|
The Fall Of The House Of Usher
[MGM Home Entertainment]
1960; color
Directed by Roger Corman
Starring: Vincent Price, Mark Damon, Myrna Fahey & Harry Ellerbe
|
|
The first - and, as some would argue, the best - of Roger Corman's Poe cycle, The Fall Of The House Of Usher stays fairly true to the Poe story of the same name. Corman made the most out of his budget (this time it was around $300,000) and ended up with one of the top grossing films of 1960. More importantly, the picture helped launch a whole new wave of American Gothic horror films in the process. (Although the influence of Hammer's new takes on the Universal monsters from the same time period is also undeniable.) I don't always watch the director's commentaries on DVDs, but Corman is one of the few (along with the likes of H.G. Lewis and Jess Franco) whose insight I'm actually interested in. Granted, when you take on the director's commentary you've gotta watch the film twice in order to really see it but is that so bad when it's Corman taking on Poe? Sparing the minutiae of plot detail, there are two "monsters" in this flick: Vincent Price (who was in a real groove from the mid-'50s through mid-'60s as far as his horror work goes) as the bizarre Roderick Usher and the house itself. (As Corman makes a point of pointing out in his commentary.) And talk about getting the most out of a set. The house groans, shudders and shakes like an octogenarian on a Tilt-A Whirl of doom. From the outside it looks like it's been covered in decades-old layer of perma-dust, with a giant fissure running up one side that threatens to split the structure in two at any moment. The inside pretty much looks like your standard Gothic mansion, but the way some of it is shot as the characters move through gives the illusion of a never-ending series of rooms and passageways—all of which appear to wind back to the main entrance hall or one of the many bedrooms. Price goes from sympathetic at first to downright evil by the film's end as he manipulates his sister, Madeline, and unsuccessfully tries to have sway over her fiancee, Philip, who's come to take her back to Boston. The more evil he becomes, the more the house crumbles. While The Fall Of The House Of Usher doesn't sport the usual bag of tricks you'd expect from a horror flick, there are a few great moments that not only got a rise from audiences in the theaters when it was first shown but still hold up rather nicely some 45 years later. Truth be told, this B movie is really an A.
—the Kommandant
|
|
