House of Usher was a series of firsts: It marks the first time that B-movie director Roger Corman was issued a serious budget for a film. It is the first movie shot in color for American International Pictures. Lastly, it is the first production in the AIP Corman/Poe cycle. However, most of these precedents fail as a consequence: Corman, having spent a career at being forced to creativity in order to supplement for his deficient funds was obviously lost what to do with 200,000 in hand. For Poe aficionados, the script by famed screenwriter Richard Matheson borders on blasphemy as the gothic short story writer’s genius is all but removed while only his trademark atmosphere is prostituted as it is placed alongside the mere skeleton of the original tale’s plot. Finally, the burgeoning use of color for AIP, obviously far from honed, makes the dated film all the more temporally lodged in time. Yet, for all its faults, the first film in the Corman/Poe cycle marks a staunch turn in horror along with the Hammer series in that we are permitted to step away from the then trite alien invasion/monster epic on the 1950’s and are ushered toward a more confined, atmospheric tale of foreboding doom.
Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon) arrives from Boston in order to retrieve his fiancée, Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey). However, Philip is frigidly greeted by Madeline’s brother, Roderick (Vincent Price), who discloses that both siblings suffer from hypersensitivity and warns that Philip should not attempt to take Madeline with him when he leaves the following morning due to her catalepsy. When Philip confers with Madeline, she states that she will die shortly. True to her prophecy, she passes away and Roderick places her corpse in the family tombs located in the house’s catacombs. However, Philip quickly discovers that his fiancée wasn’t dead when she was placed in her casket.
For anyone familiar with Edgar Allan Poe, the first sin committed by Corman and Matheson is the naming of the narrator, Philip. The undisclosed narrator is one of the steadfast trademarks of the writer, which was not implemented without express purpose, yet the filmmakers not only consign to this aesthetic blasphemy (considering that many before Corman and many after him have posited such a character on celluloid to masterful effect doesn’t bode well for possible rebuttals) but they also shift the impetus for Philip’s arrival from Roderick requesting his guest to come to the family estate to the character appearing with the agenda of the procuration of his future bride–yet another literary liberty which Matheson takes upon himself. Obviously, by presenting a hint of hope within the narrative, i.e. lovers, the philosophic ramifications of Poe’s vision are thus eradicated but this seems only part and parcel after Corman relegates a title to the Everyman character atop inserting an arbitrary character in the figure of a butler named Bristol (Harry Ellerbe). With all of this in mind, most of the more popular readings of the story, all of which could have been aptly conveyed on film if earnestly attempted, are tossed by the wayside, including the reversal of gender roles between the siblings and the tertiary division of the Aristotelian soul between the Ushers and the house itself. Yet, for whatever reason, the plausibility that incest is occurring within the house is retained in lieu of the less risqué, more cinematic as well as literal, vampiric presentation of the character of Madeline and her brother as her victim.
It seems as if instead of challenging themselves, the filmmakers attempted a more gratuitous, less engaging work using the writer’s title as a selling point. As such, the character of Roderick is symbolized by the color red, which we are bombarded with once we enter the confines of the Usher mansion as the chairs, countless candles, paintings, and curtains bleed onto the screen. In a moment of inspired didacticism, Matheson casts Philip as a brunette in a blue jacket (in contrast to Price’s very blonde dye job) just to make sure the viewer is aware the characters are at odds with one another as Madeline’s room “poignantly” contains a mixture of both color schemes.
The production is an obvious sign of the times (that is, the 1960’s) as we are victim to such unPoeian moments including a dream sequence, copious amounts of blood, and an explosion before the final credits. Yet, for all its flaws, the narrative seeps with morbid ambiance which, given the preceding decade of monster invasions and giant monsters that relied on frights more than atmospheric development, the film is extremely divergent as we are cast into a dead forest, met by a less-than-hospitable host, as–all the while–a fissure in the side of the mansion continues to grow as the rivalry between the male characters proportionally escalates. What results is the signaling of a new era in horror, reigned in by Corman’s Poe adaptations alongside Hammer’s remakes of the Universal Monsters of yesteryear.
Yet my two main complaints outside the literary sacrilege committed by the pen of Matheson is that Madeline is revealed to be alive after her burial midway through the film instead of Corman withholding his macabre trump card until the finale, which, if postponed, would have permitted the two central male figures’ enmity to continue to mount, thus further milking the tension and suspense while paralleling Madeline’s dilemma until its revelation is permitted to coincide with the climax of the former’s antagonism. Secondly, it seems as if Price is merely walking through the role, his sardonic wit and signature caustic intonations being largely absent, which would have given life to this otherwise insipid production.
Roger Corman, due to his tightfisted, but nonetheless original, style of filmmaking–while at a loss at what to do with a reasonable budget–is less at fault with the mess referred to as House of Usher than Richard Matheson’s malicious pen as the latter desecrates one of the masterpieces of American literature. Few would claim that Edgar Allan Poe could successfully make the transition from page to screen without losing something during the voyage, but the screenwriter unrelentingly exploits the gothic writer’s superb tale, casting “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a piece of mere horror pulp instead of earnestly attempting to present some of the genius’s revelatory insights into human predicament. The only saving grace to the production is its timely emergence during a much-needed revitalization period for the genre. That said, if the work would have been released at any other period in cinematic history, I doubt few would have taken notice outside of respected Poe/Corman audiences.
-Egregious Gurnow
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