The Fall of the House of Usher

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Summary: 'House of Usher' is the best of the Poe-Corman-Price films.
Review: I first saw this a few years ago when on a whim i rented it from the library without ever hearing of AIP or Corman or any of the Poe films and after seeing it i went looking for more of the films. The film directed by AIP vet Roger Corman is inspired by a poem or short story (i forget which) by Edgar Allan Poe and it concerns a young man (Mark Damon) who goes to the house of his fiancee in an isolated area. There he meets her brother, the morbid and possibly insane Roderick Usher (Vincent Price). Roderick tries to convince the young man that the Usher blood is tainted, that it's ancestors were all of the lowest form of human life ( they were prostitues, insane, theives, murderers, pirates, you get the picture) and that for his sister Madeline (Myrna Fahey) to continue the bloodline by marrying would be unwise. The young man does not heed the warning. Big mistake. The movie includes a memorable turn by Vincent Price. His performance goes from subtle to sometimes hammy but that is what makes it so memorable. He really sinks his teeth into this part. His co-stars are not so memorable. Mark Damon is too stiff and for a while Myrna Fahey plays it too subtle though that eventually changes. The production values are good considering this was a low budget picture. Roger Corman's direction is actually quite good. He creates a feeling of claustrophobia by keeping the major part of the movie indoors and his uses of color are excellent. The cinematography is very surreal and striking. The only problem might be that the speical effects do look low budget which might distract some but the special F/X only come at the end. All in all this is a great midnite horror flick to watch on a stormy night or on Halloween and it will satisfy any lover of scary movies if you don't mind the fact that the first 50 minutes of the movie is talky.

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Summary: classic Corman
Review: I love all the Corman/Price/Poe movies but this one along with The Pit and the Pendulum I think,are my favourites.Vincent Price's performance as the the pained and sensitive Roderick Usher is remarkable.He injects such a sense of despair and melancholy into the character that you begin to feel an empathy for the tragic man.The wonderful Panavision photography(as usual for this cycle of movies)is transferred beautifully onto this MGM Midnite Movie dvd.

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Summary: It was great movie and had lots of horror things I like.
Review: I love movies like this one. I recommend this movie to anyone who likes movies with Vincent Price or if they like old horror flicks.

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Summary: House of Usher DVD Transfer - A Visual Disappointment
Review: I recently compared the DVD of House of Usher to the earlier Orion laserdisc release. I hooked up both my DVD and laserdisc players through a Videonics MX-Pro video mixer using S-video cords. As I toggled back and forth between the two versions, the results were startling and my initial suspicions were confirmed - the laserdisc image is dramatically superior to the DVD. The people responsible for the DVD transfer chose to overemphasize color saturation at the expense of clarity. Whereas the laserdisc image is sharp and detailed, the DVD is blurred and indistinct. The colors in the DVD are so exaggerated as to appear unrealistic (note Roderick's candy-red robe at the beginning of the film). The laserdisc colors are rich, but real. Generally speaking, the laserdisc image is brighter than the DVD. When I first sat through the DVD, I thought the darker tones looked too dark. They are, and again, detail is lost. If a person with a mild stigmatism were to watch the laserdisc version through a pair of sunglasses, they would come close to what the DVD image looks like. In conclusion, if you already have the Orion laserdisc, hang on to it, for it is far and away the best print of the film available. Those of you who missed the laserdisc (and have a player) should try to snag one on ebay. The DVD transfer is, unfortunately, a sloppy job, attempting to please us with "eye candy" rather than a well-defined image. And just to show you that I'm not prejudiced against DVD's, the DVD release of Pit and the Pendulum is indeed superior to the Orion laserdisc release.

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Summary: outstanding classical movie
Review: i watched it once at the british council and since then i havent found this anywhere.

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Summary: The best of its kind.
Review: I'm in my 40s now and still love it; but when I was a kid, this was the ultimate scary movie, the one by which all others were judged. It seems to me there was another version titled Fall of the House of Usher a few years later based on the same story. The House of Usher from 1960 is the definitive version. If you like Poe movies and/or Vincent Price, this is a MUST SEE!

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Summary: i have to give it a one star
Review: if i could give it a 0 that's exactly what it deserves! this movie has nothing to do with the story and the movie is horrid!

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Summary: Classic Vincent Price
Review: If you're a Vincent Price fan, you need this movie. It's creepy Vincent at his best! Fall of the House of Usher is another great addition to the MGM Midnite Movie line.

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Summary: All Slasher Fiends Pale in Comparison to Roderick Usher
Review: In 1960, director Roger Corman (Bucket of Blood, the Intruder, and the Little Shop of Horrors) released this harrowingly depraved, metaphorically Freudian-laced, statically claustrophobic, and cleverly low budgeted color cinematic interpretation of Edgar Allen Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" (which would later end up being the first installment of Corman's Edgar Allen Poe series of films including Pit and the Pendulum, the Raven, and Masque of the Red Death) internationally to unexpectedly bountiful critical and commercial success then and unswerving fanfare, dedicated admiration, and a classic distinction now.

However, it still seemed improbable that such a cheaply made 15 day film production (which was rather fortunate for Corman because many of his film's from this period were made in 3 to 10 day stints) that was so hastily shot and composed would eventually be considered a vastly significant Gothic Horror Classic by modern standards. Ironically in this case, economy and intense limitations impregnated profuse creativity and storytelling resilience into what might have ordinarily been a typical B-Grade horror flick. Starring Vincent Price (Roderick Usher), Mark Damon (Phillip Winthrop), Myrna Fahey (Madeline Usher), and Harry Ellerbe (Bristol), Roger Corman's The Fall of the House of Usher achieves a resplendent ambiance that still lingers in the minds of its viewer perhaps due precisely to Corman's psychologically drenched perspective of lunacy, the film's gravitating narrative immersion into emotional decay, the camera's manically unpredictable movements that counterbalance the film's sometimes fallible overabundance of dialogue, and the set's eccentric lavishness that evokes a perceivable feeling of malice from the House of Usher itself play immeasurably to the film's vivaciousness.

With all the film's numerous delicious peculiarities, the Fall of the House of Usher's most inestimable crown jewel incessantly continues to be Vincent Price's magnum opus rendering of Roderick Usher. A performance pulsating of giddily fleshed out multi-layered neuroses, Price portrays Roderick Usher an introverted man of apparent sophistication and nuanced civility who due to his family's heinous heritage of evil suffers from excruciating intensities of his senses to an intolerably debilitating degree. Foods too tasty, sights too flashy, or sounds too audible consistently railroad Roderick upon the brink of insanity.

With what may have been a principally thankless antagonistic role, Price's regally discriminating physical mannerisms, vocal inflections of indecisiveness, wide range of distinctive pathos present in his face, and the emotive pitifully visible moral inescapability of his character enhanced Roderick into a startlingly evocative contradiction of intelligence versus fate. With unavoidability eventually claiming the day over free will.

Poetically decisive, structurally lean, and racially noteworthy, Roger Corman's The Fall of the House of Usher remains a grandly enjoyable first-rate horror film that will remain on top of many of it's contemporaries for a long time to come.

As for the Fall of the House of Usher's DVD edition, it only includes a theatrical trailer and a great resourceful commentary track by its director Roger Corman. Not to be missed by any self-respecting horror fan.

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Summary: Not anything like Poe's story
Review: In high school, my one Literature teacher insisted we watch movies instead of read the books like we should have I guess she was lazy or something. Anyway, some movies were good, others so-so, and then there was The Fall of the House of Usher. Well, being a HUGE Edgar Allan Poe fan, I was so excited to be covering one of my favorite Poe stories. Well, of course we watched the movie instead of reading it, which didn't really bother me because I read the story many, many times but I've never seen the movie. I obviously expected too much from it. It was horrible! I guess I didn't like it mostly because there were extra characters and the story was changed. I guess as a movie it's a good one, but if you're a Poe fan, or you've read the story, I suggest not even bothering. It's bad. I still don't understand why my teacher had us watch something so far-fetched from the origional story and try to pass it on as the story itself, but I do know it was a GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT!