One of the great unsung traditions of horror is a character’s external environment reflecting their internal state. It has found its way into films as diverse as Repulsion (1965), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), and Relic (2020) to name just a few. Edgar Allan Poe was hardly the first to use the device, it had been a feature of the Gothic romances popular in the decades before him, but Poe moved it from character-deepening subtext to overt metaphor in his short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
Roger Corman’s 1960 film adaptation of the story latches onto and expands this and several of Poe’s obsessions into what has become a classic of slow-burning terror. The Fall of the House of Usher is the first in what has come to be called the Corman Poe Cycle. These eight films produced between 1960 and 1964 are among the most stylish, intelligent, and elegant films in horror history. One could go so far as to compare them to the Val Lewton produced films of the 1940s—suggestive rather than sensational, psychologically complex, and brimming with atmosphere.
Feeling that the “cheapie” drive-in double feature trend of the 1950s was coming to an end, Corman proposed a radical new direction to his American International Pictures (AIP) bosses James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff. As Corman tells it, he pitched combining the budgets used to make two black and white films to be sold as a double feature into making one film shot in widescreen and color. He suggested basing the first of these on a work of Edgar Allan Poe as it would be assigned reading for every high schooler in America. Of course, God help any students who based their book reports on any of the films Corman produced based on Poe’s stories, but the essence of Poe’s work remains the crux of the Poe Cycle despite its many deviations from the source material.
Corman also felt the pull to create more psychologically entrenched horror films from what he had made previously. As he wrote in his memoir How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime:
“I was also using what I knew of Freud’s dream interpretations and my own analysis to make the picture work on an unconscious, symbolic plane as well. Horror can be a reenactment of some long-suppressed fear that has seized a child, even a baby. A dream. A taboo. A fear gets locked in the subconscious.”
To help him dive into the depths of the subconscious with The Fall of the House of Usher, Corman called upon noted science fiction and horror writer Richard Matheson to adapt the story. Matheson expanded and deepened Poe’s short work greatly, turning it into a four-person drama dealing with fanaticism, oppression, the unraveling of a twisted mind and the effect it has on those around him.
The plot is simple enough with a climax that is revealed in the title itself, but the point of the story is the journey, not the ultimate destination. It begins with young Phillip Winthrop (Mark Damon) riding from Boston to see his fiancé Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey) at her stately country home where she lives with her brother. As he approaches, he sees nothing but barren trees and desolate landscape surrounding a large, dark, and foreboding old house that looks to be on the brink of collapse. When he knocks on the door he is greeted by Bristol (Harry Ellerbe) who has worked as a servant to the Usher family his entire life, more than sixty years. Phillip is told to remove his boots and put on soft house slippers. When we meet the master of the house, Roderick Usher (Vincent Price), we are told why. In a stirring and melancholy monologue, Usher explains the situation.
“Madeline and I are like figures of fine glass—the slightest touch and we may shatter. Both of us suffer from a morbid acuteness of the senses. Mine is the worse for having existed the longer, but both of us are afflicted with it. Any sort of food more exotic than the most pallid mash is unendurable to my taste buds. Any sort of garment other than the softest is agony to my flesh. My eyes are tormented by all but the faintest illumination. Odors assail me constantly. And as I’ve said, sounds of any degree whatsoever inspire me with terror.”
Those familiar with the other films in the cycle will note that this motif returns in other films, notably the final film in the series The Tomb of Ligeia (1964) in which Price plays a man practically allergic to sunlight.
Soon, Phillip is reunited with Madeline who, despite her brother’s insistence, does not seem to be at all afflicted with the same ailments. Instead, we soon realize that Madeline is a bright light slowly being snuffed out by Roderick and his insistence that the Ushers are cursed, and they are both about to die. Now trapped in an oppressive, codependent relationship with her brother, Madeline rages against him, declaring her life to be her own. “Do you hate me so much you want to keep me as a prisoner here?” Roderick claims to love her but only seeks to have complete control over her. It seems, though, that from Roderick’s point of view, he is being protective, preserving her life and keeping the family afflictions at bay as long as possible.
Roderick’s twisted logic and sickened mind seem to manifest themselves in the deterioration of the House itself. During his first night in the House of Usher, Phillip hears creaking and rumbling. He sees a huge fissure in the stone wall outside his window and soon after is nearly killed when a huge chandelier comes crashing to the floor. Later he nearly tumbles to his death when a banister gives way and is nearly crushed by a casket that unexpectedly falls in the family crypt. Roderick claims that these events have all happened because the Usher line has infected the house itself, which is centuries old having been moved to the New World from its original home in England. These happenings could be viewed as the jealousy of Roderick, who clearly wants Madeline for himself, lashing out against Phillip, who would take her from him, through the collapse of the House, again reflecting Usher’s twisted mind. Roderick describes his own ancestry as “a plague of evil” filled with thieves, usurers, merchants of flesh, forgers, assassins, blackmailers, murderers, and slave traders. He believes that the only way to end this evil is for he and Madeline to die, therefore ending the Usher line.
Though not labelled as expressly religious in the film (the production code of the time forbade negative views of any creed), the subtext of Roderick Usher’s character carries a strong undercurrent of religious fanaticism. In the parlance of today, Usher would be an extreme fundamentalist, convinced that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and the children are powerless to break that curse. To him, the blight of the Usher family line is so pervasive that Roderick claims that “the house itself is Evil now,” that the very stones are infected. Phillip pushes back by stating, “I don’t believe in the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children…the House, sir, is neither normal nor abnormal. It is only a house.”
Phillip urges Madeline to return to Boston with him, but her brother’s ideas and the oppressive gloom of the House have begun to infect her too. “Look at me, Phillip. Do I look full of life?” she asks him. He responds as one who sees the psychological abuse that has been perpetrated by her brother. “I remember you as you were in Boston. Do you remember? You were exuberant. You were filled with the joy of living. That’s how you’ll be again when you leave here and become my wife.” After this, she shows him the family crypt complete with two empty caskets Roderick has prepared for her and himself. No wonder she is “obsessed with thoughts of death,” as Bristol tells Phillip. In these sequences, the psychological richness of The House of Usher is on par with the great works of Val Lewton like Cat People (1942) and The Seventh Victim (1943). Phillip becomes insistent, “if you remain here this House will destroy you. I know that your brother has poisoned you with his absurdities. The entire atmosphere of—of sickness and disillusion is his doing. Oh, Madeline, believe me, there’s nothing wrong with you that leaving this House won’t cure.” Unfortunately, it appears to be too late by this point.
Two of Poe’s ongoing obsessions were the untimely death of a beloved young woman and premature burial, The Fall of the House of Usher has both which leads to the most overt horror of the film. After Madeline is sealed in her casket, Roderick refuses any words of comfort from Phillip who says at least she’s in a better place now. Roderick’s fanaticism is so deep that he says he believes Madeline is in hell because there is no peace for any Ushers after death. Soon after the crypt has been sealed, we learn from Bristol that catalepsy (a trance state that appears to be death) runs in her family and that Madeline was buried alive. We also learn the depths of Roderick’s villainy when he describes being able to hear her scratching at the casket lid. When Madeline reappears, she is the image of vengeful madness in her soiled white gown, fingers streaked with blood, and eyes wild with rage as her hair blows in the wind issuing from the broken windows of the House. It is an image that should be touted as one of the greatest in horror cinema. This all leads to the fruition of the promise of the film’s title as Roderick’s internal self and the madness represented there overtakes him and everything, internal and external, is destroyed.
The film was a massive success in 1960, grossing nearly four times its budget, leading directly to Corman’s next Poe film The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), which would prove to be the most financially successful of the entire Cycle. Corman has sometimes said that he worried he was making the same film over and over with this cycle, but though they have much in common, each is remarkably unique. The Premature Burial (1962) is an intimate, twisty drama, The Raven (1963) is a unique horror comedy, and The Masque of the Red Death (1964) reaches levels of the surreal barely glimpsed at by previous entries. With Mike Flanagan’s new Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher available this Halloween season, it’s a great time to look back at this legendary series of films. The Corman Poe Cycle was made by some of the most talented filmmakers of their generation and its greatness is ripe for rediscovery.
In Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Pretorius, played by the inimitable Ernest Thesiger, raises his glass and proposes a toast to Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein—“to a new world of Gods and Monsters.” I invite you to join me in exploring this world, focusing on horror films from the dawn of the Universal Monster movies in 1931 to the collapse of the studio system and the rise of the new Hollywood rebels in the late 1960’s. With this period as our focus, and occasional ventures beyond, we will explore this magnificent world of classic horror. So, I raise my glass to you and invite you to join me in the toast.
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