The Fall Of The House Of Usher

The Fall Of The House Of Usher is not so much a horror film as a cross somewhere between a Shakespearean tragedy and a 19th Century penny-dreadful , and it lacks a traditional monster attraction. There is the house of course- the stark realm of the doomed Usher family; malignant, and rotting with the ancient curse that imprisons them. Indeed Director Roger Corman sold this movie on the very premise of the house as the monster. But in this case it creates an enveloping presence that sustains the sense of dread rather than clumsily lurching out at the end like the Paul Blaisdell-designed rubber tentacled pickle-creature of Corman's earlier It Conquered The World. Truly, the so-called Poe Cycle of movies produced by American International Pictures marked a departure in style for the now legendary Corman. After years of cranking out teenage delinquent movies and sci-fi schlock for his AIP bosses James Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, Corman convinced the shrewd, low-budget filmmakers to let him make a relative epic for the studio, based on the Edgar Allen Poe shocker. House had a built-in star with Vincent Price, who would be the defining Roderick Usher. In fact, his name continued to draw audiences to the profitable series of AIP Poe adaptations that followed; beyond the point that they ran out of actual Poe titles to adapt. And in the role of Roderick Usher Price gives, arguably, his finest performance.

In the beginning, Roger Corman envisioned a horror movie where the crumbling environment of the house created the unease. But Poe wasn't writing a play when he wrote The Fall Of The House Of Usher, and so writer Richard Matheson was contracted to write a compelling script from the languidly-paced original story, which, like a lot of literature of that time, was short on action but astoundingly long on adjective. The first two-thirds of Poe's story consists of little more than elaborate descriptions of the decrepit old house and of Roderick Usher himself, these provided by the story's narrator Phillip Winthrop, a childhood friend and guest of Roderick's. Therefore it was important that the house in the movie look suitably impressive, and that the part of Roderick Usher be played by someone that could convey the character's torment and despair, as well as his aristocratic sophistication. Corman was able to rent old sets from Universal and his resourceful art director made the most of them. As for Roderick Usher, Vincent Price fits Poe's description uncannily, playing a tragic heir to madness with eerily-natural cold aplomb.

Poe's story is vividly atmospheric, and comes to a genuinely creepy (if wildly abrupt) climax. But it's also exceedingly tedious, for the most part, and, physically-speaking, it was barely longer than a typical campfire story. Therefore, screenwriter Matheson made Phillip Winthrop the love-interest of Roderick Usher's dying sister, and the source of the stories pivotal conflict. Roderick insists that if his sister marries she will spread the Usher curse of evil and insanity to future generations, implicitly determined that the Usher line will end with him and Madeline. However, this incestuous subtext calls Roderick's motivations, and ultimately his acts, somewhat into doubt. In Poe's story Roderick's sister is portrayed as his only companion, and in the movie it's possible that he perceives Winthrop, here a total stranger to him, as a rival for her affection. So it is up to the beholder to decide to what degree Roderick is a villain, or if his acts in trying to prevent this union are ultimately moral and sensible. Thus, the script added psychological depth to the story which allows the characters contribute to the intrigue more than the prop of the dark, looming house does. What makes Roderick conclude that the curse will follow Madeline when she flees the House of Usher? And exactly what hold does he have over her?

The terrain surrounding the house is blackened and lifeless, itself tainted by generations of the Usher curse, foretelling the mystery and peril that awaits Phillip the usurper. Upon Winthrop's clearly unexpected arrival, he is informed by the grimly polite butler that the woman Phillip insists is his fiancée is seriously ill, and unable to see her by order of her brother Roderick. Naturally, Winthrop demands to speak to Roderick himself. The butler admits him, and perplexes the already suspicious visitor by asking that he take off his shoes. It turns out that the master of the house has such a heightened sense of hearing that even the sound of mere footsteps grieves him.

"I could hear your horse approaching; hear the clatter of it's hooves across the courtyard. Your knock. The grating of the door-bolt was like a sword-stroke to my ears.... I can hear the scratch of rat-claws within the stone wall, Mr. Winthrop..."

This is just one the various Usher family afflictions, the most significant of which is a tendency to be struck by insanity when they reach a certain age, and go on a rampage of violence and mayhem. Certainly this could suggest the sort of inbreeding associated with noble families. But the symptoms- heightened hearing, smell and sight, animal strength- are almost predatory in nature. This regression, akin to a genetic strain of lycanthropy, is ostensibly what Roderick wishes to put to an end with the death of him and his sister.

Though very much in love with Phillip, Madeline demonstrates an acceptance of her brother's version of reality by giving Phillip a tour of the family crypt, where her own vault awaits. She and Philip lack the dimension of Roderick. Her role is the Greek heroine, and his the obstinate, but ultimately ineffectual hero. Instead of boldly kidnapping Madeline for her own good, his meddling only assures a grim outcome to the story by forcing Roderick to resort to violent measures to stop her inevitable flight. In the end, Phillip is less the hero and more, like his counterpart in Poe's story, a witness to the horrific final descent of the Usher clan. Only, in the movie, he is the also catalyst that sets the increasingly dire chain of events into motion.

The tortured house itself forecast's the coming catastrophe. Fissures run through the walls, the house trembles on it's foundation and angry embers shoot from the fireplace. A chandelier falls and nearly kills Phillip. Roderick tries to impress on Phillip that the house presents a threat to his own safety, yet he stoically tolerates Phillip's intrusion until it seems that Madeline might deny her morbid legacy and escape with her lover. She begins to draw back from Roderick's brotherly affection, seduced by the idea of a new life with Phillip, in her selfishness threatening to propagate the Usher curse through the Winthrop family-tree and beyond.

Roderick tries to reason with Phillip, explaining that the Usher estate was once lush and vibrant but was corrupted by the Usher stigma, implying that this invisible force of destruction would follow behind Madeline wherever she might flee. He shows him the portraits of his infamous mad predecessors, detailing their crimes and depravity, a preview of the misery in store for any unfortunate offspring of the Ushers. Phillip accuses Roderick of trying to distort Madeline's mind and keeping her captive in a disintegrating house, surrounded by death. He goes to Madeline and gives her an ultimatum. She agrees to leave with him, and while Phillip goes to pack his things, Roderick slips into the room. Phillip hears the two arguing, rushing in when he hears Madeline's screams. He finds Roderick looking placidly out the window. Nearby, lying on the bed, is the lifeless body of Madeline. Roderick blames the death on her delicate condition, provoked no doubt by Phillip's useless arousal of her will. And, as they had all known, she was sick.

At Madeline's funeral, as Roderick and Phillip pray over Madeline's open casket, Roderick notices one of Madeline's fingers twitch slightly and says nothing about it. He closes her casket, suddenly eager to have the internment done with, and the three men carry her down to the Usher crypt. Later, the butler lets it slip that members the Usher family occasionally suffer episodes of catalepsy, going into a deep sleep that mimics death. Horrified, Phillip rushes to the crypt to release Madeline, but her body is not in it's casket. Roderick has hidden her somewhere in the recesses of the castle in a chained and locked casket. Here again the movie improves on the book, where, improbable as it seems, Roderick is too terrified to go down into the crypt and free her, even when, with his keen ears, he can hear her frantically clawing at her coffin lid .

After running through the manor for some time, desperately searching through every room and crawl-space, Phillip collapses in exhaustion. In his dream the characters in the paintings have come to life, surrounding him and holding him at bay while Roderick carries Madeline to her certain death. He sees Madeline bound in her coffin screaming, and then he wakes up. Phillip finds Roderick strumming a lute in front of the fireplace, waiting. Roderick reveals that he can hear Madeline in her box, screaming out his name in vengeful fury. After a moment, they all hear her screams. The men run down and find the casket where she was hidden torn open, a trail of crimson from her mangled fingers leading into the castle. The trauma of being buried alive has triggered the notorious Usher madness. She is the Usher curse in human form, eyes wild, hands bloodied. In this feral state, she runs through the castle, shrieking. She attacks Phillip, and then Roderick. As she strangles her brother and killer, the house seems to self-destruct. A fissure opens in the hearth, quickly spreading flames through the house in an infernal fire-storm. To the end, Roderick is unrepentant. Our doubtful hero Phillip, barely escaping with his life, staggers away from the conflagration having failed his only objective. With any luck, he has survived this abysmal ordeal a wiser man.

Yet, apparently, these events have all taken place within a dream; an artifice of symbolic imagery and subconscious desires. Corman shot the movie to have this quality. The blighted, fog-hung forest, the moldering corpse of a house, all intended to evoke a sense of the characters playing out a recurring nightmare. Phillip is never forceful enough to save Madeline because this is a process that he is powerless to alter. Roderick is a dual figure, either a fiend or a tragic hero forced to make a regrettable choice. As the object of desire, Madeline is caught between them; unable to either determine her own destiny or quietly accept her fate. In my view, all are locked in an hellish, eternal conflict from which there is no awaking, until the cycle is somehow broken. The House is the dream, and the unfortunate characters are the quarreling aspects of the dreamer's personality, each selfishly striving for resolution.

There are other fine movies in the Poe cycle, The Masque Of The Red Death being perhaps the most remarkable, but no others beside TFOTHOU stuck so closely to the source material, or brought Poe's phantasmagoric imagery to life so vividly. Roger Corman's much-imitated Poe movies proved that the writer's highly sublime stories could be adapted for the visual medium of film, and might well have helped keep Poe popular to this day.