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

As a lifelong admirer of Ken's work I was very disappointed with this film. Not in the making of the film using home video, not in Ken's artistic vision, but in the muddle that his scripts and latest written work have become. Take away the producer looking over his shoulders as a critical friend and you have the pensioner trying to regain his long-lost youth in a kind of disordered teenage romp. Parts of the film raised a smile but only in a kind of 'shouldn't he have got over that at the age of sixteen' sort of way. Ken is so much better than this and I look forward to Tesla & Katherine with anticipation. Best forget 'Louse', I think!

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.)

This movie, the 30 minutes or so of it I did watch, really filled me with horror. It is scary to think that this is Ken Russell without professional crew, editor, producer. The film really imparts the lesson that you do need a studio you do need backing you do need at least a few different expensive craftsmen for every pixel on the screen. I would be loathe to criticize Russell cause of his past work. Man Ray used to say that it is hypocritical of a critic to endorse one work by an artist then to reject another. But this movie looked like something you'd have to sit through at an underground film festival ca 1971 like Trisha's Wedding. And what moves me to speak badly of it is that although I doubt he meant to make this point, he has, and its not true. You don't need all the money in the world to make a great film you just need to take lots and lots of care or do lots and lots of shooting and lots and lots of cutting.

As far as using non actors to do scripted dialog, well George Kuchar does that a lot better too, using the awkwardness for comic effect rather than just having everyone yell constantly. But in the case of casting I think the ineluctable lesson is that unless you after a very particular kind of comedy, you shouldn't give non actors lots of scripted lines. The little darlings should be led by the nose through improvs into what looks like acting (in fact what often looks like very very good acting).

George Kuchar is a hugely important role model if you want to work outside the system. He has shot innumerable gorgeous films on 16 mm for say $600 per 20 minutes. He mostly works with video now.

It's funny how in art, you often see a cycle in which the Masters begin borrowing techniques from the very students they influenced, in turn creating whole new heights for the rest to aspire to. It could be argued that Ken Russell single-handedly pioneered the art of stylised psychosexual horror delirium and he's back to show that no one can do it better. It's a very modernised and flashy approach he uses here though, cribbed from his contemporaries and improved upon greatly. Shot on digital video and employing breakneck editing in the style of Greg Dark or Richard Kern, Russell's latest epic "The Fall of The Louse of Usher" is a whole new plateau of erotic mania for the others to aspire to. I'm not sure Edgar Allen Poe would be fully enjoying it, however...

Plotwise, it concerns Gothic rock star Roddy Usher (played by Gallon Drunk's James Johnson) who, upon being accused of murdering his wife, Sweet Annabelle Lee, is committed to an insane asylum. Under the care of the maniacal Dr Calahari (Russell himself, with a terrible fake German accent, chewing up the scenery admirably here) and the beautiful Nurse ABC Smith (Tulip Junkie), Roddy is plunged headlong into a roller-coaster ride of nightmare imagery and murder as the lines between reality and insanity blur into one great big psychedelic smudge. Somewhere at the heart of it all is a murder mystery (who killed Sweet Annabelle Lee?) and, amazingly, this is solved by the end. But the mystery itself is merely secondary to all the breathtakingly strange set pieces, bogglingly obscure Poe references and increasingly unpredictable twists in the tale.

Russell's eye for the bizarre and beautiful hasn't faded with age and, despite its low budget, "Louse" looks sumptuous and outlandisht. The costumes and production design are really quite remarkable, making best possible use out of the most peculiar props he could lay his hands on. Watch out for the tea cosy hat, the blow-up dinosaur dolls, the pharoah mask, the Playstation controller, the bouncy castle and, best of all, the talking 'Big Mouth Billy Bass' ornament (here playing the Egyptian God Osiris) if you don't believe me. On top of the visual weirdness, we're also treated to a series of catchy Gothic rock songs, courtesy of Johnson, that wind up as a cross between Sex Gang Children, Nick Cave and something you'd see at the end of a "Hale and Pace" episode. Astonishingly, this actually works!

All in all, "Louse" isn't for everybody and if you didn't like Russell before, you're unlikely to appreciate him any more after enduring 90 minutes of this feverish plunge into the depths of his twisted mind. However, if you've a taste for genuinely weird cinema or fancy a colourful, entertaining change of pace from the dreary toss that passes for alternative film-making these days, I'd highly recommend it. For my mileage, it's just another shining jewel in his crown that reaffirms Russell as being the greatest imagination working in cinema today. I only have two questions: When can I buy the soundtrack? And where is Ken Russell's knighthood already? 9 out of 10.

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!!