The Fall Of The House Of Usher Blu-ray Review

• 15th Aug 2013

Released to coincide with Frightfest 2013 restoration screening, Arrow are releasing Roger Cormon’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Made in 1960, this was the first film of Cormon’s Poe adaptations, a formula he would repeat over the next five years and in each case bar one would star Vincent Price. 33-years-old during the making of this film Cormon had for a few years now been making quick and mostly terrible drive-in monster and dragstrip teen movies; some of which were made in just a few days. He approached film company AIP and said that he could make something that could make money with a bigger budget; he had already proven that he could cut corners with costs and would continue to do so. The Fall of the House of Usher was the first of these films and was a direct challenge to Hammer films in the UK. The addition of colour was quite a departure for both AIP and Cormon. There were a few things these films had that Hammer didn’t: less blood, Cinemascope, pre-psychedelic dream sequences (these were often very effective and nightmarish) and the big addition of Vincent Price. What the Hammer films had was of course Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and a whole raft of great British actors, whereas in this films case it only had Price as the other characters were ineffectual actors from TV, often westerns. And that was true of most of Cormon’s films. What they did share was the use of Eastmancolor in all its garish brightness. (The other link after the Poe films was Mario Bava’s Italian horror films which share many of these motifs.)

The Fall of the House of Usher commences with a rider riding through a petrified forest (with some serendipity Cormon filmed this sequence in the Hollywood Hills following a forest fire) arriving at the Usher mansion. His name is Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon) and has come to marry Madeleine Usher whom he had fallen in love with in Boston. However, when he arrives he is met with indifference and hostility from the butler and Roderick Usher (Price) who tell them he must leave and cannot marry Madeleine for this would spell her end. In the meantime the house is crumbling with a huge fissure running through the house; the Freudian idea of the house representing the human consciousness never found a truer voice. As the film develops Roderick is growing more insane culminating in Madeleine being buried alive in a catatonic coma and the house collapsing.

This film marks a turning point in the horror genre after the cross-over of science-fiction and horror in the 1950s and in many ways it may appear a little hackneyed today, but this was made on a very low budget (of $750,000) and marks a real departure from the usual black and white haunted house film that had been popular since the silent period, particularly in using colour to such dramatic effect. Price has never been as good as he is here. He usually deliberately camps his characters in such films as Cormon’s Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven (1963) and Theatre of Blood (1973) but here he plays madness with great understatement and melancholy in what is probably one of his best performances. The film also benefits from Richard Matheson’s more or less faithful adaptation of the book (he also wrote the post apocalyptic vampire novel, ‘I am Legend’) and some particularly haunting paintings on the Usher mansion wall painted by Bert Schoenberg.

As is usual with Arrow releases there are a whole raft of extras including an interview with Price filmed in Malibu for French TV in 1986, ‘Fragments of Fear’ edited highlights of the film with quotes and observations but seems poorly edited together as a throwaway as well as two wonderful half hour appraisals of Cormon’s Poe films: one by Jonathan Rigby, an expert on 50s-70s gothic horror films and a fascinating interview with director Joe Dante as he recalls the films of Roger Cormon in which both clearly know their subject. Often with extras of this type they will only focus on the main feature but Dante looks at the entire oeuvre of Cormon’s horror films, although he doesn’t give away much about Cormon’s throwaway attitude and style to the business of filmmaking.

On its release many criticized the film for its lack of monsters, but Cormon insisted that the house was the monster. While this might not be the most exciting of the Cormon/Poe films, it is quite a break through film that benefits from a fantastic performance from Price in one of the most gothic of tales. Available on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK it does, as is usual with such releases give away some poor make-up on the butler, make the sets look a little shaky in places and the cheap matte painting for the Usher house but is never the less an important addition to any horror collection.

Chris Hick