

An evil feudal lord rapes a village girl on her wedding night and proceeds to ruin her and her husband's lives. After she's eventually banished from her village, the girl makes a pact with the devil to gain magical ability and take revenge.



The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

Young Jeremiah lives in a stable environment with loving foster parents until the day his troubled mother, Sarah, returns to claim him. Jeremiah becomes swept up in his mother's dangerous world of drugs, seedy hotels, strip joints and revolving lovers. Salvation comes in the form of the boy's ultrareligious grandparents, but soon Jeremiah's mother returns. Maternal love binds the pair together on the road until Sarah's desperate and depraved lifestyle finally consumes her.



Imprint
Imprint(2006)
6.822

An American journalist travels through 19th-century Japan to find the prostitute he fell in love with but instead learns of the physical and existential horror that befell her after he left.



House
House(1985)
6.2

Roger Cobb, a divorced horror novelist coming to terms with the disappearance of his young son, inherits an old mansion home to malevolent supernatural residents.



Faust
Faust(1994)
7.451

A very free adaptation of Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", Goethe's "Faust" and various other treatments of the old legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil. A nondescript man is lured by a strange map into a sinister puppet theatre, where he finds himself immersed in an indescribably weird version of the play, blending live actors, clay animation and giant puppets.



The Cabinet of Caligari

A delirious young woman feels trapped in a remote mansion at the mercy of a madman.

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