The Fall of the House of Usher

This film is one of my favorite versions of "House of Usher." Unlike the Roger Corman version, this film treats the viewer with a variety of sets and locations with unique concepts and ideas not widely known. This film was a great effort for its day, with beautiful black and white cinematography and a gothic mood. This film is probably one of the closest to the original story, with some great new ideas thrown in, like the hag in the woods and further explaining the family curse. The music is really cute and catchy, further giving a feeling of the renaissance time, and it's quite catchy (by the end of the movie I was humming the main theme, as it was repetitive throughout the film). Through the brilliant (and realistic) thunderstorm sequence we are led up to a great climax, and I love the ending. The originality of the whole film, and the last words must've left people talking about the film as they left the theatre, discussing what they thought really happened. I was surprised that this film had so little success (if it did, I know not about it, it's quite rare you see). I wonder if it had international distribution, or if it was made by a very small company and didn't get the attention it deserved? This is definitely an excellent film and I highly recommend it to anyone, except perhaps some of today's modern youth(what is the world coming to? Can't they recognize fine art when they see it?)

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER is a low budget British adaptation of the storyline that has been somewhat eclipsed by the lush and colourful Roger Corman/Vincent Price version of the tale. That's a shame, because this is an interesting little movie in its own right, a film where every penny of the budget has been put on screen.

The film has a disjointed, almost dream-like atmosphere to it which reminded me of the horror classic VAMPYR. The set design is absolutely wonderful and the film as a whole is packed with creepy and atmospheric locales which really add to the experience. Some aspects of the Poe tale have been altered, and the acting from the unknown cast members is nothing to get excited about, but the quality of the direction and script helps make up for these shortcomings. The addition of the hag character for a number of jump scares is a good one too, although the make-up job is a little crude by modern standards.

The Fall of the House of Usher (1949)

** (out of 4)

This British version of the Edgar Allan Poe story has pretty much been forgotten over the years thanks to two very good versions from 1928 and of course the Roger Corman/Vincent Price film that was released after. This here features a cast of unknowns, most of them making their first and only film appearance. The story is the same that you're used to as a friend (Irving Steen) shows up at the house of Roderick Usher (Kay Tendeter) and gets caught up in a mystery. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination but it's unique enough to where it can hold your attention throughout its short 70-minute running time. I think the biggest problem with the movie is the fact that director Ivan Barnett isn't able to create any sort of pacing and this becomes a problem. It really does seem like every scene is something onto its own and it was hard to really feel that the film ever really connected together. This is again due to the pacing, which is just all over the place. I will say that the director manages to create a pretty good atmosphere and the ending is actually extremely good. The performances are all a mixed bag but for the most part I thought they were just fine. If you've seen any other version of the story then it's doubtful this one here is going to blow you away. Still, it's a rather interesting movie and its forgotten status makes it even more curious.

I caught up with this on TCM as part of their October 2012 schedule. It's really not that bad, given that it was made on a budget of about two shillings thruppence and someone decided to tack on that ghastly footage in the gentlemen's club to pad the length. Granted, it's not quite the story Poe wrote, but taken as an old-dark-house thriller that just happens to be about the House of Usher... Anyway, I've seen worse photography in higher budget films, the amateur actors in the story proper were reasonably competent (especially young Gwen Watford, who went on from this film debut to better things in film, on stage, and on the Beeb), and the climax closeups were quite convincing--as well they should be, since many of the closeups came from WWII newsreel footage carefully edited.

I bought (for £22) a standard 8 sound copy of this film and showed it at a meeting of Group 9.5. We attempt to show films that are not normally shown on TV, so this was a rare opportunity for the members to see this British version. Graham Murray was at the show and told me why it doesn't appear on TV in the UK. He worked for Granada TV and was on the panel that rejected the film as being too poor to show on TV-but he bravely sat through the show that night. Despite the rather crude technical quality of the film,I liked it.