Who payed the critics

Truly Dreadful Film

Sadly Over-hyped

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

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.

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.

I saw this on TCM (and I do appreciate them showing it) but I found the film unbelievably amateurish, like something made by a Kinema Club in the late forties. It seemed to be filmed over a long period of time, with gaps in continuity and actors. Probably was some home-grown experiment that someone (must have been desperate) thought could be a commercial property, and they tacked on a prologue and epilogue filmed by a different director. The scenes in the crypt have a gruesome directness that seems strangely contemporary, and my only praise is for the actress who plays the old woman: she has a nice intensity. I agree with the other reviewer that this would embarrass even Edward D. Wood, Jr! Horrible musical score.

"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.