Thoughts on This Film

Halloween viewing continues with The Fall of the House of Usher from 1960. This movie is more or less based on the 1839 short story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. Everyone in this movie would seem to be dead as of when Mark Damon, who played Philip Winthrop, the movie name of the unnamed narrator in Poe's story, died on May 12, 2024. I say "would seem to be" as there were four principals and ten ghosts and information isn't available for all of the ghosts. In the story, the narrator was a friend of Roderick Usher, the Vincent Price character, while in the movie Philip is Madeline's fiancé, having met her in Boston. This creates rather a huge plot hole or at least major question, as Roderick is so paranoid over the family curse he will never leave the house nor allow Madeline to so it's uncertain how she ended up in Boston, particularly in an era when women didn't travel alone. In the short story, Roderick and Madeline were twins, while actors Vincent Price and Myrna Fahey were 22 years apart. Their ages in the movie are unspecified but Price is made up to look older even than his real age, with pure white hair. Both stories include details of cataleptic fits and burial alive and there are similarities in the endings.

The film starts out somewhat slow and proceeds at a deliberate pace but becomes more exciting and dramatic as it goes along. Vincent Price is great as usual and the others are also good. Overall not a bad watch.