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

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.

I have loved Russell's films for years, but this one tops it all. It is inventive and stunning beyond belief. Made on a shoestring budget, but with the flair of a Hollywood blockbuster, it has humor, irony, great self-conscious acting and the biggest arsenal of consumerist gadgets since, well, Russell's own masterpiece The Lair of the White Worm. Stunning set-pieces, great visuals and a surprise-a-minute. Russell has turned to underground film-making once again (that's how he got started in the late fifties). The financial restrictions have forced him to be truly creative again. The result is this film, made on digital video. If ever a film was rightfully called mind-blowing, it's this one. There's nothing quite like it, nor is it likely there ever will be. One of the most extraordinary films you are likely to see. Ever. SEE/RENT/BUY IT 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!!

Thirty years ago, I sat in a movie theatre stunned to my very bones watching THE DEVILS. Director Ken Russell worked with big budgets and big stars then. Now, that's not the case, but the feeling of being stunned remains the same. FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER blows you away. It's as simple as that. Russell has made a low budget, feature length video with no producer or movie company looking over his shoulder. The result mystifies because, on one hand it's a puerile, tasteless, and totally delirious send up of just about everything connected with pop culture; on the other, it's a playfully mature work of art that can indeed be taken seriously if one can withstand its brutal and disorienting assault to probe the meaning of Russell's vision. It's like this: cross the Jackass boys with Jean Luc Godard and add a little ATTACK OF THE COCKFACED KILLER, and you get, relatively speaking, a point of departure for discussing this movie. Russell plays with his digital camera like a teenager in puberty, but the sophistication of an elderly artist is there, as well. This is not the least bit surprising to me when you consider Russell's obvious need to create. While others sit around and wait for the phone to ring, Russell gathers all these young folks at his house and goes for it. Given the ghastly state of most straight to video fare, much of which has been shot on video, one can only hope that those with money who produce will see the value of this director and let him go, go, go some more. The movie is great, and Ken Russell is even greater. Thank-you for stunning me so.