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.

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.

"Found Objects" are those things generally discarded or ignored that somehow possess an intrinsic artistry, and this "Quota Quickie" certainly qualifies. Dashed off in what looks like a couple of weekends on whatever locations were handy, with badly-synchonized sound and wretched acting of pointless dialogue, it nonetheless conveys a genuine creepiness I found oddly haunting. The photography reminds one of the French New Wave, which came along a decade later, with starkly realistic images contrasted with baroque set-ups and disorienting editing. The story -- as much as I could understand -- offers a nightmarish progression through some sort of curse, and a mockingly down-beat ending.

Decades before independent companies were regularly shooting horror films cheaply on location, the mysterious Ivan Barnett made "The Fall of the House of Usher" in and around a mansion in Hastings, Sussex. There are conflicting stories about its production. It seems to have been shot in 1948. Jonathan Rigby claims it played (with an "H" certificate) "for one week in the Tottenham Court Road" in 1950. This implies the cut version released in 1956 wasn't its premiere. The actor playing Roderick Usher is credited as Kaye (not Kay) Tendeter. Almost certainly he and the rest of the cast were, with the exception of Gwen Watford, local amateurs. Barnett was a talented director and a particularly skillful cameraman. His lighting is highly atmospheric. In theory he could still be alive. But what became of him after the early 1960s? (Update: Subsequently it was revealed that Barnett died 13th September, 2013, i.e. only months before the screening of the film, complete with its "H" certificate, at the BFI Southbank, London, on 22nd December, 2013).

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.