The Fall of the House of Usher

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER is a low budget British adaptation of the storyline that has been somewhat eclipsed by the lush and colourful Roger Corman/Vincent Price version of the tale. That's a shame, because this is an interesting little movie in its own right, a film where every penny of the budget has been put on screen.

The film has a disjointed, almost dream-like atmosphere to it which reminded me of the horror classic VAMPYR. The set design is absolutely wonderful and the film as a whole is packed with creepy and atmospheric locales which really add to the experience. Some aspects of the Poe tale have been altered, and the acting from the unknown cast members is nothing to get excited about, but the quality of the direction and script helps make up for these shortcomings. The addition of the hag character for a number of jump scares is a good one too, although the make-up job is a little crude by modern standards.

The plot of this curious version of the Poe classic differs considerably from the original story, including a number of plot elements and characters that are not in Poe's story at all. Some of the acting seems almost amateurish at times, and the entire production was clearly carried out on a very small budget.

However, where this film excels is in its' sense of creepy atmosphere. Indeed, in that respect it reminded me of Carl Theodore Dryer's 1932 film, "Vampyr". Those who have seen that most peculiar horror film will understand to what I refer. In that film, as well as in this one, style and atmosphere completely dominate character and story to the point where the latter two elements almost cease to matter at all. Both "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Vampyr" are prime examples of how much a creative director can achieve even without benefit of special effects or a large budget.

I caught up with this on TCM as part of their October 2012 schedule. It's really not that bad, given that it was made on a budget of about two shillings thruppence and someone decided to tack on that ghastly footage in the gentlemen's club to pad the length. Granted, it's not quite the story Poe wrote, but taken as an old-dark-house thriller that just happens to be about the House of Usher... Anyway, I've seen worse photography in higher budget films, the amateur actors in the story proper were reasonably competent (especially young Gwen Watford, who went on from this film debut to better things in film, on stage, and on the Beeb), and the climax closeups were quite convincing--as well they should be, since many of the closeups came from WWII newsreel footage carefully edited.

VERY loose adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story. Jonathan (Irving Steen) pays a visit to childhood friend Roderick Usher (Kaye Tendeter). He finds Roderick terribly depressed and his sister Madeline Usher (Gwen Witford) suffering some kind of illness. And what's in that old house in the woods?

They took the main characters from the book, added new ones, changed the ending of the story but it still works. It is slow-moving, static and has bad dialogue but I've seen worse. There's an eerie atmosphere throughout with spooky music and depressing dark sets. The acting isn't half bad but only Witford went on to a career in the field. It all ends on a dark and stormy night which is actually quite chilling. A pretty good unknown horror film. I give it a 7.

I bought (for £22) a standard 8 sound copy of this film and showed it at a meeting of Group 9.5. We attempt to show films that are not normally shown on TV, so this was a rare opportunity for the members to see this British version. Graham Murray was at the show and told me why it doesn't appear on TV in the UK. He worked for Granada TV and was on the panel that rejected the film as being too poor to show on TV-but he bravely sat through the show that night. Despite the rather crude technical quality of the film,I liked it.