I signed up for The Criterion Channel in part to go through with the Stacker Challenge, but one thing I will say about the service is it has, beyond a library of near-constant offerings that don’t seem to be going anywhere, a nice rotating selection of themed movies that often are only there for a month or two. For example, there is what looks like the entirety of producer/director Roger Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, most if not all of which feature Vincent Price. I had seen (and was impressed by) another of these movies, namely The Masque of the Red Death, and like so many Criterion selections, the Corman Poe adaptations are leaving at the end of September.
Well, I have time to get one in, and frankly, I remember not being overly interested in The Fall of the House of Usher when I read it as a kid. It’s the first, and Netflix has its own version coming out soon. I figure I can check this out.
Phillip Winthrop (Mark Damon) is traveling to see his fiancee Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey) at her dilapidated family mansion in the middle of a swamp. The butler (Harry Ellerbe) suggests that no one will see her, but Phillip insists, and he insists all the more when he meets Madeline’s creepy, controlling brother Roderick (Price). But Madeline is there, and despite the fact the two are engaged, Roderick insists that she stay where she is. Roderick believes the Usher line is cursed with madness and evil, and it is for the best if he and his sister, the last of the line, simply die off and end the family curse. Naturally, Phillip disagrees.
But there’s creepy stuff in the House of Usher, and not just because Roderick already has engraved coffins set up in the family vault for himself and Madeline. Madeline herself is prone to sleepwalking, and the inspiration for this movie is a story about a man who buries his sister alive and lives to regret it. Phillip just wants Madeline to get out of there, but when she dies unexpectedly, well, that might not be the end of the story just yet.
OK, bottom line: Price makes this movie. Madeline is barely a character, Phillip even seems a bit controlling by 21st century standards while likewise being simply the square-jawed hero, and the butler is just there because someone needs to tell Phillip about the history of the house. But there’s Price, with what looks like bleached blonde hair and a fatalistic manner that just says everything around him is doomed. The large, symbolic crack and the “house settling” sounds that Phillip doubts is the house actually settling are largely enhanced by Price’s performance. I heard recently Price had a good time on these movies, and why not? One third of the $300,000 budget went to him, and he’s pretty much always fun to watch.
However, House of Usher does seem to take its old, sweet time to have anyone buried alive. If anything, I think the story of the House of Usher has perhaps aged poorly. This should be Madeline’s horror, not Phillip’s or Roderick’s as I see it. But then again, I was never much into this story to begin with. That said, I am looking forward to Mike Flanagan’s take that will be popping up on Netflix next month. Maybe that can make me appreciate Poe’s original tale in ways that Corman just couldn’t.
Grade: C+
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