My review was written in January 1991 after watching the film on RCA/Columbia video cassette.
A lackluster remake of the Poe tale, "The House of Usher" was shot in South Africa in 1988 as one of four Harry Alan Towers Poe films, all going direct to video Stateside.
Fond memories of the Jean Epstein silent version or Roger Corman's vehicle for Vincent Price (which set off the Poe cycle in 1960) do not prepare one for this boring entry, perhaps closer to a forgotten 1949 British programmer version.
Oliver Reed huffs and puffs his way through the central role of Roderick Usher, decaying last representative of the House of Usher who is determined to impregnate young Romy Windsor to carry on his diseased, inbred line.
She's the girlfriend of his nephew Rufus Swart, latter dispatched in the opening as she's made a prisoner in the Usher mansion. Upstairs lives kindly uncle Donald Pleasenxe, but it will take a very slow-witted audience member not to spoth him as an incipient bd guy
Other than some interesting sets that recall the Robert Fuest-helmed "Doctor Phibes" pictures of two decades ago, this remake offers no suspense and a very weak cast. Windsor, who previously went to South Africa to film "Howling IV", is unscintillating as the oppressed heroine, and little sympathy is generated for the family of servants who see to Reed's needs.
Unnecessarily sleazy in several scenes of torture, pic does not reward the patient viewer since the ending is a fakearoo that undermines all that's come before. Tech credits, with South Africa doubling for a British setting, are minor.
