THE HOUSE OF USHER (1989)
The Hag of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. The sequence where she approaches a hapless gardener with a raised knife is timelessly eerie, her distinctive lines looking like a Berni Wrightson comic panel.
EDGAR Allan Poe's 1839 short story The Fall of the House of Usher intertwines many Gothic threads, in particular madness, isolation and metaphysical identity. The last days of the Usher family are symbolised by a disintegrating mansion house; indeed, its windows are described as "eye-like" twice in the first paragraph, and the central crack of the building can be associated with a split personality. On the printed page Roderick Usher, his twin sister Madeline and the house all share one common gloom and guilt-laden soul, with the notion of a crumbling and haunted construct dating back to a tale which largely defined the Gothic genre itself, Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. Atmospheric and emotional, Poe's story is given laden treatment in the two film adaptations under consideration here.
Ten years before the Roger Corman/Vincent Price version of Poe's story, THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER was released by GIB Films (named after the photographer, producer and director here, George Ivan Barnett). Actually made in 1947, it uses a Gentlemen's club as a framing device ("talking of horror stories, those of Edgar Allan Poe take quite a lot of beating"), before discarding most of the source. When Jonathan (Irving Steen) visits friend Lord Roderick Usher (Kaye Tendeter) at his English mansion, he discovers that Usher and his sister Madeline (Gwen Watford) are both forlorn shells of human existence. By ignoring the nuances of Poe's association between the house and the Ushers, and making the family illness the result of a curse from their mother's lover, the production is instantly transported to the stilted melodrama of 1940s horror mysteries (replete with a creepy hag (Lucy Pavy), homemade torture chamber and a severed head with all the effectiveness of a Halloween mask).
Oliver Reed in THE HOUSE OF USHER. Two years later, Reed would appear in Stuart Gordon's take on THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM.
Despite the final third interpolating many of Poe's elements, by this stage there are more questions than answers: was Madeline slowly poisoned and buried alive? Is Roderick mad and imagining the end of the film? Why would a medical doctor so freely attribute a family illness to a curse, or not have institutionalised the mother? As we return to The Gresham Club, members are as perplexed as the viewer ("your guess is as good as mine.") With such uneven exposition and the unintentionally hilarious club, one wonders if the script is intended to whimsically play with the audience.
Alan Birkinshaw's modern adaptation THE HOUSE OF USHER not only acts as a metaphor for disintegrating buildings and psyches, but also crumbling reputations. Oliver Reed whispers his way through as Roderick Usher, and Donald Pleasence is the demented Walter, Roderick's brother who is locked in the attic with his drill-hand. LA hairstylist Molly McNulty (a somnolent Romy Windsor) accompanies English boyfriend Ryan Usher (Rufus Swart) to visit his family estate, but are involved in a car crash when two ghostly children appear in the middle of the road. Faking Ryan's death, Roderick - who suffers from hyper-acuteness to the senses - plans to keep Molly a prisoner in the house, to impregnate her and continue the Usher line.
Donald Pleasence in THE HOUSE OF USHER. A year later, Pleasence would appear in the Edgar Allan Poe-inspired BURIED ALIVE.
This US/UK co-production, filmed in South Africa, was one of many Poe film revivals of the late 1980s and early 1990s. THE HOUSE OF USHER is cheap but certainly not cheerful, a mishmash of dream sequences, under-developed ideas and gore (an overstepping family doctor is castrated by a rat, faux hand in meat mincer, head on platter et al). The robust Reed is woefully miscast, and it is left to Pleasence is give an insane star turn, literally dancing through the corridors with his budget power attachment. This leaves the rest of the cast in a nonsensical state of their own, typified by cook Mrs Derrick (Anne Stadi) uttering the immortal line to Molly: "I know you have a lot on your mind, but while you're here, can you do something with my hair?"