House of Usher.

Review #1918: House of Usher.

Cast: 

Vincent Price (Roderick Usher), Mark Damon (Philip Winthrop), Myrna Fahey (Madeline Usher), and Harry Ellerbe (Bristol) Produced and Directed by Roger Corman (#368 - The Little Shop of Horrors, #684 - It Conquered the World, #852 - The Terror, #931 - Not of This Earth, #1007 - Attack of the Crab Monsters, #1039 - Five Guns West, #1042 - War of the Satellites, #1136 - Gas-s-s-s, #1147 - X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes, #1186 - A Bucket of Blood, #1423 - The Wild Angels, #1425 - The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and #1674 - Machine-Gun Kelly, and #1684 - Creature from the Haunted Sea)

Review: 

“What drew me to Fall of the House of Usher was first the macabre setting, the house itself. Surrounded by fog, deserted…and then within the house, the relationship between Roderick Usher and his sister. The incestuous sexual/horror relationship between them, it was just a fascinating situation.” - Roger Corman

Undeniably, a film by American International Pictures leaves a bit of curiosity to go along with trepidation. Sure, they made plenty of fast and cheap movies in their day, but you always have to pick your hopes and doubts when it comes to wondering how they can handle executing premise the right way...so imagine them adapting the works of Edgar Allen Poe. But they did do so, with Roger Corman behind it all. Instead of making two low-budget black-and-white films (done in 10 days each) fit for a double feature that AIP desired, Corman came to an agreement to make one color movie for them (with 15 days to shoot), and the result became its own cycle of movies, much to the surprise of Corman. He would make eight feature films as director and producer for eight Poe works House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Premature Burial (1962), Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). All but Burial had Vincent Price as the star, as he was a contract player for the studio. Corman wanted him for this movie, and he got his wish for an actor that loved playing this role, one he felt was the most sensitive of the lead characters of a Poe work (he even bleached his hair for the role). The film was made on a budget of $270,000. Richard Matheson was best known at the time for his novels I Am Legend (1954) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1956), and he had written film scripts for two prior movies (one being an adaptation of the former novel). He wrote the adaptation of this film and wrote for three more of the Corman/Poe cycle of films. The movie, as you might know, is adapted from Edgar Allen Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher", first published in 1839. The movie changes the dynamic of the trio of characters: the story features an unnamed narrator that visits the house to see the elder Usher, his "best and only friend", while the film has him visit the Ushers because of his fiancé. This was the third adaptation of the book, after La Chute de la maison Usher (1928), the short The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), and The Fall of the House of Usher (1950). It was the last film adaptation for 29 years.

Corman was an engineer before he realized that he was destined to be a filmmaker, you know. By 1960, he was already a five-year director familiar with getting things done on a quick and engineered basis. This proves to be right up his alley, given the limited cast and one big set captured in CinemaScope. Well, that, and a barn in California that had its teardown filmed by Corman to be used in the film, which ended up being used in a handful of future movies. I think it is a splendid film in its execution that benefits most from having Price on screen more than anything. He is the perfect one to emulate such a pale figure of doomed stature, and his belief that the film was a gamble worth believing in is proven correct, and his dynamic with his on-screen sister in Fahey is appropriately eerie. The monster of the movie isn't any one thing but instead the curse that has stricken a bloodline: it is the specter of inevitability that looms over the film when you boil it all down, combining two curiosities into one: folks who love to see Corman try to pull another cheap show of entertainment and Price dominate your attention with dignity, for which you get exactly what you want in terms of fun in horror. Ellerbe may not have the name power of the others or even as many lines, but he fits the puzzle in the tiniest crucial moments needed to keep the movie on point of weird stylings that never get distracted. In a lesser movie, you might focus on Damon, who actually won an award for his performance (granted, it was a Golden Globe...awarded for "newcomer" actors, despite the fact he appeared in a number of shows and movies since the mid 1950s). It isn't a terrible performance, merely just being an ordinary one to contrast with Price and the other doomed figure in Fahey that is, well, a guy trying to make sense of oneself. Corman utilizes cinematography by Floyd Crosby and production design by Daniel Haller to striking effect to make a solid 79-minute ride of creeping atmosphere. You are left to brood for the time required, and it rewards your patience in a movie that is one of Corman's highlights as director. 

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Good morning. THE HOUSTON ASTROS HAVE WON THE WORLD SERIES AGAIN! Friends of the show know my appreciation for this baseball team and all they have done for the state of Texas, and it feels so good to call them the king of baseball once again. 

Next Time: A redux special.