House of Usher(1960)
NR
07/20/1960 (US)Horror, Drama1h 19m6.7
"Edgar Allan Poe's demonic tale of The Ungodly... The Evil House of Usher"
Overview
Convinced that his family’s blood is tainted by generations of evil, Roderick Usher is hell-bent on destroying his sister Madeline’s wedding to prevent the cursed Usher bloodline from extending any further. When her fiancé, Philip Winthrop, arrives at the crumbling family estate to claim his bride, Roderick goes to ruthless lengths to keep them apart.
Richard Matheson
Writer
Roger Corman
Director
Top Billed Cast
Where to Watch
Stream
Rent
Buy
Powered by JustWatch
Popularity Trend
Last 30 Days
This chart shows the popularity trend over the past 30 days.
Media
House of Usher (Trailer 1960)
Trailer
The History Of The Usher Family
Clip
Family Coffins
Clip
Strange Noises In The House
Clip
Philip Comes To Visit
Clip
Mary Lambert on HOUSE OF USHER
Featurette
Social
J
A review by John Chard
8.0
Written on April 24, 2019
Fissures of concrete and of the mind...
Phillip Winthrop has been searching for his missing fiancée, Madeline Usher. Tracking her down to the Usher family castle, he finds that Madeline is held strangely under the spell of her brother Roderick. The house itself also seems to be laden heavy with a mystical sense of dread and impending death. Can Phillip persuade Madeline to leave this crumbling abode? will he himself be at the mercy of Roderick and the Usher curse?
Filmed in glorious CinemaScope with vivid colour photography from Floyd Crosby, based on a story from dark master writer Edgar Allen Poe, boasting Vincent Price in the lead role, and directed by Roger Corman with a budget worthy of his vision, House Of Usher (The Fall Of) is a highly eerie Gothic piece of work.
Delightfully weird, the film covers a myriad of things to unease the watching public, curses, incest, burial alive, paranoia and sadistic intentions all sit together with Corman and Richard Matheson's Gothic leanings. In fact a huge amount of credit for the pic's subsequent success at the box office must go to Matheson, who took Poe's skeleton story and cloaked it with the previous mentioned strands to fully flesh out the piece.
On the surface the picture probably shouldn't have worked, basically it's just four characters moping around talking grimly and waiting for the inevitable, but it's the house itself that is the story's major player. Corman utilising his widescreen trait to make the house disjointed and creepy in every frame, with the use of sounds also helping to keep the pervading sense of doom a very real threat - the house does in fact become the monster of the piece.
All is not well in the House Of Usher, I hope you feel it as well. Amen. 8/10
Phillip Winthrop has been searching for his missing fiancée, Madeline Usher. Tracking her down to the Usher family castle, he finds that Madeline is held strangely under the spell of her brother Roderick. The house itself also seems to be laden heavy with a mystical sense of dread and impending death. Can Phillip persuade Madeline to leave this crumbling abode? will he himself be at the mercy of Roderick and the Usher curse?
Filmed in glorious CinemaScope with vivid colour photography from Floyd Crosby, based on a story from dark master writer Edgar Allen Poe, boasting Vincent Price in the lead role, and directed by Roger Corman with a budget worthy of his vision, House Of Usher (The Fall Of) is a highly eerie Gothic piece of work.
Delightfully weird, the film covers a myriad of things to unease the watching public, curses, incest, burial alive, paranoia and sadistic intentions all sit together with Corman and Richard Matheson's Gothic leanings. In fact a huge amount of credit for the pic's subsequent success at the box office must go to Matheson, who took Poe's skeleton story and cloaked it with the previous mentioned strands to fully flesh out the piece.
On the surface the picture probably shouldn't have worked, basically it's just four characters moping around talking grimly and waiting for the inevitable, but it's the house itself that is the story's major player. Corman utilising his widescreen trait to make the house disjointed and creepy in every frame, with the use of sounds also helping to keep the pervading sense of doom a very real threat - the house does in fact become the monster of the piece.
All is not well in the House Of Usher, I hope you feel it as well. Amen. 8/10
