The Fall of the Louse of Usher: A Gothic Tale for the 21st Century

Thirty years ago, I sat in a movie theatre stunned to my very bones watching THE DEVILS. Director Ken Russell worked with big budgets and big stars then. Now, that's not the case, but the feeling of being stunned remains the same. FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER blows you away. It's as simple as that. Russell has made a low budget, feature length video with no producer or movie company looking over his shoulder. The result mystifies because, on one hand it's a puerile, tasteless, and totally delirious send up of just about everything connected with pop culture; on the other, it's a playfully mature work of art that can indeed be taken seriously if one can withstand its brutal and disorienting assault to probe the meaning of Russell's vision. It's like this: cross the Jackass boys with Jean Luc Godard and add a little ATTACK OF THE COCKFACED KILLER, and you get, relatively speaking, a point of departure for discussing this movie. Russell plays with his digital camera like a teenager in puberty, but the sophistication of an elderly artist is there, as well. This is not the least bit surprising to me when you consider Russell's obvious need to create. While others sit around and wait for the phone to ring, Russell gathers all these young folks at his house and goes for it. Given the ghastly state of most straight to video fare, much of which has been shot on video, one can only hope that those with money who produce will see the value of this director and let him go, go, go some more. The movie is great, and Ken Russell is even greater. Thank-you for stunning me so.

I have loved Russell's films for years, but this one tops it all. It is inventive and stunning beyond belief. Made on a shoestring budget, but with the flair of a Hollywood blockbuster, it has humor, irony, great self-conscious acting and the biggest arsenal of consumerist gadgets since, well, Russell's own masterpiece The Lair of the White Worm. Stunning set-pieces, great visuals and a surprise-a-minute. Russell has turned to underground film-making once again (that's how he got started in the late fifties). The financial restrictions have forced him to be truly creative again. The result is this film, made on digital video. If ever a film was rightfully called mind-blowing, it's this one. There's nothing quite like it, nor is it likely there ever will be. One of the most extraordinary films you are likely to see. Ever. SEE/RENT/BUY IT NOW!

I'm not sure if it was because it was a slow Sunday afternoon or the fact that I'm having a thing for blokes with bad teeth (is that redundant?) but I didn't dislike this movie as much as I probably should have. I love Ken Russell...everything I have seen of his from The Boyfriend to The Devils.(We share birthdays!)I think that if a director is one of those filmmaker's who has a strong flavor, a distinct original style that one enjoys, it is hard to deny even his lesser moments. This movie is probably only for die hard Ken Russell fans like myself. I don't know anyone I would recommend this film to...but that is more of an insult to those I know than the movie itself.

This film is dreadful. Badly shot, badly acted, with stupid off-the-cuff dialogue... there are a couple of decent scenes which come close to disturbing, but for the most part this is just like a weird episode of Rainbow.

On the plus side, everyone seems to be having fun, especially the nurse. With a decent script and a competent director (Russell clearly was in it for the fun of it) it could have been an average film. Sadly, it is tamer than an episode of the X Files, features terrible special effects (even Albert F. Pyun would laugh at this!) and is just plain ugly to look at.

A dreadful film, badly directed. Don't spend more than a quid on it. I bought it for a fiver and I'm bloody annoyed!!

Even though his work was always wildly indulgent and overblown, I've enjoyed the unique excesses of Ken Russell's cinema, being fond of several films because they're good (if still excessive), flamboyantly bad, or some campy mix of both. He's always done best under pressure from a generous budget and strong studio or producer oversight.

Left to his own devices, and abandoned by the film industry, this farcical goof only tangentially related to Poe themes is silly, shrill, amateurish, sophomoric-ally sex-phobic, and aims to shock in a dated early 80s punk/New Wave cinema mode. Its wit is mostly a matter of horrible puns, community-theater "foreign" accents, and in-joke references. The performers ham in Russell's preferred over-the-top style, albeit without the skill of the professional actors he once used--none worse than Russell himself, who plays a mad doctor with a vaudeville Nazi accent and is not a pretty sight as his face has gone spotty-red and pustule- ridden.

That said, there are some funny touches--as in the "Premature Burial" upending, an early gag involving one of those singing/tail-waggling fishes on a trophy placard, or a late sequence exploiting a huge blowup children's slide--and even on zero budget Russell retains a knack for lending nearly every shot some sort of surreal flash. (Whether that means having an actor in a gorilla suit or utilizing a multicolored plastic Slinky.)

It gets better as it goes along, but there's still a feeling of glorified home-movie indulgence by an attention-hungry old man only further caricaturing his image as a filmmaker who never should have been taken seriously. That's unfortunate, because (skipping his TV work as a separate issue) from "Women in Love" through at least "Lair of the White Worm" he made strikingly distinct if always flawed contributions to the art form. (Russell will never get a Knighthood, unlike just about anyone else who's got a long high-profile career in British cinema, because he's just made too many movies HRH couldn't be associated with.)