Scarecrow-88 Rough around the edges 40s Brit version of the Usher Poe story has some variable, stagy acting and a rather awkward opening (English gentlemen gathered at a retirement club decide to read a ghoulish story, and choose the Usher story for the night), but the stark, B&W photography centered around a gloomy, darkened manor in the middle of a countryside nowhere is a knockout. Add a crazed ancestor inside a temple soon to be loose with a creepy mask (she wields a mean knife, too) and a potential buried-alive scenario that leads to the one trapped in a coffin entombed to break free with revenge on the mind thanks to a possible poisoning, there are positives to take from this lesser known version of the Poe story. I think with better actors this could have been a real winner, but the presentation (absent the creaky score which is just too choppy) is aesthetically striking enough to perhaps at least offer an alternative to (but not an improvement of) Corman's famous version.A young man visits his "melancholy chum" at his ancestral castle and encounters unexpected horror. He's motivated by Roderick Usher to follow him and his butler (with knowledge of secrets regarding the family the children now alive at the estate couldn't have possibly imagined) to a temple which actually serves as the prison of a mad relative who could prove to be quite homicidal if turned loose on the world. Roderick's sister Madeleine is in love with Roderick's friend, Jonathan, trying to locate him when the butler and Roderick return without him (due to Jonathan walking into a bear trap and being left to face the crazy woman alone). Maddy is inadvertently responsible for the mad woman's release, soon returning home only to fall prey to an abrupt illness that takes her life. When Roderick begins to suspect she didn't die, the guilt torments him into his own mania. Jonathan is party to all of this, with the butler also trying to get involved in the safety of Roderick. It doesn't end well for most of them in this bleak portrait of a family falling to ruins due to sins of the past. The butler insists that burning alive the mad woman's head will relinquish the curse of the Ushers, so Roderick and Jonathan oblige him in the attempt to do so. Well, that doesn't go according to plan. The mad woman in the temple is photographed with grim touches that give her quite a look that coincides well with the morose atmosphere of the castle and rural grounds.It ends with the home struck by lightning, crumbling as Jonathan looks on. He has seen those very close to him destroyed. It is an appropriate conclusion, particularly considering the tragedy that seems destined to envelope the Ushers.

robertguttman The plot of this curious version of the Poe classic differs considerably from the original story, including a number of plot elements and characters that are not in Poe's story at all. Some of the acting seems almost amateurish at times, and the entire production was clearly carried out on a very small budget. However, where this film excels is in its' sense of creepy atmosphere. Indeed, in that respect it reminded me of Carl Theodore Dryer's 1932 film, "Vampyr". Those who have seen that most peculiar horror film will understand to what I refer. In that film, as well as in this one, style and atmosphere completely dominate character and story to the point where the latter two elements almost cease to matter at all. Both "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Vampyr" are prime examples of how much a creative director can achieve even without benefit of special effects or a large budget.

SSteveL This film might be worth a look for horror buffs and Poe completists, but others beware.There are a few highlights. A framing device has Poe's title story being read aloud at a modern-day men's club. The sequence in which the narrator rides to the Usher house is faithful to Poe's description of the countryside. The creeping hag (not in the original tale) could be nightmare fuel for sensitive viewers.Flaws include flat acting, terrible additional (non-Poe) dialogue, shots that drag on pointlessly, and illogical character behaviour (e.g., no search for, or even concern about, the hag intruder). Absurdly, the narrating character disappears early in the story and is absent for half the film, a 30-minute segment which consists of a silly, incongruous, gratuitous subplot cooked up by the screenwriters (and which resembles Joseph Payne Brennan's 1963 short story "The Horror at Chilton Castle", itself perhaps based on a legend of Scotland's Glamis Castle) and crudely shoehorned into Poe's narrative to explain the family curse.There were strange errors. The exterior of the house, for example, is represented by three distinct buildings, one of which is clearly revealed as a model (and which differs in appearance from the other two) in the climax by the small scale of the flames that engulf it. When Roderick Usher hammers nails into the lid of his sister's coffin, the blows are obviously without real force, and when Madeline later breaks out, the underside of the lid is devoid of nails and their holes.

email2amh This "nearly lost" film represents an earnest attempt at telling the ghost story, more or less, found in Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination. It has none of the camp and insanity of the Vincent Price version.The print I watched was fairly poor, probably from television somewhere, and likely missing 7 of the original 70 minutes. Some of the scenes are really boring, but I liked the kookiness of it all, the lightning, and the overall atmosphere. I'm not making excuses for the film, as it's old & creaky, but I found it fairly interesting.The plot tracks Poe's story fairly well, however, several aspects have been added. Credited as "The Hag" (and referred to in other reviews here as such), I actually believe the character is referred to early in the film as "Roderick's mother". Regardless, you get the old hag, the head of the headless lover (looking demonic), the scary temple where the lovers met, and some good coffin/crypt scenes involving the sister.Near the end, the old hag watches as Roderick is driven up flights of stairs by his sister's (seemingly?) walking corpse, until he falls or is pushed from the parapet. The "head" then seems to cause the House of Usher to burn, with only the narrator escaping.One scene clearly suggests that the sister is slowly poisoned, with someone giving her glasses of milk. Also, as she is clearly shot by Roderick (twice) as she chases him - to no effect, suggesting she really is dead.The ending is left to the imagination, as it returns to the men's club from the beginning of the film, where the story is being read from Poe's book.