My Top 10 Favorite Scary Movies: "House of Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher)" (1960)

"The House of Usher is alive. The evidence can be seen in the condensation of an atmosphere about the waters and walls. The exhalations of the mansion. Can you not see it rise and gently fall? Yet it is ever present around the clock throughout the seasons." "House of Usher" becomes something more than an elusive psychological link between twins under Roger Corman's direction. Shot in fifteen days on a budget of $270,000 (50,000 going to its top billed star), Edgar Allan Poe's famous short story becomes something even more haunting than its original implications. 

With the exception of the friend who visits the house being Madeline's love interest, Richard Matheson has been faithful to the original Poe text. Vincent Price is barely in his campy horror stride just yet, but devours every last adapted syllable as if it were a Shakespearean character mourning his own despair. 

But, as horror films moved from the psychological to the show-y under this lush landscape of cinemascope, the look almost overpowers the script. Daniel Haller's production design is full of "living and breathing" reds, yellows and browns as well as specialty paintings painted by Burt Shonberg. Poetically enough, the landscape of night and Philip's (Mark Damon) dreams are all designed in blues and purples! The use of the house being a creature itself lends to the art design considerably in the tiniest of details from the tapestry-like patterns on the curtains to the family crest sewn into the backs of chairs. Even the sounds, dominantly in the dream sequence full of the atypical moaning of ghosts over the score and a choir singing runs, is definitely cheesy yet clever against the haunting image!

I would like to think that Corman's first two Poe adaptations were perhaps not only the best [of the 8], but two sides of the same coin. Against a stark backdrop of a dungeon and basement corridors, "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1961) shows off Price's true acting prowess whereas in "House of Usher," his budding talent comes across almost muffled against the deep red carpet patterns. But it comes across loud and clear that Vincent was the star of the movie and rightfully so! But the others (Mark Damon, Myrna Fahey, and Harry Ellerbe) play their parts with not as much raging passion, but they do their jobs as well as they could. But it is true what works best in this film: the right people behind the camera and the genesis of Vincent Price as a horror icon in the years to come.