House of Usher (film)

House of Usher
Theatrical release poster by Reynold Brown
Directed byRoger Corman
Screenplay byRichard Matheson
Based on"The Fall of the House of Usher"
by Edgar Allan Poe
Produced byRoger Corman
Starring
CinematographyFloyd Crosby
Edited byAnthony Carras
Music byLes Baxter
Color processEastmancolor
Production
company
Alta Vista Productions
Distributed byAmerican International Pictures
Release date
  • June 18, 1960 (1960-06-18)
[1]
Running time
79 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$300,000[2]
Box office$1,450,000 (US/Canada)(rentals)[3][4]
213,785 admissions (France)[5]

House of Usher (also known as The Fall of the House of Usher) is a 1960 American gothic horror film directed by Roger Corman and written by Richard Matheson from the 1839 short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. The film was the first of eight Corman/Poe feature films and stars Vincent Price, Myrna Fahey, Mark Damon and Harry Ellerbe.

In 2005, the film was listed with the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[6][7]

Plot

Advertisement from 1960

Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon) travels to the House of Usher, a desolate mansion surrounded by a murky swamp, to see his fiancée Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey). Madeline's brother Roderick (Vincent Price) opposes Philip's intentions, telling the young man that the Usher family is afflicted by a cursed bloodline which has driven all their ancestors to madness and even affected the mansion itself, causing the surrounding countryside to become desolate. Roderick foresees the family evils being propagated into future generations with a marriage to Madeline and vehemently discourages the union. Philip becomes increasingly desperate to take Madeline away; desperate to get away from her brother, she agrees to leave with him.

During a heated argument with Roderick, Madeline suddenly falls into catalepsy, a condition in which its sufferers appear dead. Roderick knows that she is still alive, but convinces Winthrop that she is dead and rushes to have her entombed in the family crypt beneath the house. As Philip is preparing to leave following the entombment, the butler, Bristol (Harry Ellerbe), lets slip that Madeline suffered from catalepsy.

Madeline revives inside her sealed coffin, goes insane from being buried alive, and breaks free. Philip rips open Madeline's coffin and finds it empty. He desperately searches for her in the winding passages of the crypt but eventually collapses. Madeline confronts Roderick and attacks him, throttling him to death. Suddenly the house, already aflame due to fallen coals from the fire, begins to collapse, and the two Ushers and Bristol are consumed by the falling house, ending the Usher bloodline. Philip alone escapes and watches the burning house sink into the swampy land surrounding it. The film ends with the final words of Poe's story: "... and the deep and dank tarn closed (sullenly and) silently over the fragments of the 'House of Usher'".

Cast

Production

The film was important in the history of American International Pictures which up until then had specialized in making low budget black and white films to go out on double bills.[2] The market for this kind of movie was in decline so AIP decided to gamble on making a larger budgeted film in color.[citation needed]

The film was announced in February 1959 and was dubbed the company's "most ambitious film to date".[8]

A number of other companies announced Poe projects around this time: Alex Gordon had a version of Masque of the Red Death, Fox had Murders in the Rue Morgue, Ben Bogeus The Gold Bug, and Universal The Raven.[9]

It was shot in 15 days.[1] The budget was $300,000, $100,000 of which went to star Vincent Price.[1] Production designer Daniel Haller purchased sets and props from Universal Studios for $2,500 and redressed them to create the Usher mansion.[10] The misshapen trees seen on the Usher estate were actual trees which had burned in a fire in the Hollywood Hills.[11] To depict the burning manse, Corman had two cameramen film the burning of a barn in Orange County.[11]

House of Usher made $1 million in the summer of 1960.[11]

Score

In February 2011 Intrada made the world premiere release of the Les Baxter score from music-only elements in mono.[12][13]

No.TitleLength
1."Overture"3:03
2."Main Title"2:00
3."Roderick Usher"4:02
4."Madeline Usher"2:50
5."Tormented"2:24
6."Lute Song"1:00
7."Reluctance"3:58
8."The Sleepwalker"4:12
9."The Vault"2:36
10."The Ancestors"2:58
11."House of Evil"4:53
12."Catalepsy"4:13
13."Pallbearers"2:03
14."Buried Alive"8:14
15."Fall of The House of Usher"13:50
Total length:1:02:16

Reception

Eugene Archer, in the September 15, 1960 edition of The New York Times wrote, "American-International, with good intentions of presenting a faithful adaption of Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale of the macabre...blithely ignored the author's style. Poe's prose style, as notable for ellipsis as imagery, compressed or eliminated the expository passages habitual to nineteenth-century fiction and invited the readers' imaginations to participate." He further opined, "Under the low-budget circumstances, Vincent Price and Myrna Fahey should not be blamed for portraying the decadent Ushers with arch affectation, nor Mark Damon held to account for the traces of Brooklynese that creep into his stiffly costumed impersonation of the mystified interloper."[14]

Other reviewers have been kinder, however; a positive assessment in Variety declared, "It's not precisely the Edgar Allan Poe short story known to high school English that emerges in House of Usher, but it's a reasonably diverting and handsomely mounted variation ... The film has been mounted with care, skill and flair by producer-director Roger Corman and his staff."[15] Harrison's Reports called it "fairly good entertainment. Although a bit too wordy, the abundant gore, photo gimmicks, special effects and unusual theme, help keep the viewer on his seat's edge."[16] The Monthly Film Bulletin praised the film's "unusually resourceful" camerawork as well as "an excellent central performance" from Vincent Price, finding that although Corman's direction "does not suggest a great stylist in the making, he brings off the big scenes with some invention, as well as making the most of what was probably only a medium-sized budget."[17] Betty Martin of the Los Angeles Times called it "a better than average horror film – if that's saying much", adding that Price "does a masterful job" in his role.[18]

House of Usher has an 84% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 50 reviews and a critics consensus: "Scary, strange, and maybe a little silly, House of Usher represents an early high mark for Vincent Price and a career triumph for director Roger Corman."[19]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Eagan 2010, p. 565.
  2. ^ a b Mark McGee, Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures, McFarland, 1996 p. 179
  3. ^ "Rental Potentials of 1960", Variety, 4 January 1961 p. 47. Please note figures are rentals as opposed to total gross.
  4. ^ "Poe & Bikinis". Variety. 9 October 1963. p. 17.
  5. ^ Box office information for Roger Corman films in France at Box Office Story
  6. ^ "Librarian of Congress Adds 25 Films to National Film Registry". Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Retrieved 2020-10-30.
  7. ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Retrieved 2020-10-30.
  8. ^ Scheuer, Philip K. (Feb 13, 1959). "Chase Still Critical Element in Comedy: Tempo and Crescendo Applied by Veteran Norman McLeod". Los Angeles Times. p. B7.
  9. ^ Murray Schumach (Aug 21, 1959). "Poe Scenarists Tell a Sad Tale: Couple Working on 1 of 6 Films Being Adapted From Writer Encounter Pitfalls". New York Times. p. 12.
  10. ^ Eagan 2010, pp. 565–566.
  11. ^ a b c Eagan 2010, p. 566.
  12. ^ CD-page on Intrada's site
  13. ^ Official announcement
  14. ^ House of Usher review New York Times Retrieved 23 September 2008.
  15. ^ "House of Usher". Variety: 8. June 29, 1960.
  16. ^ "'House of Usher' with Vincent Price, Mark Damon and Myrna Fahey". Harrison's Reports: 106. July 2, 1960.
  17. ^ "The House of Usher". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 27 (322): 151. November 1960.
  18. ^ Martin, Betty (July 21, 1960). "Horror and Hoke Keys to 'Usher.'" Los Angeles Times. Part III, p. 10.
  19. ^ "The Fall of the House of Usher". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved August 18, 2022.

Bibliography

Wikiquote has quotations related to House of Usher (film).
Wikimedia Commons has media related to House of Usher (film).

Read other articles:

National Historic Sites of Canada

Heritage registers in Canada NHSC redirects here. For other uses, see NHSC (disambiguation). BC AB SK MB ON QC NB PE NS NL YT NT NU Click on a province/territory for a list of its National Historic Sites National Historic Sites of Canada (French: Lieux historiques nationaux du Canada) are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being of national historic significance.[1]&#...

 

 

AMPA

For other uses, see AMPA (disambiguation). AMPA Names IUPAC name 2-Amino-3-(3-hydroxy-5-methyl-isoxazol-4-yl)propanoic acid Identifiers CAS Number 74341-63-2 N 3D model (JSmol) Interactive image ChEMBL ChEMBL276815 N ChemSpider 1184 Y DrugBank DB02057 Y IUPHAR/BPS 4131 MeSH AMPA PubChem CID 1221 CompTox Dashboard (EPA) DTXSID20868301 InChI InChI=1S/C7H10N2O4/c1-3-4(6(10)9-13-3)2-5(8)7(11)12/h5H,2,8H2,1H3,(H,9,10)(H,11,12) YKey: UUDAMDVQRQNNHZ-UHFFFAOYSA-N YI...

 

 

Mainan

Artikel ini tidak memiliki referensi atau sumber tepercaya sehingga isinya tidak bisa dipastikan. Tolong bantu perbaiki artikel ini dengan menambahkan referensi yang layak. Tulisan tanpa sumber dapat dipertanyakan dan dihapus sewaktu-waktu.Cari sumber: Mainan – berita · surat kabar · buku · cendekiawan · JSTOR Boneka beruang Tedi. Acara mainan di Johor, Malaysia. Mainan mobil-mobilan. Mainan (Inggris: Toy) adalah sesuatu yang digunakan dalam permai...

KYQX

Radio station in Weatherford, Texas KYQXWeatherford, TexasBroadcast areaWeatherford and VicinityFrequency89.3 MHzBrandingPure CountryProgrammingFormatClassic CountryOwnershipOwnerCSSI Non-Profit Educational Broadcasting CorporationSister stationsKEQXHistoryFirst air date1986Call sign meaningQXFM BrandingTechnical informationFacility ID62040ClassAERP340 wattsHAAT158 metersLinksWebsiteqxfm.com KYQX (89.3 FM) is a community radio station licensed to Weatherford, Texas. The station serves the are...

 

 

Domestic partnership in the United States

Part of the LGBT rights seriesLegal status ofsame-sex unions Marriage Andorra Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Canada Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Denmark Ecuador Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Iceland Ireland Luxembourg Malta Mexico Netherlands1 New Zealand2 Norway Portugal Slovenia South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan United Kingdom3 United States4 Uruguay Recognized Israel5 Civil unions andregistered partnerships Bolivia Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Hungary Ita...

 

 

Strictly Dishonorable (1931 film)

1931 film Strictly Dishonorable1930 advertisementDirected byJohn M. StahlScreenplay byGladys LehmanBased onStrictly Dishonorable1929 playby Preston SturgesProduced byCarl Laemmle Jr.John M. StahlStarringPaul LukasSidney FoxLewis StoneCinematographyKarl FreundJackson RoseEdited byArthur TavaresMaurice PivarMusic byGiuseppe BecceJ. S. ZamecnikDistributed byUniversal PicturesRelease dateDecember 26, 1931Running time91 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglish Strictly Dishonorable is a 1931 Ame...

Farkaslyuk

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: Farkaslyuk – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Village in Northern Hungary, HungaryFarkaslyukVillage FlagCoat of armsFarkaslyukLocation of FarkaslyukCoordinates: 48°11′11″N 20�...

 

 

Bibliography of Donald Trump

This article is part of a series aboutDonald Trump Business and personal Business career The Trump Organization wealth tax returns Media career The Apprentice bibliography filmography Eponyms Family Foundation American football Golf Honors Public image in popular culture SNL parodies handshakes Legal affairs Sexual misconduct allegations Nicknames pseudonyms Racial views Comments on John McCain Conspiracy theories Residences Rhetoric 45th President of the United States Presidency timeline Tr...

 

 

Construction of the World Trade Center

Construction project in New York City (1968–1987) This article is about the construction of the original World Trade Center. For the construction of the new World Trade Center after the September 11 attacks, see World Trade Center (2001–present) § Rebuilding. World Trade Center1 World Trade Center under construction in 1970General informationArchitectural styleNew Formalism (Buildings 1, 2, 4, 5, 6)LocationLower Manhattan, New York CityGroundbreakingAugust 5, 1966; 57 years ...

Тибетская ложносойка

Тибетская ложносойка Научная классификация Домен:ЭукариотыЦарство:ЖивотныеПодцарство:ЭуметазоиБез ранга:Двусторонне-симметричныеБез ранга:ВторичноротыеТип:ХордовыеПодтип:ПозвоночныеИнфратип:ЧелюстноротыеНадкласс:ЧетвероногиеКлада:АмниотыКлада:ЗавропсидыКлас...

 

 

Housing First

Providing permanent housing as a policy against homelessness This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: Housing First – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) Part of a series onLiving spaces MainHouse (detached) • Apartment • Housing...

 

 

Immigration

Movement of people into another country or region to which they are not native For the practice of checking travellers' documents when entering a country, see border control. For the album by Show-Ya, see Immigration (album). Not to be confused with emigration or migration. Immigrant redirects here. For other uses, see Immigrant (disambiguation). Net migration rates per 1,000 people in 2023. On net people travel from redder countries to bluer countries. Legal status of persons Birthright Birt...

Bostall Heath and Woods

Gorse alongside the Green Chain Walk on Bostall Heath A path through the eastern side of the woods Bostall Heath and Woods is an area of 159.1 hectares of woodland with areas of heathland located in the Royal Borough of Greenwich ward of Abbey Wood, west of Lesnes Abbey Woods in southeast London. The area to the south of the A206 (Bostall Hill) is Bostall Woods; to the north is Bostall Heath. Background The wood is owned and maintained by the Royal Borough of Greenwich. This excludes the Coo...

 

 

Bagdad

BaghdadKotaبغداد BaġdādNegara IrakProvinsiBagdadDidirikan762PendiriAbu Jafar al-MansourPemerintahan • BadanBadan Penasehat Kota Bagdad • Wali kotaSaber Nabet Al-EssawiLuas • Total673 km2 (260 sq mi) • Luas daratan673 km2 (260 sq mi) • Luas perairan0 km2 (0 sq mi)Ketinggian34 m (111,54 ft)Populasi • Perkiraan (2018)8.126.755[1] • Ke...

 

 

Sisimiut

Sisimiut HolsteinsborgPusat kota, Teluk Kangerluarsunnguaq dan massif Palasip QaqqaaKoordinat: 66°56′20″N 53°40′20″W / 66.93889°N 53.67222°W / 66.93889; -53.67222Koordinat: 66°56′20″N 53°40′20″W / 66.93889°N 53.67222°W / 66.93889; -53.67222Negara Kerajaan DenmarkNegara bagian GreenlandMunisipalitas QeqqataPermukiman pertama2500 SMPendirian1764Pemerintahan[1][2] • Wali kotaHermann Bert...

Zen

Meditation-based school of Mahāyāna Buddhism For other uses, see Zen (disambiguation). Zenshu redirects here. For the TV series, see Zenshu (TV series). For city in South Korea formerly known as Zenshu, see Jeonju. ZenChinese nameTraditional Chinese禪Simplified Chinese禅TranscriptionsStandard MandarinHanyu PinyinChánWade–GilesCh'an2IPA[ʈʂʰǎn]HakkaPha̍k-fa-sṳSàmYue: CantoneseJyutpingSim4Southern MinHokkien POJSiânMiddle ChineseMiddle ChinesedʑjenVietnamese nameVietna...

 

 

List of United States Navy ships: Q–R

USS Queenfish (SSN-651) Ships of the United States NavyShips in current service Current ships Ships grouped alphabetically A–B C D–F G–H I–K L M N–O P Q–R S T–V W–Z Ships grouped by type Aircraft carriers Airships Amphibious warfare ships Auxiliaries Battlecruisers Battleships Cruisers Destroyers Destroyer escorts Destroyer leaders Escort carriers Frigates Hospital ships Littoral combat ships Mine warfare vessels Monitors Oilers Patrol vessels Registered civilian vessels Sail...

 

 

Theo Snelders

Dutch former professional footballer (born 1963) This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous.Find sources: Theo Snelders – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2010) (Learn how and when to ...

1213 en santé et médecine

Chronologies Données clés 1210 1211 1212  1213  1214 1215 1216Décennies :1180 1190 1200  1210  1220 1230 1240Siècles :XIe XIIe  XIIIe  XIVe XVeMillénaires :-Ier Ier  IIe  IIIe Chronologies thématiques Religion (,) et * Croisades   Science () et Santé et médecine   Terrorisme Calendriers Romain Chinois Grégorien Julien Hébraïque Hindou Hégirien Persan Républicain modifier Années de la santé et de la médecine ...

 

 

Gradi militari della Corea del Sud

I gradi militari sudcoreani rappresentano le insegne militari impiegate dalle Forze armate sudcoreane. Nelle forze armate sudcoreane, i ranghi rientrano in una delle quattro categorie: commissario, maresciallo, sottufficiale e arruolato, in ordine decrescente di autorità. I ranghi degli ufficiali sono suddivisi nei livelli di Janggwan (generale), Yeonggwan (ufficiale di terra) e Wi-gwan (ufficiale minore). La maggior parte dei gradi militari delle truppe della Corea del Sud sono identiche a ...