The House of Usher

Judge a movie on its own merits I say. Yes there is a couple of bad acting moments but there is nothing wrong with this movie per se. The movie has good production values, story and music. Oliver Reed doesn't disappoint and neither does Donald, those guys are very reliable actors.

You know the story, couple crash car and girl ends up in mansion by herself being prepped for her reproduction values by some evil inbred wealthy peeps. It's really nothing new to horror fans. Maybe the movie is a little drawn out and maybe some of the characters don't seem 100% all the time. I think a lot of people were not expecting its weirdness though, weird horror is not everyone's cup of tea. I liked it and at anything less than 5/10 its under-rated imo.

Soon-to-be-wed American couple Ryan (Rufus Swart) and Molly (Romy Windsor) travel to England to meet Ryan's uncle Roderick (Oliver Reed) at the family mansion, which is slowly sinking into a swamp. Whilst driving to the estate, the couple are shocked to see two ghostly kids standing in the middle of the road, and crash their car into a tree. Ryan is knocked unconscious, so Molly runs to the Usher home for help; convinced that an ambulance has been called for her injured fiancé, Molly rests, but ultimately finds herself a prisoner of Roderick, who wants the girl for himself, to carry his seed and continue his lineage.

Fancying himself as a bit of a Roger Corman, director Alan Birkinshaw tackled two Edgar Allen Poe adaptations in 1989, The Masque of the Red Death (which I have yet to see, but has a lousy rating), and what has to be the worst film ever to be inspired by The Fall of the House of Usher. Not only does the plot bear little resemblance to Poe's original story, but Birkinshaw's handling of the film is lousy, the director commanding hilariously bad performances from Oliver Reed and Donald Pleasence (both slumming it at this point in their careers), and staging the whole mess in some of the cruddiest movie sets imaginable: not just hideous to look at (garish paintwork, amateurish murals, ugly statues) but quite obviously fake, with flimsy plywood and polystyrene constructions masquerading as stonework and marble.

The movie makes no sense whatsoever, so much so that Birkinshaw wraps up matters with one of those cyclical, 'it was all a dream' endings that excuses the script's many flaws by closing the story as it began: with the soon-to-be-wed Ryan and Molly driving to the home of Roderick Usher. The fact that none of what we have seen has really happened means that no explanation is necessary for the two ghostly children that periodically appear, or for the extreme loyalty of the Usher's staff and family doctor, or for why Roderick's supposedly wheelchair-bound lunatic brother Walter (Pleasence) remains a prisoner when he can actually walk and there are numerous passages and secret doors by which he could leave.

Of course, films this bad can also prove to be quite entertaining, and the last twenty minutes are a riot: Pleasence goes kill crazy, hacking off the head of housekeeper Mrs. Derrick (Anne Stradi) and mutilating mute maid Gwen (Carole Farquhar) with his wrist mounted drill, and Reed drops all pretence of being a serious actor and gives one of the craziest performances of his career, which is saying something. The finale sees Reed and Pleasence having a scrap (which is worth the price of admission alone), during which a fire starts, all that plywood and polystyrene going up a treat.

4/10 - It's an interior decorator's nightmare, a film to set Poe spinning in his grave, and an insult to the viewer's intelligence, but I couldn't help but like it just a bit.

A couple of obvious continuity problems caught my eye, but I won't get into it. I did not care for the ghosts and they were never explained. All viewers will feel extremely cheated by the ending.

It's set in a visual interesting House of Usher decorated mainly with flowing drapes and robed statues. That held my attention, but then I got angry about the last scene.

Harry ALan Towers' produced this, another remake of Poe's classic tale. Oliver Reed does a lot of whispering and Donald Pleasence runs around a lot with his chainsaw. Not really a very good film but worth a look for it's two stars, who are again lumbered with a none too bright script.The youngsters Rufus Swart and Romy Windsor are positively dire, but scenes like a hungry rat being placed on a man's privates are quite fun to watch.

This movie can hardly be considered to be an adaptation of Poe, because it barely has any touch points. They are built on the same base, but the construction is completely different. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it is. Ideas that changed Poe's story are not that bad, but the realization is lousy. The complete scenery screams FAKE, the story is inconsistent, acting mediocre, directing like in porn, and ending knocks the final nail in the coffin. If we simply cut the last scene and end movie with the one before, without any changes, we'll get an average '80s B horror ending. Why did they feel the need to additionally annoy viewers, already annoyed by wasting an hour and a half on a crappy movie, by adding terribly stupid, inconsistent, illogical and most of all redundant nonsense to the movie that already had a decent ending in the previous scene... I have a feeling that team, who spent their lives making porn exclusively, suddenly decided to make Poe adaptation. If that's true, good job guys, but if it's not the case, then please, change profession, or at least keep your hands off of classics.

4/10