The Fall of the House of Usher

CLUB 18+79 min

If Britain in the 1960s had Hammer, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, America had Roger Corman, Vincent Price and Edgar Allan Poe. American International Pictures had enjoyed success in the 1950s with low budget sensationalist features released as double-bills. As box office receipts declined, the company gambled on a more lavish (by their standards) $300,000 adaptation of Poe’s tale, under the rationale that it was a) a title that people would know and b) in the public domain and therefore free. Elegantly scripted by Richard Matheson, the coup for the production was to acquire the services of Price, who was already established as a leading horror actor thanks to House of Wax (1953) and his collaborations with producer William Castle. Price plays Roderick Usher, who lives with his sister Madeline (Myra Fahey) in a crumbling, forsaken mansion. Roderick is disturbed by the arrival of Madeline’s fiancée Philip (Mark Damon) claiming that the Usher bloodline is cursed and that the union will only continue the evil that befalls the House of Usher. Shot in Technicolor and Cinemascope by veteran cameraman Floyd Crosby, Corman’s film is, rather like Price’s Roderick Usher, both beautiful to behold and deeply chilling. The film is remarkably faithful to Poe’s story, retaining all its themes of death and horror and its incestuous undercurrents. Price is simply magnificent, his cultured exterior hiding a soul as desolate and crumbling as the walls around him. Corman would go on to make a further seven Poe adaptations, six with Price and five with Crosby, and while some are arguably more polished (Usher was shot in just two weeks) the first retains a raw energy which leaps off the big screen.