House of Usher

During the fifties Roger Corman directed several low-budget black and white horror and science fiction films for AIP, including “It Conquered the World” and “Not of this Earth.” Such films were released on double bills, usually to drive-in theaters. At the start of the sixties Corman approached the studio with an ambitious idea. He wanted to film a larger-budgeted horror movie in widescreen and in full color. The picture would be an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic 1839 story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” AIP founders James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff decided to take the gamble and gave Corman $300,000 to work with, an enormous sum for the studio. The director hired first-class author Richard Matheson to write the script, and put the great cinematographer Floyd Crosby behind the camera. In front of the camera was the amazing actor Vincent Price.

This week’s movie was “House of Usher” from AIP in 1960. Mark Damon plays “Philip Winthrop,” a young student who is searching for his lost fiancé “Madeline Usher,” (Myrna Fahey). He crosses a desolate wasteland to her family estate, the dark and mysterious House of Usher. He first encounters the gentle but protective butler “Bristol,” (Harry Ellerbe), before meeting her brooding and antagonistic older brother “Roderick,” (Price). He tells the boy that there is no future in a relationship with his sister. The family bloodline is cursed with madness and villainy, so much so that the very stones of the ancient mansion are polluted with evil. The strain of the encounter causes Madeline to collapse! She is placed in a coffin to be interred in the basement crypt, but as the lid is being closed Roderick spots the tiniest movement. Madeline is alive, but her brother buries her anyway, hoping to bring the cursed bloodline to an end. But she doesn’t stay buried…

This is a stylish and atmospheric film with an excellent cast and an intelligent and plausible script, (although it could have used some humor to balance the relentlessly dark mood). Corman builds nicely to a shocking and spectacular climax.

“House of Usher” did extremely well at the box office, and won several awards in Europe. It launched a whole series of Corman-directed Poe Adaptations for AIP, all but one starring Vincent Price and several written by Richard Matheson. Corman directed more than fifty films, but his reputation as a director rests largely on these eight pictures.

• “House of Usher” (1960)
• “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1961)
• “The Premature Burial” (1962, starring Ray Milland)
• “Tales of Terror” (1962, an anthology film)
• “The Raven” (1963)
• “The Haunted Palace” (1963)
• “The Masque of the Red Death” (1964)
• “The Tomb of Ligeia” (1964)

Although “The Haunted Palace” takes its title from a poem by Poe, the plot comes from H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 tale “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”