House of Usher

1960 Poe adaptation

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Another nondescript dude arrives at another creepy mansion, this one dilapidated and encircled by a misty swamp and dead foliage. This time, the nondescript dude has come to retrieve Madeline Usher, a gal he met in a night club in Boston. The nondescript dude is desperate, refusing to take no for an answer. Unfortunately, ghastly older brother Roderick Usher doesn't want his little sister going anywhere because the family is cursed. Roderick believes to end the bloodline of debauchery, perversion, and violence, he and his sister must die without producing any more Ushers.

The first of Corman's Poe adaptations, House's got a literate script from Richard Matheson, music by Lex Baxter, a monochromatic dream sequence, burying alive, and the greatest actor of all time in common with The Pit and the Pendulum. That would be the incomparable Vincent Price in case you don't know anything about movies. It's not quite as good as The Pit and the Pendulum, but I'm still amazed at Corman's ability to do a whole lot with little time and not much money. Corman's so good at creating mood through setting imagery. Here, you get gnarled tortured trees and a relentless fog to set the mood. The first shot of the house is electric. The denouement for House of Usher is powerful and intensely scary even though the demise of the house is the silliest thing I've seen since Village of the Damned. No, wait. It's sillier. My favorite thing about this one (other than the white-haired Vincent Price, of course) might be the paintings of the Usher ancestors that hang on the walls. That is one attractive family tree!