“It’s a mad house, a mad house!”
In the late 1830s, a man from Boston (Mark Damon) visits the ancestral manor of his fiancé out in the country (Myrna Fahey), but he finds her curiously ill and her older brother nigh insane (Vincent Price). What’s going on?
"House of Usher" (1960) was the first of AIP’s gothic horror flicks of the 60s inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, eight of which were done by Roger Corman, but others were filmed by different directors, like “The Conqueror Worm” (1968), aka “Witchfinder General,” and “The Oblong Box” (1969). Others were Poe-ish in ambiance, yet had nothing to do with the works of Poe, like Corman & Coppola’s “The Terror” (1963).
Speaking of which, most of these flicks didn’t follow Poe’s stories/poems very closely despite his name being linked to them. “The Oblong Box,” for instance, features a totally different story. Meanwhile the title of “The Conqueror Worm” was tacked on to “Witchfinder General” in America, along with a quote from Poe’s poem, merely to sell tickets.
This one is closer to Poe’s actual story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” although scriptwriter Richard Matheson wisely throws in some romance involving the protagonist and Roderick’s sister.
While it was successful at the box office and kicked off the series, I found it (melo)dramatically tedious and one-dimensional despite the colorful gothic atmosphere. I suggest seeing “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1961), “The Terror,” “The Conqueror Worm,” “The Masque of the Red Death” (1964), “The Raven” (1963) and “Tomb of Ligeia” (1964) first. If you want more, check this one out too.
AIP was basically the American version of Hammer in England, so devotees of Hammer horror should appreciate it.
The movie runs 1 hour, 19 minutes, and was shot at Raleigh Studios, Hollywood, with the fire-charred land done in Hollywood Hills.
GRADE: C+
