Lee Eisenberg
This 1949 British version of Edgar Allan Poe's story isn't as fun as Roger Corman's version starring Vincent Price but it still has its charms. It goes more for cheap shocks than atmosphere. They gave it an interesting angle with the framing device of a gentleman's club, although it's not until towards the end that the movie really gets going. Basically, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is an OK movie to watch around Halloween. I don't know most of the cast, but it turns out that Gwen Watford (Madeline) played Wendy's mother in Richard Attenborough's "Cry Freedom" (about anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko).Corny, but fun.
Hitchcoc
This is an adequate psychological ghost story. There are similarities between it and the Poe story. But there are so many additional distractions that one has a hard time seeing the general point. Roderick and Madeline Usher are the last in line and they are as cracked at the building in which they live (if you can call it live). Roderick's friend Jonathan comes to visit and I guess his only reason for being there is to tell the story. People get murdered. There are agendas that weren't in the original. There are lots of good atmospheric shots. But the pacing of this movie is so slow. If someone walks to the old temple, we see every footstep. When the old lady leaves the temple and goes to the house, she plods along, on step at a time. If this film had been edited properly, it would have lasted about forty minutes. Still, perhaps the effort was worthwhile.
tom-456
I don't see the point of this movie at all. I don't know why TCM bothers to show it, except that they probably don't have to pay anything at all to show it. The story is only vaguely similar to Poe's story. The similarities are largely superficial and barely adequate to justify borrowing the title from Poe's story. It is just weird. The story is just strange, most of it involving the old hag that escapes and wanders all over everywhere. The acting is horrifically bad. The technical quality is so bad that I could barely believe that it was made in the post-WWII era. It just does not have any redeeming qualities whatsoever. And it certainly does a horrible injustice to Poe. Evidently, some people believe that because Poe wrote stories that were macabre, that this makes it okay for anyone to re-write the story however they see fit, leaving out some elements and adding whole other aspects that they made up, as if Poe's work should be viewed as a template of sorts for other would-be Poes to embellish in whatever manner suits the fancy. If ever there was a movie that would not be any regret for all copies to be lost and the movie itself forgotten, this would probably be it.
c532c
"Found Objects" are those things generally discarded or ignored that somehow possess an intrinsic artistry, and this "Quota Quickie" certainly qualifies. Dashed off in what looks like a couple of weekends on whatever locations were handy, with badly-synchonized sound and wretched acting of pointless dialogue, it nonetheless conveys a genuine creepiness I found oddly haunting. The photography reminds one of the French New Wave, which came along a decade later, with starkly realistic images contrasted with baroque set-ups and disorienting editing. The story -- as much as I could understand -- offers a nightmarish progression through some sort of curse, and a mockingly down-beat ending.
AD
