Whispers of Fear

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1950)

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?"

Escape from the Asylum

GHOST STORY (1974)
KILLER'S MOON (1978)

Even though GHOST STORY won Best Picture at the Sitges and Paris Film Festivals, it was never released theatrically, languishing on late-night TV before resurfacing on home video a decade later under the title MADHOUSE MANSION (to avoid confusion with Peter Straub's best-selling novel Ghost Story, which was filmed in 1981).

STEPHEN Weeks' GHOST STORY and Alan Birkinshaw's KILLER'S MOON are two films that feature Droog-like asylum escapees, but in very different styles. M.R. James meets P.G. Woodhouse in GHOST STORY, where three mismatched ex-university chaps are haunted in a stately house. Weeks' slow-burning chiller is set in 1930s England, where McFayden (Murray Melvin) invites former college associates Duller (Vivian Mackerell) and Talbot (Larry Dann) to spend a few days at his recently inherited isolated mansion. McFayden eventually reveals rumours that the house is haunted and it is the sensible Talbot - rather than spiritualist Duller - who becomes susceptible to a demonic antique doll and a supernatural gateway which shows Robert (Leigh Lawson) incarcerate his sister Sophy (Marianne Faithfull) in a nearby asylum for incestuous desires. The institution is run by Dr Borden (Anthony Bate) and Matron (Barbara Shelley), and when Sophy's former servant Miss Rennie (Penelope Keith) attempts to free her, the inmates (all played with relish by members of a hippy commune) accidentally escape and run riot.

Tired of behind-the-scenes complications on I, MONSTER and GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, Weeks co-wrote, produced and directed the picture under his own "Stephen Weeks Company," so he would have full artistic control. Shooting most of the film in South India gives GHOST STORY a fittingly otherworldly detachment, where the colonial architecture and sun-baked locations act as a backdrop to an exaggerated, dream-state Englishness which is further enhanced by its time-lapping narrative and an atmospheric, experimental score by Pink Floyd collaborator Ron Geesin. The performances are all first rate, especially a post-Rolling Stones Faithfull - who arrived five weeks late on the shoot with her heroin-dealing boyfriend in tow - perfectly cast as the doomed innocent, and GHOST STORY can also boast the only major role of the late Mackerell, Bruce Robinson's inspiration for WITHNAIL AND I. Unsurprisingly, the actor talks like Richard E. Grant, and you can hear traces of Withnail in his indignation at being served a jam sandwich.  

Imagine a film fused with the backwoods sleaze of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, CARRY ON CAMPING, Linda Hayden's sister Jane, and a shot of the old ultra-violence, you would arrive at KILLER'S MOON.

In comparison, KILLER'S MOON is a notorious, badly misconceived slice of Britsploitation. A coach populated by the kind of people who only would appear in 1970s British films - a driver from ON THE BUSES, prim and proper school teachers, and a group of school girls all played by actresses in their twenties - are on their way to a singing contest in Edinburgh when their vehicle brakes down on a backwoods country road. A local groundskeeper leads them to a hotel where they can spend the night, run by Mrs May (Hilda Braid). The bus driver (comedian Chubby Oates) isn’t so lucky, as he meets four men as he goes back to sleep on his stranded vehicle: Mr Smith (Nigel Gregory), Mr Muldoon (Paul Rattee), Mr Jones (Peter Spraggon), and Mr Trubshaw (David Jackson). The men are escaped mental patients in an induced LSD-addled state, who are convinced they are living a shared dream in which they are free to rape and murder.

Exactly why this LSD state is good therapy for the escapees is one of the film's many mysteries. In fact, it is difficult to conclude what is the most unbelievable element: is it the fact that the film actually enjoyed a theatrical release after being granted an uncut X certificate by the BBFC, or is it the debacle was co-scripted by Birkinshaw's sister Fay Weldon, who goes uncredited. Or is it the crass dialogue, which includes "all men want to kill their mothers - isn't that what they say?" and "look, you were only raped. As long as you don't tell anyone about it, you'll be alright." Fittingly for such a demented release, Hannah - a three-legged Doberman Pinscher - gives the best performance. Supposedly attacked by the escapees at the beginning, in reality the dog was awarded the canine V.C. in 1974 for defending her master in an armed robbery - during which she was shot and had to have a leg amputated. Hannah's bravery hit the headlines when her owner - the landlord of the Cheeky Chappie public house in Brixton - was held at gun-point after closing time.

Santa Slayer

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS (1984)

“Do you think we might have a psychopath on our hands?” Wearing a distorting plastic mask, a hooded killer is terrorising London Santa's in Britain's answer to the American slasher craze of the 1980s.

WITH a scene of 198 naked, elderly men corralled in an electrified reindeer pen, the release of Finnish horror RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is set to rekindle interest in the sleazy sub-genre of mean-spirited Christmas cinema. Origins of this particular type of film can be traced back to the Mexican-made SANTA CLAUS in 1959, which displays both a nauseatingly wholesome attitude to its hero and near surreal art direction. It features Santa battling Satan, who sends bad dreams to innocent children and inspires them to break windows and steal toys. The original killer Santa appeared in the celebrated And All Through the House segment of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, before the festive season was the setting for two influential slashers released in 1974: the sorority-house based BLACK CHRISTMAS and the giallo-like SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT. The most notorious, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is actually nothing special, but came along at the wrong time and felt the brunt of a slasher-weary protest movement during its 1980s explosion. Rather than following the mold of these previous entries, DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS makes Santa the victim, focusing on the search for a London serial killer who slays Shopping Centre Father Christmas's.

The film is associated with a long list of cult personalities. Producers Stephen Minasian and Dick Randall had previously been involved with FRIDAY THE 13TH and PIECES; Derek Ford, a director and writer of sex films throughout the 1960s and 70s, wrote the screenplay; Alan Birkinshaw, who helmed the notorious KILLER'S MOON - here credited as Al McGoohan - is "assistant director"; and Des Dolan (the guiding light behind the Go Video label) provides the score. Fallen star Edmund Purdom heads the cast as Scotland Yard detective Ian Harris, and set dressing is provided by Caroline Munro cameoing as herself, and sex starlets Pat Astley (as a nude model) and Paula Meadows (as the London Dungeon secretary). In his final film Alan Lake plays journalist Giles, a fittingly seedy role to end a seedy life; a notorious heavy drinker who had punched an extra on the set of THE PLAYBIRDS, he was most famous for being the third husband - and attempted murderer - of Diana Dors, before shooting himself in 1984.

Why has a killer such an apparent and vile disgust for Santa and the festive holiday? The answer is supplied in this obligatory childhood flash-back scene.

This role call of suspect talent could not prevent DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS suffering one of the most troubled shoots in British cinema history. The film took two years to complete and scenes were reshot and rearranged endlessly, with Birkinshaw, Ford, Purdom and editor Ray Selfe all taking turns in the director's chair. What eventually surfaces looks suitably filthy and is technically inept, but at least the body count is kept consistent and the deaths bloody and inventive; one Father Christmas has his penis cut off with a razor, while another has his face thrust into roasting chestnuts. There are also scenes that exude a sleazy charm: the photographer snapping nudes in his grubby bedsit could have come straight from any British smut-fest of the previous decade, and Munro's glittery performance of an instantly forgettable song (Warrior of Love) concludes with a scream when a Santa with a machete in his face comes up through the stage trapdoor.