House of Usher [The Fall of the House of Usher] **** (1960, Vincent Price, Myrna Fahey, Mark Damon, Harry Ellerbe) – Classic Movie Review 2,844

The 1960 horror film House of Usher is the first and perhaps best of Roger Corman’s eight Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. Vincent Price is on rousing form as the albino Roderick Usher, desperately trying to end the curse of the madness in his family. 

The 1960 American horror film House of Usher is the first and arguably perhaps the best of director Roger Corman’s eight Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, and finds Vincent Price on rousing form as the albino Roderick Usher, who is desperately trying to end the curse of the long line of madness in his family. You’d be mad even to try.

Corman’s greatest acclaim came with his eight movies based on the works of Poe, made through American International Pictures and mostly in collaboration with writer Richard Matheson, who here adapts Poe’s 1839 short story The Fall of the House of Usher. Corman also worked with set designer Daniel Haller and cinematographer Floyd Crosby on the series. 

Mark Damon co-stars as Philip Winthrop who arrives at his fiancée Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey)’s family mansion and discovers an appalling family curse. While Roderick’s senses have become painfully acute, Madeline has become catatonic. Roderick tells Philip about the Usher curse: if there is more than one Usher child, all of them go insane and die horrible deaths.

[Spoiler alert] Later Philip correctly fears that his future brother-in-law Roderick has buried his future bride alive, which is not the best way to the altar. Content that his mad sister is safely entombed, Roderick is well upset when she returns to haunt him.

Corman’s movie is a cheaply and quickly made but imaginative and stylish horror movie with a spectacular, fiery ending that Corman later reused in several other of his Poe films. But it is Price’s bravura turn gives it real class.

Writer Matheson provides a surprisingly sleek, subtle and effective script, while there’s intense, powerful and imaginative direction by Corman in one of his finest hours. Cinematographer Floyd Crosby makes fine, energetic use of the CinemaScope and Eastmancolor, filming relentlessly and restlessly.

House of Usher was shot in just 15 days. It cost $300,000 and took $1,450,000 in the US and Canada.

It stars Vincent Price as Roderick Usher, Mark Damon as Philip Winthrop, Myrna Fahey as Madeline Usher and Harry Ellerbe as Bristol. Also in the cast are Bill Borzage, Mike Jordon, Ruth Oklander and George Paul.

The studio Corman rented left the small basement staircase set standing after production wrapped, so he reused it in subsequent films.

It was remade as The Fall of the House of Usher in 1980 and as The Fall of the House of Usher 1983 and as The House of Usher in 1988.

The film marks a turning point for American International Pictures. Till then AIP specialised in low-budget black and white films for double bills, but with this market in decline, they decided to gamble on making a larger budgeted film in colour.

On 6 August 2010, BRIC Arts presented the film in Prospect Park with a new score and psychedelic overlays and flashforwards by Marco Benevento in celebration of the film’s 50th anniversary. DVD versions have running times between 76 and 80 minutes.

The seven other Corman Poe adaptations are: The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Premature Burial (1962), Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). All but The Premature Burial star Vincent Price. Ray Milland got to do that one.

After The Raven was completed, Corman had some shooting days left before the sets were torn down and so made another film, The Terror (1963), on the spot with the remaining cast, crew and sets, but it is not actually based on any text by Poe.

Mark Damon became one of Hollywood’s most prolific producers and pioneer of the foreign sales business in the 1970s.

The film was listed with the US National Film Registry in 2005 as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.

Les Baxter’s score was finally released in February 2011.

Roger Corman turned 95 on 5 April 2021. He has an incredible 515 credits as a producer. His 1960 film The Little Shop of Horrors set a world record for the shortest shooting schedule of a feature film of two days.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,844

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