Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: House of Usher (1960)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is
Rob Lamb. You've caught us on our fall Break week,
but since fall Break is in October, we have loaded
it up with October episodes from previous years. This episode
is going to be one that originally published ten twenty
five twenty twenty four. It is our discussion of nineteen

(00:26):
sixties House of Usher. So yes, another fabulous Corman Poe
feature starring a platinum blonde Vincent Price. Let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
And I am Joe McCormick. And October continues, so we
are still bringing you Halloween themed episodes of Weird House
Cinema and also core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your
Mind throughout this month. Today we are covering the nineteen
sixty Roger Corman adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story

(01:13):
The Fall of the House of Usher, starring who else,
it's Vincent Price. This movie is sometimes billed with the
full name of the story as its title, The Fall
of the House of Usher, but sometimes you'll see it
shortened to just House of Usher. In fact, I've seen
it the latter format more times. I think it looks
like that in all the classic Posters.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah, this is another one of those cases where there
have been enough adaptations of the original post story in
question that you should just go ahead and throw nineteen
sixty on there whenever you're looking it up anywhere, just
to be sure. Especially this is complicated since you don't
know how this film is actually going to be titled
in a given release.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
So this is one of a series of films from
the nineteen sixties that had three production elements in common.
The first element is a script adapted from the works
of Edgar Allan Poe, conveniently in the public domain by
this time. The second element is it was directed by
Drive in double feature god Roger Corman. And the third

(02:15):
feature is that the movie starred the peerless Vincent Price,
who I love the way Price fits into these Edgar
Allan Poe characters. He just gets in there so perfectly.
I was trying to think of an analogy, and what
came to mind is it's like when you drop one
of the game pieces into a Connect four set, you know,
it just falls into place with this happy little click.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, yeah, well it certainly clicks, that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
So anyway, it was a three way collaboration, the Poe
Price Corman collaboration that was so nice. They did it
like seven or eight times, depending on how much of
a stickler you are for accurate story credits. And we'll
come back to the Corman post cycle later in the
Connections part of this episode. But I wanted to start
today by mentioning that we've cover one of these movies

(03:01):
on the show before for a previous Halloween season Weird House,
and that previous movie was The Mask of the Red
Death from nineteen sixty four, a lavish satanic plague tale
featuring Vincent Price as the wicked corruptor of innocence Prince Prospero.
And I love Mask of the Red Death. If you

(03:23):
go back and listen to that episode. I'm sure I'm
just running out of positive things to say about it,
but I still think about it all the time. I
love the atmosphere of good and evil as almost physically
embodied powers. I love the use of extravagant, brightly colored
masquerade costumes set against this gray world. It creates this

(03:43):
jewels on bone visual texture that I find so pleasing.
Of course, I love Vincent Price, and I also love
how Mask contrasts with Roger Corman's previous B movie work,
stuff like Attack of the Crab, Monsters, Not of This
Earth and It Conquered the World, all movies that I
love and we have talked about lovingly on the show

(04:05):
many times. But all of these previous movies I think
you could say are self consciously schlock, Like Corman sort
of knew he was making trash, but he was trying
to make like fun, scrappy, sort of intelligent trash. Mask
of the Red Death, on the other hand, I think
is not schlock in the same way. You can argue
that it has some subtle bits of self parody, but

(04:28):
ultimately I think Mask is a very successful classic Gothic
horror film when taken straightforwardly and it's made with real finesse,
and then sort of on top of that, once you
accept it at that level, you can unlock maybe second
and third levels of pleasure by watching it with a
more ironic lens.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
It is a very pleasurable film, and it is a
prestige Roger Corman picture, And I would say Ultimately, if
you're too good for Mask of the Red Death, then
we probably don't have much in common. We probably I
don't have even like a groundwork upon which to build
out this friendship.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, but so anyway, I love to Mask of the
Red Death so much. I wanted to come back to
one of the Corman Poe Price movies this October, and
I decided we should watch the one that started it all,
the first of these collaborations. So here we are with
House of Usher from nineteen sixty. So as a point

(05:25):
of comparison, I think it's interesting how scaled back this
movie feels compared to Mask. Mask has a big cast,
a lot of extras, lots of location changes, you know,
interior exterior. It has a lot of location changes within.
The main castle, has bright colors, interesting costumes, big sets,

(05:48):
and light effects that in some cases even border on psychedelic.
You could say. Usher, by contrast, I think feels like
a really good bottle episode of a TV show. The
cast is small, there are only four characters, really, three
principal characters in sort of a gruel boiling butler. The

(06:09):
setting is mostly confined to the interior of one house.
There's nothing too crazy visually, at least not until around
the climax. Then toward the end there are some sights
and sounds that get kind of weird. But in general,
I would just say that Usher contains less flambuoyant original
creativity than Mask, and it is a more disciplined attempt

(06:29):
to capture the tone and plot of the original Pose story.
But this is by no means a dig A lot
of people cite Usher as their favorite of the Corman
Price collaborations, and I think I can see why. Like
the wildness of Mask is a bit more my speed,
but Usher has a really good script and a chillingly
effective and ambiguous performance by Price, who has bleach blonde hair.

(06:54):
By the way, where else are you going to get that?

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, that's right, We'll come back to the look of
the Price in this picture. That alone makes it stand out.
But I agree this is a picture that in many
ways makes it a smaller picture, but a smaller picture
that's really allowed to breathe, you know, like the fewer
elements involved all managed to sort of build up their

(07:18):
own energy that by the end of the picture you
don't feel like you've been slided at all. That being said,
I think it is fair to say this is maybe
a movie in which not as much happens compared to
other pictures, and you've got to be on board with that.
Like I watched this film zonked Out on an airplane,
and it was the perfect perfect picture for that sort

(07:39):
of setting. You know. I like a nice slow film
like this. You can breathe in all the sights and sounds,
especially the sites more so than the sounds here. But
then also some strong performances in here as well. But
like I say, if you want something that's really snappy,
this is maybe not yet you've got to be on

(07:59):
its wavelength. But if you're on its wavelength, a film
like this is perfect.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Oh this is a gloomy, languid, classic gothic haunted mansion story. Yeah, well,
wait a minute now that I say haunted mansion. Actually
I think a great thing. Maybe we can discuss the
themes more when we get into the plot section, but
I think this movie is interesting in that you could
legitimately ask, at least for most of the runtime, whether

(08:26):
there's actually anything supernatural happening or not, or whether it's
all just kind of the the consequences of Vincent Price's
character Roderick and his delusional behavior.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, if nothing out as else, it is a film
haunted by multi generational human evil. Yeah, and it definitely
ruminates on that.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
All right, we usually do an elevator pitch. I'll try
to give a straightforward plot set up here. Philip Winthrop
travels to the desolate and decomposing Usher Estate to visit
his fiance, Madeleine, whom he courted and became engaged to
during their time together in Boston. So she's gone ahead
of him back to the Usher Estate and he's coming

(09:07):
to beat her. But when he arrives, Philip discovers that
Madeleine is in ill health and she is under the
constant control of her strange and morose brother, Roderick played
by Vincent Price. Over time, Philip begins to doubt what
he's being told by Roderick and the household butler. Is
Madeline really sick or is she having her will to

(09:30):
live sapped by Roderick's psychic manipulations? Or is there something
more sinister and ghostly operating underneath it all?

Speaker 1 (09:39):
We'll find out, all right, Let's go ahead and listen
to a little trailer audio for House of Usher.

Speaker 4 (09:50):
Go take her man, now let me go.

Speaker 5 (09:56):
Only the incomparable genius of Edgar Allan Poe could knit
them so closely together, the burning passions of the purest
of loves, the deadly passions of the madly blurian.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Hope when you're leaving this house with me tomorrow, Oh
I God. For hundreds of years, evil thoughts and evil deeds.

Speaker 5 (10:21):
Have been committed within these walls.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
The house itself is evil.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
Now they all are ashes. This is monstrous.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
It waits for me because very soon I shall be dead.

Speaker 4 (10:41):
Oh, Madeline, come away with me. Now where is she?

(11:05):
You buried your own sister alive?

Speaker 5 (11:08):
I did, but.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
She's dead now.

Speaker 5 (11:13):
The master hand of the maccab creates its masterpiece.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
All right. If you want to watch House of USh,
or follow the House of USh, or whatever you want
to call this nineteen sixty film, there are a couple
of ways to do it. If you're in the UK,
I believe you have access to the Beautiful Arrow blu Ray.
If you're in the US, I think you can find
it in the Vincent Price Collection box set from Shout Factory.
Off the top of my head, I'm not sure about
the current production status of either of those, But that's

(11:47):
kind of the beauty of physical media is that even
if it's out of print, there's a good chance you'll
be able to find a copy out there. And if
you have a rental store in your neighborhood in your city,
like Atlanta's own Videodrome, for example, you can just go
and rent it. And that's so beautifully simple.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
I have that Vincent Price box set from Shout Factory,
and that is how I watched this movie. It's also
how I watched Pitt in the Pendulum. It's got Mask
of the Red Death in there, and it's also got
some other fun stuff like Witchfinder General and The Abominable
Doctor Five. So highly recommend that collection. It's very solid.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, the witch Finder General film is said to be
another great Price performance.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
That one I've only watched on mute while doing other things,
but it looked interesting, so maybe I'll have to go
back and turn the sound on sometime. It's by a
filmmaker who we watched another movie by him. It was
the guy who made that movie The Sorcerers, about the
people like the old people who can get into the
young guy's brain.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, short lived. Director died tragically young, but showed so
much promise. Anyway, again, I watched this film. No doubt
is Roger Corman intended on an iPhone in an airplane.
But you know there are fewer distractions in some ways
when watching a film in that format, so you know,

(13:08):
sometimes it's the right time for that sort of treatment.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Roger wouldn't hate on you for that. He don't love
it all right.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Well, since we're already talking about him, Yeah, let's get
into the people behind this film, starting with Roger Corman,
the director of the producer who lived nineteen twenty six
through twenty twenty four. We've talked about him numerous times
on the show, so we're going to try not to
repeat too much of that instead sort of frame this
within his output and within the history of weird House

(13:36):
cinema shows. I believe this is our fifth Corman directed
motion picture, but he also served as producer on some
of the films we've covered. This, of course, is one
of the films loosely classified as being part of the
Pose cycle. In fact, again it is the film that
kicked off the entire cycle. Usher came on the heels
of nineteen fifty nine's Eye Moobster, The Wasp Woman, and

(13:57):
Bucket of Blood. Those all directed by Corman, and it
was one of four Corman directed films that came out
in nineteen sixty, along with Ski Troop Attack, The Little
Shop of Horrors, and Last Woman on Earth.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Well, I know Little Shop of Horrors. Now I'm curious
about Ski Troop Attack. Yeah, it's like real stands the
test of time, I bet, yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
I mean, that's the thing about Corman's output is, you know,
certain genre films have become a legendary of his, and
you know, you instantly think of them when you think
of Roger Corman. But for every one or two of those,
there are three or four more in other genres, often
that have just kind of fallen through the cracks. For many,
except for the Roger Corman completest, I suppose. Anyway, the

(14:41):
Corman post cycle is generally considered to run eight films.
You have Usher, then you have sixty ones, The Pit
in the Pendulum, sixty two's The Premature Burial and Tales
of Terror, sixty threes the Raven and the Haunted Palace,
and then sixty four is The Mask of the Red
Death and the Tomb of Like. Of course, we should

(15:02):
note that The Haunted Palace is actually based on a
Lovecraft story and not a post story. It's just the
title that ties into Poe's work. All of them Starvincent Price,
except for the premature Burial.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah, so I've seen three of these movies at this point.
I've seen Usher, the Pit and the Pendulum, and Mask
of the Red Death Mask is my favorite easily, though.
All three of them I think are quite good, And
maybe we'll have to come back to the Pit and
the Pendulum sometime. Price's performance in that movie is a
lot more unhinged and off the wall than in Usher.

(15:34):
But let's see the premature Burial and Tales of Terror.
I think, is that one movie or two movies? That's
two Tales of Terror is supposed to be anthology?

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, I mean that's the thing. These are Corman films,
so sometimes there's two coming out a year, and those
are inevitably not the only pictures he directed. It certainly
not the only pictures he produced during a given year.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Yeah, and then The Raven is interesting because that one
is supposed to be a comedy. I have not seen it.
I'm a little curious how that works. I feel like
I would be less interested in an overt comedy with
Price and po themes, but who knows, maybe it's great.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Well, I mean, you have to acknowledge that that Vincent
Price is terrific in everything. Oh so his kind of
comedic timing is solid, so he may be able to
deliver there. And you know, you do have some really
good Roger Corman directed dark comedies such as Bucket of
Blood or Little Shop of Horrors and so forth.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah, And frankly, I would say all of the movies
of his I've seen that I've liked have some sense
of humor about them. Probably House of Usher has the
least humor of any of them, but he's always got
a little bit of eye twinkling going on.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, we of course have to drive home that this
is an adaptation of the work of Edgar Allan Poe,
who lived eighteen oh nine through eighteen forty nine, American writer, poet, editor,
and literary critic, best remembered for his spooky poems and stories,
not only in the United State dates but internationally.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Oh yeah, well, so I guess Rob is referring to there.
There was an article that we were sharing off Mike
that I read by a writer named winn Bin from
I think it was just published a couple of days ago,
at least published October of this year, twenty twenty four,
about the popularity of Edgar Allan Poe among a lot
of the writers and poets of Vietnam in the first

(17:24):
half of the twentieth century. I think that's interesting, like
what authors really resonate in different language cultures around the world,
But apparently, like, yeah, a lot of Vietnamese writers in
I think it would be around the nineteen twenties and
thirties or so really really thought that Poe was just
like the best of the American writers.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah. And of course that reminds me a bit of
a Japanese author that we've discussed in the show before,
because we've discussed adaptations of his work in cinema, Edugawa Rampo,
whose name is an allusion to the name Edgar Allan Pope.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
And he was a writer of detective stories.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Wasn't Yeah, yeah, a lot of detective stories and the
mysteries thriller is that sort of thing. Yeah, all right,
So that's the source material. But then the screenplay, the
adaptation comes to us via another name that we've talked
about on the show before the legendary Richard Matheson, who
lived nineteen twenty six through twenty thirteen. American writer who's

(18:23):
best remembered, I would say as the author of the
excellent nineteen fifty four novel I Am Legend, upon which
three films have been based. One even had Vincent Price
in it.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
I've been thinking we should do that on the show.
By the way, Yeah, I think it's called Last Man
on Earth.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yes, yeah, and of course the others being I Am
Legend with Will Smith and then The Omega Man with
Chuck Huston.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
The Vincent Price one is it's got some really good
things about it, and I really enjoyed. I sampled that
one in some music that I was working on. It
works out pretty good.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
The episodes where we discussed Richard Matheson previously there was
the film The Devil Rides Out. He did the adaptation
on that as well, adapting a weekly novel, and then
we talked about the film adaptation The Incredible Shrinking Man.
That's an adaptation by Matheson of one of Matheson's own books.
If I remember correctly.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
This guy snuck up on me. I didn't realize it
first but I think Matheson has written the scripts for
a lot of the best movies or the movies with
the best scripts that we've done from the mid twentieth century.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Yeah, I mean he was excellent, excellent writer, worked on
a lot of shows like the original Twilight Zone, Night Gallery,
Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and had a big influence on an
entire generation of horror and terror scribes, especially including Stephen King.
Stephen King has frequently cited Richard Matheson as an influence.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
The Incredible Shrinking Man I remember in particular, had a
really good script.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yeah, that's a great picture. If you haven't seen that,
when you haven't listened to our episode on that, go
back to one or the other. Don't be afraid of
that kind of goofy title and perhaps you know comedic
idea of a tiny man inside a house being attacked
by his cat, because it's much more than that. It's
actually a pretty deep flip. Yeah, all right, onto the cast,

(20:25):
and this is going to be a pretty short cast.
There are really only four people in this for the
most part. A few extras here and there, but really
only four people. The lead of course, again being Vincent
Price playing Roderick Usher Price lived nineteen eleven through nineteen
ninety three. We've talked about him plenty of times on
the show because we keep coming back to Vincent Price

(20:47):
films and you never know exactly what you're going to
get from him. He was active on screen from the
late thirties to the early nineties, and you know, there's
a certain vision, a certain version of Vincent Price that
I think is solidified in the horror canon that instantly
comes to mind when you think about him, and a
lot of it is defined by his look, Right, what

(21:07):
do you think of? You think of like that dark
or certainly in later life gray and even white, slicked
back hair. You think about that sharpened mustache, an optional
goatee add on, and then of course he's going to
be wearing some sort of a suit, maybe an optional
Dracula cape, that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
If this makes any sense. He's somebody who really I
think has the face of a character actor, a kind
of interesting, memorable face you would see pop up playing
like second build characters with a little bit of personality
to them, but instead he more often ended up playing
leading male characters or leading villains, and it works pretty

(21:46):
well that way, because he can sort of manipulate his
interesting look with just sort of an inversion of the
slant of his eyebrows to look quite sympathetic or quite evil.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Absolutely, and as we were alluding to earlier, this film
also gives us a rather different looking Price because he's
clean shaven and he has bleached blonde hair. You might
want to call him Peroxide Price or platinum blonde Price,
you pick, but either way, a very distinctive look. It

(22:20):
reminds me a bit of in the movie The Ten Commandments.
He shows up in that, and he's clean shaven there
as well, which can throw you off if you're used
to Vincent Price with facial hair. But add in the
screaming blonde hair in this picture, and yeah, he looks
sufficiently different. It ends up influencing your entire reception of

(22:41):
the character.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
I think I was thinking about Barbie's hair color, so
I was thinking, like Malibu Price.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's fair. At this point
in his career, Price had already taken on the mantle
of horror star. I think by having already done House
of Wax, which we've talked about in the show, that's
one that really elevated him in the horror genre. But
then also he'd already done fifty eight's The Fly, fifty
nine's House on Haunted Hill, and Return of the Fly,

(23:08):
as well as The Tingler and The bat oh Man.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
There's so many good Price roles in horror movies that
sometimes you can't hold them all in your head. I
was getting ready for this episode and I didn't even
think of The Tingler until you just said it.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, that's a fun film as well. Yeah, but this
is a really fun performance beyond just the different appearance
for Vincent Price, because he's this character is firm but
very fragile. You know. It's an interesting performance of emotional extremes,
as we'll get into, Like there's a really strong will,

(23:44):
but not if you're raising your voice or touching his
garments or not taking your shoes off in the house
it is. It is worth stressing that the House of
Usher is a shoes off household, and you need to
be prepared for that.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, Roderick Usher is a character who I like how
you us. This character is like you. For a long
time in the movie, you're not clear if he's friend
or foe. How dangerous he is what's going on, and
even when it does become clear in some ways that
he is dangerous and to be feared, at the same
time he is so weak he could He's just easily

(24:17):
physically bested, and yet that doesn't solve the problem.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, he's almost like a living ghost in that regard. Yeah,
all right, so that's the that's the lead. But then
second billing, we have the personable Mark Damon as Philip Winthrop.
This is the the individual that is engaged to the
sister of Roderick Usher.

Speaker 3 (24:38):
By normal accounting, this is the protagonist, right, He is
the good guy of the movie. Though I think you
could still say that the main character is Vincent Prices
as Roderick Usher, but that's you know, villain first framing.
This is the supposed good guy.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, yeah, personable Mark Damon. We previously talked about him
because he was in Mario Bava's Black Sabbath from nineteen
sixty three, so that would be in the future of
the Mark Damon that we're seeing here. This was apparently
a big, big film for him. He actually won a
Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer for this film, and

(25:15):
it was a familiar face in motion pictures during the
fifties and sixties, but he's probably best remembered for Usher
and Sabbath, at least as far as acting goes. But then,
as we discussed previously, went on to be a really
major producer in Hollywood and had his hands in some
major pictures of note, including dust Boat or dust Boot

(25:35):
if you will, The never Ending Story, Clan of the
Cave Bear nine and a half week short circuit Flight
of the Navigator, The Lost Boys Beast Master two, as
well as a pair of Universal Soldier sequels, among other pictures.
When we last talked about him, he was still alive,
but he actually passed away over the summer at the

(25:58):
age of ninety one. He also, I have to mention again,
he has one writing credit, and it's The Devil's Wedding
Night from nineteen seventy three. This is essentially a Dracula
movie despite the title. Oh and Joe Tomato apparently did
some uncredited directing on it, but it's said to be

(26:18):
pretty good. Actually I haven't.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Seen it, okay, Yeah. Well, Also, in case you don't
know what we're talking about when we keep calling him
the personable, that's from the trailer for Mario Bava's Black Sabbath.
So the announcers like, ooh, the chilling Boris Karloff, the
personable Mark Damon.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
You know, maybe Mark Damon is fine in this. I'm
not criticizing his work at all. It's more the sort
of role this is. I guess I don't find it
as personable as I would find like a Vincent Price
character or you know, a Peter Lorie character and so forth.
And then also I'm wondering, if you have to say

(26:59):
the personable, an't name it, how personable is this performer?

Speaker 3 (27:02):
It makes it. It makes him seem less personable. It's
like introducing somebody by calling them trustworthy. Immediately you start
wondering should I trust them?

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, but he is good in this. I mean he's
he is the straight man in this story where he's
encountering like nothing but strange happenings and strange surroundings. So
he's our grounding, our he's the point at the center
of the dial, and so he's essential and it is
essential that you have, you know, a square jowed, handsome

(27:32):
young actor playing that role, really, especially during this time period.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
I agree, I think he does fine. I'm not trying
to slam him at all. I think he's good in
this role. He is somewhat upstaged by the more interesting performances,
like especially of course by Vincent Price. But then I
would say also later in the film, upstage somewhat by
the performance of Murna Fay, he as Madeline Usher, who
gets weirder as the movie goes on.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah. Yeah, mRNA Fay, who lived nineteen thirty three through
nineteen seventy three, is the third build out of like
four actors in this picture, and she is quite good.
She's I think best remembered probably for this film role
as well as various television works she did. She did
a lot of TV work in addition to a handful
of films like Disney Zoro. She was on that series.

(28:19):
She was on Father of the Bride in the early sixties.
But yeah, yeah, it's a good role that it first
maybe seems like a little subdued, and you might think
that she's not going to have much agency, but stick
with it because she does get she does get to
get some work in towards the end.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Of the picture, it gets kind of wild. I was
reading a biography of her somewhere online that mentioned she
did an interview I think it was in the year
nineteen sixties, so the same year as House of Usher,
where she was sort of complaining that she had been
typecast in like moral upstanding roles. You know, she was always, oh,
you know, tisk, tisk, I am very good, I am

(28:55):
very low abiding, and she wanted to explore, you know,
a more complicated, maybe darker roles, and well I think
she got her wish.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
She also apparently went on to be in an episode
of the TV anthology series Thriller, hosted by Boris Karloff.
The episode is called Girl with the Secret, which is
about her, which is about a character who has to
keep a secret about her husband and is being blackmailed
by someone. I haven't seen this episode of the show,
but I pulled up like the IMDb listing for the episode,

(29:28):
and the screenshot from it is somebody driving a car
making this incredibly creepy grinning face. So now I'm tempted
to look it up.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah, yeah, I haven't watched a lot of Thriller, but
it's said to be a very good horror anthology series.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
I've seen at least one episode of Thriller. It was
an adaptation of the Roberty Howard story Pigeons from Hell,
which is like a ghost horror story.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Oh yeah, probably one of the rare non conan kin
adaptations of his work. I pretty much The fourth and
final human in this picture is the butler Bristol, played
by American actor and Atlanta native Harry Ellerby, who lived
nineteen oh one through nineteen ninety two. He worked extensively

(30:14):
in stage, screen, and TV, with his screen and TV
credits going from the early nineteen thirties through the early
nineteen seventies, though I understand he remained active in theater
longer than that, especially in like local Atlanta theater. His
film credits include nineteen sixty threes The Haunted Palace, and
nineteen sixty six's Chamber of Horrors. He appeared in an

(30:35):
episode of the original Outer Limits as well. Okay, and
you know he's good in this. He basically he's the middleman.
Though he's the butler in a haunted mansion, so you
kind of know what you're going to get.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
Yeah, it is his job to help carry the coffins
and boil the gruel.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yes. Oh, but we have a very interesting credit to
share regarding this picture Now. I mentioned Night Gallery earlier
and passing, and it's appropriate because this movie features a
number of very creepy paintings that would look perfectly at
home on the walls of the Night Gallery. These paintings

(31:14):
are credited to Bert Schoenberg, who lived nineteen thirty three
through nineteen seventy seven, American painter whose work could be
described as surrealist or psychedelic, and he was certainly celebrated
during the nineteen sixties, though he was also exploring this
style in the fifties and seventies as well. In fact,

(31:37):
I've seen some people argue that he was one of
those artists working in California at the time that was
kind of a precursor to the psychedelic art scene in
nineteen sixties California. So ultimately, when you get into like
surrealism and strange art, there's plenty of stuff that seems
ahead of its time and kind of informs that air.

(31:59):
I suppose. So his work is, and you can look
it up online. It's Schoenberg s H O N B
E r G. His work is dreamy and weird at times,
invoking occult imagery. Again, look it up because it's worth
checking out, and certainly you get to see it a
lot in this movie. It's not just it's not just

(32:20):
an incidental detail. The paintings are important plot points and
you really get to drink them in. I think they
really contribute to the great vibe of this picture.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah, there's a this is never made explicit, but there
is almost an implied picture of Dory and Gray kind
of concept at work, where there are these paintings of
the the you know, the patriarchs and matriarchs of the
of the Usher household, and when we start to learn
about their evils and their crimes, we see the paintings,
and the paintings appear almost kind of warped or melted,

(32:55):
as sort of altered in a way that reveals the
evil of the character lying underneath.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
You know. It's interesting to think about the use of
painted portraits in movies because it's often the case that
you'll find either either a portrait actually does its job
and you just buy it as being a portrait of
a character. Generally it looks like one of the actors
in the film, right, or it looks like the old
count or the old baron that will inevitably come back
to life. And is you know, played by Christopher Lee

(33:21):
or something, so you know what they're supposed to look like.
But then in other pictures you can tell, like the
portrait just does not pass the sniff test. You know,
you're like this, I'm not buying it. I'm not buying
this as an historic work of art. Yes, this picture
dodges those pitfalls and instead just goes for the utterly weird.

(33:44):
These pictures feel like, you know, drawing on the door,
the portrait drawing gray here. It's it's like they are
like snapshots of the corrupted soul. They seem like they
are dark, wrong, perhaps insane works.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, absolutely, and they're not subtle, you know all It's
not like they look a little bit creepy. It's they
are oozing evil, demonic energy and just advertising the wickedness
of the people portrayed.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
I was reading a bit more about these on the
excellent website Vincent Price Legacy dot uk, and the author
there points out that Schoenberg provided five portraits and two
additional paintings to this production, and again they certainly pulled
their weight in delivering the film's vibe. Afterwards, two of
these paintings apparently went to Roger Corman and then were

(34:34):
subsequently stolen from his office. Another portrait was reportedly given
to Vincent Price himself, who was an avid art collector,
but according to the website Vincent Price Legacy, the whereabouts
of this painting are unknown and it was never listed
in the official estate documents concerning Price's extensive art collection,

(34:55):
So it's unknown what happened to it, Like, did it
you know, did he sell it? Is it lost? Is
it I'm assuming at this point that all of these
paintings are like on the Dark Side of the Moon,
somewhere transported there through dark arcade magic.

Speaker 3 (35:11):
Wow, that's a wild story. I'm almost tempted to doubt it,
but no, it's got to be true, right, these paintings
were made to disappear mysteriously.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah. Now, to be clear, I'm not sure if all
of the Schoenberg paintings for this picture are missing, but
at least some of them are, which adds to the mystique.
But that website, Vincent Price Legacy also has some other
additional details about Schoenberg that are obtained from out there.
The Transcendent Life and Art of Bert Schoenberg by Spencer

(35:44):
Kanza and This is a book from twenty seventeen. The
author points out that Schoenberg was very much a part
of the occult and counterculture scene in LA at the time.
In the LA area, he partially owned the controversial weirdo
hippie coffee shop in Orange County that was known as
Cafe Frankenstein. Definitely look up a picture of Cafe Frankenstein.

(36:07):
It has this signature glass window piece, like a stained
glass picture of Frankenstein's Monster in the front, and this
was created by Schoenberg. He also had murals inside of
the establishment, and it was apparently kind of like a
notorious hangout for dangerous hippies, you know, like there's some
art going on there, there's some coffee drinking, maybe there's

(36:28):
some other substances, who knows, And the local squares were
not amused. I read one anecdote that they did not
like that he had the Frankestein's monster art in the
front of the establishment, and when they pressured him, he
was like, well, maybe I should do one of of
Frankenstein's monster crucified. Maybe that would make everyone happy. So
he was kind of a provocateur as well.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
I'm so sad this place no longer exists. I would
want to go to California just to go here this.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
I believe the stained glass piece still though, I think
that is in someone's collection. But at any rate, Yeah,
he was apparently quite a character. At one point he
was in a relationship with artist, poet and occultist Marjorie Cameron,
who had previously been married to Jack Parsons. Oh yeah,
and Schoenberg also provided paintings for the nineteen sixty two

(37:18):
film The Premature Burial, and he served as art director
on fifty eight's The Brain Eaters in nineteen sixties Code
of Silence.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
Oh, we covered The brain Eaters is Let's see what
were all the weird things about that one? I think
it had Leonard Nimoy in a minor role and he
never got paid for it or something. And was it
maybe or maybe not based on a Robert heinlend story.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, it might have been. I remember, this is one
that has a great poster that perhaps over sells the
rest of the picture. But it was a still fun,
fun one, still fun episode to check out.

Speaker 5 (37:51):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
I was trying to think what was the hilarious character
from it, and it was Senator Walter K. Powers you
remember Walter k Powers.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, yeah, So anyway, we'll come back to these paintings
because again they are vital parts of the picture and
they're great. Okay, two more credits, just to run through
really quickly before we get to the main plot. But
the cinematography is by Floyd Crosby, who I can't remember
if we talked about him before, but he lived eighteen

(38:19):
ninety nine through nineteen eighty five. Academy Award winning cinematographer
and father of musician David Crosby. He worked on a
number of Corman pictures, including Attack of the Crab Monsters
in nineteen fifty seven.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
You know, I've never really analyzed the cinematography of Attack
of the Crab Monsters, but you know I love the movie.
That's got to be a part of it.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
And then finally, the music is by Les Baxter, who
lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety six. So he's
popped up on the show before because we have considered
other scores by the master of exotica music, and none
of these scores have been examples of exotica. Like if
you look, I do recommend if you're having a tropical
drink and you want to have a nice like loungy vibe,

(39:04):
you know. Pull up some Less Baxter play some of
his exotica work. It's a great sound, but we don't
really get that sound as far as I know, out
of any of the scores he did. If you know
of a Less Baxter score that is actually an exotica score,
let me know about it, because I want to dig
into that picture.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
Can you imagine if House of Usher had exoticas they
go into Roderick Usher has got like a drink with
a toothpick that's got three different kinds of fruit on it.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
I mean, on one hand, I want to say it
would be completely inappropriate. But on the other hand, like
a lot of Baxter's exotica work, it has this kind
of like a dark undertone. There's a sense of like
rumbling volcanoes, you know, and slow moving lava. So in
a way it might it might have lined up with
some of those sort of geologic sensibilities of House of Usher.

(39:56):
So I'm not sure. But again, this is not an
exotica score or this is more of just like a
nineteen fifty style orchestral score. But there are other example
like for instance, Frogs from nineteen seventy two, which we
talked about in the show before. That one has a
minimalist electronic score from Les Baxter, and I think maybe
arguably it could have benefitted from an Exotica score as well.

(40:18):
I don't know. All right, well, why don't we go
ahead and just jump right into the plot of House.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
Of Usher, As is often the case with Roger Korman movies.
I like the effect of the credits, and there are
not a whole lot of credits to get to in
this movie, as we've already alluded to, I guess a
shorter credit sequence than usual. But the effect behind them
is this swirling mix mixing of clouds of colored mists.
So you've got pink, green, violet, red, and blue, seemingly

(40:54):
timed with the appearance of different actors' names. Like I'm
not sure if there is any intended signific against that.
There's suddenly a blast of sprite canned green across the
picture when the name of the personable Mark Damon splashes up.
But that is what we get.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, it's very colorful. I mean it's a color picture.
We might as well enjoy the color.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
That's right, And it is something that we should appreciate
that at this time, making this kind of movie, it
was still a question like would you pony up for
the to make this movie in color or would you
just shoot it in black and white? You know, today
that's not really much of a I mean, some films
are still made in black and white, but for the
most part, it's just assumed, Yeah, you're making a movie,

(41:34):
you will make it in color. In nineteen sixty, making
a movie of this sword, it was like a toss up,
you know, you could go either way. It was a
different type of investment.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah, yeah, and you could have made a strong case.
You know, got the car, gloomy setting, maybe that does
need to be in black and white. So I don't know.
Maybe they did feel like they needed to prove themselves
a little bit with the title sequence.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
So after the credits, the action opens on a barren
landscape of brown and gray swampland you've got mud, fog,
matted tufts of dead grass, withered tree limbs without a
single leaf. All of the dead plants are also wrapped
in these brittle, dead vines. So the land is it
appears totally strangled, just death upon death. And then a

(42:19):
character enters the picture. It is Mark Damon playing the
character of Philip Winthrop, and he is on horseback in
a heavy purple riding cloak and a tall top hat.
He makes his way through the swamp on horseback along
a sodden dirt path to reach his ultimate destination, the
titular House of Usher, which is shown to us as

(42:41):
a dark, decrepit mansion with curtains drawn across the windows,
no light emanating from it, and mist surrounding the foundation
like a white blanket.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Ah. And this just looks tremendous. I can't drive home
enough just how incredible this house looks. It is like
it is, Yes, it is a great, big, old Gothic
hulk of a mansion, but it also looks kind of
like just a decaying whale carcass, you know, just you know,
a heap of excess in a ruin that is literally

(43:14):
poisoning the surrounding landscape is on the verge of falling
into hell itself. Like this is like wealth and over
indulgence dragged across the centuries, you know, pulling souls down
into darkness with it.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
Yeah, So Winthrop approaches this, this whale carcass, the mansion
passing through a broken stone gate, and he goes in
between these black, twisted, almost melted looking trees. And I
actually read a production note that somewhere in here the
designers used some trees that had partially burned in a
recent California wildfire when the film was made. I don't

(43:50):
know if it's in this shot, but if it were,
that would make sense.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
Yeah, yeah, I know. I recently was in California. We
did a lot of driving through the countryside. We saw
a number of these sorts of trees, and this, well,
not a landscape like the Fall of the House of Usher,
but trees landscapes that had these sorts of trees in them,
And yeah, you can certainly lean into a haunted interpretation
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
So Philip comes to the front door, which is wreathed
in cobwebs, and he raps with the giant bronze knocker.
The door is answered by a gray haired servant in
a black coat, and he's got a sad, apprehensive face
framed by these silver sideburns. Philip introduces himself to the
servant as Madeline Usher's fiance and asks to see her.

(44:36):
But the butler, whose name is Bristol tells him that
she is confined to her bed because she is taken ill.
So Bristol tries to deny Philip Entree, saying that Madeleine's
brother Roderick, has forbidden any visitors, but Philip is very pushy.
He won't take no for an answer, so Bristol leads
him inside.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
And already we are seeing some red candles. This film
is all about the red Candle's only red candles in
the house of Usher, That's right.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
So yeah, the interior of the house is a little
more inviting than the outside, but there's still some threatening energy.
One thing that this is not really a complaint about
the movie. It's rather just sort of a fact about
how movies are made, especially at this time, based on
things the characters say. I think we're supposed to understand

(45:23):
that it is always kept very dark inside the Usher mansion.
Even candlelight is weak and scarce, but it doesn't really
look that way like for the audience looking at the sets,
everything is usually quite brightly lit. There may just be
no way around that. It's kind of like suspending your
disbelief for a play. You know that this is really
taking place in a room even though you're looking up

(45:45):
at a stage. But this does raise an interesting ongoing
problem even in movies today, with the art of visual storytelling,
how do you convincingly show that a scene is dark
but also allow the audience to see what's happening. It's
kind of a oxymoron, but it's a thing different filmmakers
have tried to tackle in different ways. Sometimes they just brightly,

(46:08):
you know, they just brightly light it anyway and then
ask you to suspend your disbelief. Other times the scene
is actually dark and that contributes to a kind of
emotional or atmospheric effect, but it can create frustrations when
trying to follow the drama.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah, there was there was a time or two watching
this film where they were talking about how dark the
room was, and I was like, well, even I can
really make out everything. Maybe the lighting is off on
my phone or something. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
I think this is still just a tension that visual
storytellers struggle with eve until today. You know, I remember
people talking about stuff in the last season of Game
of Thrones, you know, apart from any like writing issues
about that, but questions about certain scenes and episodes that
were like very very dimly lit and dark scenes, and
even that does highlight like, yeah, you can do that,

(46:56):
and that can be good in some ways. It can
create and intended at spheric effect. It can make you
feel a certain way, But then you're going to have
a lot of viewers complaining that they can't tell what's
going on, or they can't follow what's what's supposed to
be happening in a scene.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
I've also read I'm I can't one percent match my
experience up with this, but I've I've observed some conversations
about how really dark scenes in movies, especially modern movies,
perhaps don't play as well on streaming platforms versus physical media,
you know, And I'm not enough of a tech head

(47:31):
on all of that to really weigh in, but if
listeners out there have any feedback on that, I'd love
to I'd love to hear from you. I mean, I'm
kind of like all in on any argument for physical
media over depending entirely on streamers, so when it comes
to films.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Or I would wonder also just about watching things on
home video versus in the movie theater. The movie theater
might be a case where more dimly lit scenes come
across better.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
I don't know, Yeah, that's the in theater. Propaganda is
really big on telling me that the darks are darker,
and you know, having watched Son of Frankenstein on the
big screen, I mean those those really those dark shadows
are really luscious up there, so I got kind of
buy into it.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
Anyway, that's not what's going on in House of Usher.
Everything is very well lit here. But so we come
inside and yes, we do have these these red candles everywhere,
cherry red candles. And I like this little moment where
Bristol the butler asks Philip to take off his boots
and he's like, what for, and he just says, you know,
mister Roderick will explain, and Bristol disappears mysteriously for a

(48:32):
moment here, but then reappears with slippers for him.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yeah, some real culture shock being asked to take your
shoes off in this shoes off household here, which which
I really I really appreciated this because I prior to
watching the film, I'd been meeting up with some family
and it was clearly like a mix of shoes on
households and shoes off households. Meeting in a rental home,
you know, where you're like what why are people in

(48:57):
the kitchen with their shoes on? What's happening? And you
know their different approaches?

Speaker 3 (49:01):
Wait, if you're comfortable sharing, which way are you? I
don't even know? Do you all take shoes off in
the house?

Speaker 1 (49:05):
We're shoes off house? Okay? Cool? But you know, I
mean if someone comes and I forget to say, hey,
you can take your shoes off, and they're wearing their shoes,
I'm not going to freak out. It's like that's on
me because I didn't give you a heads up. Also,
as comedian Shang Wang points out, there are certain circumstances
where you may have to like run through the house
with the shoes on to do something, you know, like

(49:27):
turn the alarm system off or something. I don't know.
There are circumstances that the demand you keep them on.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
Well, what is totally a commonplace in some cultures and
some families is treated as quite strange.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Here.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
This is not something that Philip Winthrop is used to.
But yeah, we're told that Roderick will explain. So Philip
is led up the grand staircase. So he goes along
this carved banister and hand rail past these tapestries. Again,
the cherry red candles to an upper hallway and eventually
to Roderick's room. And ooh, there's a very good boo
scare right at the first time we meet Vincent Price.

(50:03):
So Bristol goes to knock on the bedroom door, but
before his knuckles can touch the wood, the door swings
inward and into the doorway bursts Roderick. It is a
fierce looking, clean shaven Vincent Price with platinum blonde hair,
wearing a red velvet jacket and a black tie.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah, seeming to tower over him as well. Here.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
Yes, Price does come off as very physically large in
this movie, and I think that'll be interesting to talk
about maybe later when we I don't talk about the
weird contrasting aspects of his physical presence and whether or
not he should be taken as threatening.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah, because he seems physically imposing that we learned that
he's actually quite fragile.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
Yeah, we'll get to that soon. So Roderick is initially
furious that Bristol has admitted a visitor. He's furious but
soft spoken, so he's like, how dare you? But in
a library voice, and Philip explains that he insisted he
believed he had the right. So Roderick brings Philip into
his room to discuss, and in here Philip starts talking,

(51:12):
but before he can even finish a sentence, Roderick winces,
covering his ears and saying, mister Winthrop, if you please,
an affliction of the hearing. Sounds of any exaggerated degree
cut into my brain like knives, So you have to
be you have to use your inside voice when speaking
to Roderick. He cannot stand a raised voice. It causes

(51:34):
him such pain. So Roderick goes to rest in a
high back chair and Philip begins to explain what's going on.
He says that he must be allowed to see Madeline
since they are engaged to be married. Roderick seems disturbed
by this news and tells him that it's impossible. Madeleine
is confined to her bed and their engagement has to

(51:57):
be called off. It was He should think of it
just as an unform fortunate mistake, and Philip must leave
the estate at once. He says, it is not a
healthy place for you to be. Philip, of course, does
not accept this, and it would be a strange thing
if he just conformed. He's like, no, I don't understand
why you're saying this, and he says he's not going
to leave without seeing Madeleine. Multiple times in this argument,

(52:20):
again Philip raises his voice and whenever he gets louder,
Price closes his eyes and grits his teeth in pain.
So he reacts every time. But while they're going back
and forth, their dispute is cut short when Madeleine herself
appears in the doorway of Roderick's room, and again this
is mRNA Fahe Now, she's obviously very happy to see

(52:41):
Philip and flattered that he made the journey here to
the mansion. But there is some kind of cloud hanging
over their reunion, somewhat literally, in the form of Roderick himself,
who cuts it short to escort Madeleine back to her room,
explaining that she must go back to bed.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
Yes, this is another film where people are sent to
bed a very strict bedtime schedule here in the House
of Usher.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
Yeah, so they go, and Philip is left alone in
Roderick's room, And here is where we see one of
the first of the Bert Schoenberg paintings, not of a
person in this case, but of the house itself. In
a wild impressionistic style. I was trying to think of
a way to describe this. It's this is a great painting.

(53:28):
It looks so it's so colorful and almost happy in
the way the colors are jumbled, but also does look
quite evil. It's like a cross between a haunted mansion,
a monet painting of a big pile of Halloween candies,
and also sort of a boss from Legend of Zelda
Ocarina of Time.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
Yeah, it's pretty fabulous. So again, very strong night Gallery vibes.
You know, I can basically hear the theme music in
my head. You know. It looks like a like a
decaying anson made out of meat, with like an eye
opening in the center of it.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
It's tremendous, the eye in the center. That's what I'm
reacting to with the Zelda comparison. It looks like the
first boss you fight in Okarina of Time, that thing
in the tree. Anyway, While Philip is looking at the
painting waiting for Roderick to return, the fireplace suddenly spits
a bunch of cinders onto his legs, and this will
be the first of many attempts by the house to

(54:25):
murder the characters. But he just kind of brushes it off.
Roderick comes back and asks with concern what happened, But
Philip is not worried about it. He's just like, I
think your fireplace needs a screen, and Price says, does it.
After this, they pick up the conversation sort of where
they left off. We learn that Roderick is a man

(54:47):
of the arts. He paints. The painted work we were
just talking about is his own, and Roderick also plays
the lute. But here the conversation gets weirder. Roderick wants
to know if Philip really intends to marry Madeleine. Philip says,
of course he does, and Roderick says, do you intend
to have children? And Philip says, god willing. Then Roderick

(55:10):
gasps with despair and he says god willing. He explains
that this would be a nightmare and it cannot happen. Why. Well,
here we get one of Vincent Price's many lovely tortured monologues.
So I just want to read from part of what
he says here with some abridgments. Price says, because the
usher line is tainted, you saw Madeleine and you see me.

(55:34):
We are dying mister Winthrop, as you saw her today,
she is and will remain. Which, by the way, again,
in suspension of disbelief, I will say, nothing looked all
that unhealthy about Madeleine. Like she looked fine. But by
the way the characters talk, we're supposed to understand that
when we saw her in the previous scene, she looks

(55:54):
sickly and like like she is about to die.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
But really she just looks like she still has her
night down on and it's had time to put on
all her makeup.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
Yeah, so Madeleine is supposed to look sick in the
same way that these brightly rooms are supposed to look dark.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
But anyway, Price continues. Believe me, sir, I bear you
no malice were things otherwise I should welcome you into
our family joyously. But under the circumstances it is quite impossible.
And then a little later he says, Madeline and I
are like figures of fine glass. The slightest touch and
we may shatter. Both of us suffer from a morbid

(56:31):
acuteness of the senses. Mine is the worse for having
existed the longer, but both of us are afflicted with it.
Any sort of food more exotic than the most pallid
mash is unendurable to my taste buds. Any sort of
garment other than the softest is agony to my flesh.
My eyes are tormented by all but the faintest illumination.

(56:55):
Odors assail me constantly, and as I've said, sounds of
any degree whatsoever inspire me with terror. And then Philip reasons, ah,
that's why your servant asked me to remove my boots,
and Roderick says yes. And even so, I could hear
your coming, every footstep, every rustle of your clothes. I

(57:15):
could hear your horse approaching, hear the clatter of its
hoofs across the courtyard, Your knock, the grating of the
door bolt was like a sword stroke to my ears.
I can hear the scratch of rat claws within the
stone wall. Mister Winthrop, three quarters of my family have
fallen into madness, and in their madness have acquired a

(57:36):
superhuman strength, so that it took the power of many
to subdue them. Oh excellent, and I love this for
many reasons. First of all, the evincent Price's delivery in
the scene is great, but I also thought it was
really interesting the relationship between the supposedly afflicted characters and
the senses. I think a lot of times characters in

(57:58):
horror stories like this seem to be suffering from some
kind of vague affliction are presented in the opposite way.
They're presented as insensate or unconscious, kind of detached from reality.
The Ushers instead are hyper sensitive to all stimulize, sound, light,
and taste, and they are thus more present and more

(58:21):
vulnerable to every little bit of life. And there's also
an interesting relationship of this to their cursed super strength.
And warning there will be spoilers ahead, So if you
want to see this movie without anything spoiled, you know,
go ahead and watch it for yourself. But spoiler's incoming.
Later in the film, when Madeline does finally succumb to

(58:44):
the Usher madness, we see that she's able to break
metal chains and she kind of becomes a goth hulk.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
Yeah, it is like there, the multi generational evil of
the Usher family has reached terminal velocity, and you can
tap into that velocity if you want to, if you
have the willpower, I guess.

Speaker 3 (59:02):
Yeah. So it's like at the same time that they
are dying and incredibly fragile. They're also becoming Superman. They're
gain they're gaining all of Superman's sensory powers, like his
superhering and everything, and they're gaining Superman's strength.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
So Winthrop of course reacts to this with extreme skepticism.
And then he's like, it is so dark in here, Roderick,
can you light a candle? And so Roderick goes and
lights two red candles on the mantle above the fireplace,
and then he says, two pale drops of fire guttering
in the vast, consuming darkness, my sister and myself. Shortly

(59:39):
they will burn no more.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
I think this may have been the scene where I
thought to myself, I can see every corner of this room.
I think you're overreacting, Roderick, but you know, he kind
of does a lot of the time.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
But so here the sort of the central dispute between
the characters is established. Roderick says, hey, our family line
is cursed. Madeleine and I are suffering from a physical
and mental decomposition as a result of this curse. And
Madeleine cannot be allowed to leave this house, cannot have children,
or she will pass the curse along to them. And

(01:00:11):
the evil will continue. Philip, on the other hand, does
not believe in the idea of this curse. He's dismissive
of the whole thing and says, if Madeleine still wishes
to marry him and wishes to have children, they will
do so and they will leave the house together. This
is something that Philip does bring up. It is the
fact that he does already know her. Yeah, it's you know,

(01:00:33):
like they have a relationship already. They you know, It's like,
it's just that now he is on Roderick's turf and
he he has come to meet her family and is
therefore encountering different dynamics. I do think that's actually very
interesting because this is an exaggerated horror version of a

(01:00:54):
real dynamic, which is that, you know, people often act
different when they're around their family. Can meet a person
in one setting, and then when you go to meet
their family, they just changed a little bit. They act
a little bit different. I think a lot of people
have probably experienced this with like the family of a
significant other, you know, with their in laws or whatever.

(01:01:15):
Of course, this takes that too monstrous dimensions.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Yes, but but yeah, it does plan some real dynamics
I think, you know, like even in my own life,
you know, I recognize that. Yeah, you know, I love
my family, but if I'm visiting with them more than
a couple of days, I feel myself falling back into
a former self. You know. I feel like I can
only maintain who I am outside of that dynamic for

(01:01:40):
like a day or so, and then I begin to
slip into this former self. And you know, I just
observing the way that I change or regress when I
am in this environment.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
Yeah, I think it's a really common experience. But so
Philip here, he says, I'm going to stay at the
house until Madeline is well enough to leave. And Roderick
is like, you know, okay, but now now that you know,
whatever consequences fall upon you here, that's not my responsibility.
That's on you, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
And he's gonna have some time to kill in the
House of Usher here. He's going to start pointing out
some problems with the foundation and so forth. And I
couldn't help, but think, wouldn't it be an interesting read
on this if Philip was a real fixer upper, you know,
like a handyman type, and he was like, let me
get it. Roderick let me go over to the home depot.
I'm going to pick up a few things I can.

(01:02:31):
I can spackle this crack up. We'll get sho up
and running a noe time.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
Now pards to the lab and.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Roderick would be like, you can try, but this home
is beyond repair because of the curves.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
Oh you know what Roderick is. He's like Homer Simpson
in that episode where he's like, you know, the problem
was water damage. A simple five cent washer will get out.
So anyway, one of the weird things. The first time
I was watching this, I was confused about I thought
Philip arrived late at night, but I think he's supposed

(01:03:05):
to have arrived earlier in the day, because we see
like time pass and then it's like later in the
evening and Philip is alone in his guest room getting
ready to go down for supper. And here we see
the first of the Poultergeist. Ye stuff like he's got
a chamber stick that's like a little candle holder with
a dish on the bottom. You know, He's got that
sitting on a table and it starts to scoot across

(01:03:28):
the surface of the table by itself. Now, when I
first saw this, I was like, ah, okay, so there
are definitely ghosts here. But then Philip hears a rumbling
sound and he goes to look out his window and
sees there is a giant crack running up from the
foundation up the side of the house. Part of the
frame of the house seems to be shifting, so maybe

(01:03:49):
that's what made the candle inside move. Maybe it wasn't
a ghost. And we get some nice creepy close ups
of the crack running along the length of the exterior wall.
It's just drooling cobweb and dust.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Yeah, this house is not up to cut. We're we're
we're learning.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
As Philip is coming down for supper, he nearly gets
squashed by a falling chandelier, you know, just misses him.
He dodges out of the way, and Madeline comes out
and sees this, and she begs him to leave the
house for his own safety, but he's like, no, it's fine.
It's just an old creaky chandelier. Everything's okay. So they
have dinner and they're sitting at the strange dinner table.

(01:04:36):
Apparently again the Ushers can only eat unseasoned mash and
white bread, but Roderick does appear to have a taste
for wine served in nearly opaque blood red goblets. I
guess maybe wine is not too exotic a flavor.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
No, no, you know, especially if you're just having potatoes
and molasses for dinner and you can you can handle
slightly spicy wine.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Yeah. Philip notices that Madeleine is not eating at all.
He's also like, hey, Roderick, are you going to get
that crack in the wall fixed? What you're talking about?
And I do not think Roderick is planning on it.
Other topics of conversation at dinner are that the soil
around the mansion is turned sour, no plants will grow
in the usherlands, and then also that friends in Boston

(01:05:21):
keep asking about Madeline, and she seems encouraged by this,
but Roderick looks irritated at the delivery of this news.
So after supper, Philip and Madeleine they go up to
the sitting room, I guess with Roderick, and they listen
to him giving a little concert. He plays his lute,
Remember the lute from earlier. Roderick says, yes, I play
the lute, but I don't know listening in this scene

(01:05:42):
does he play it either sounds like he is just
now learning and kind of improvising, or he is so
advanced as a lute player that now he is only
interested in non rhythmic twelve tone compositions.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
At the very least. It's it's you know, he can
only handle these very soft sounds. He gentle music, So yeah,
maybe he's into some sort of like weird or deep
ambient kind of a thing, or or yeah, it's like
I don't need to learn to play this lute all
that much because this is about all I can handle anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
Yeah, I am cursed. It is forbidden for me to
play in a key, so I shall only pluck the
notes at random. And then Philip says, remarkable, you composed
it yourself. But Philip kind of like he can't get
enough of the twelve tone lude. He's like, give me another,
let's hear another song, but Roderick insists with a severe

(01:06:39):
expression that now Madeleine must go to sleep. In fact,
all three of them must go to sleep.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
It is nice seven thirty p m. All too bad.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
So there's another scene later that night where Philip sneaks
into Madeleine's room to talk with her in secret. He
tells her that in the morning he wants to take
her away from the house if she'll let him. What
is Madeleine's state of mind again, She seems conflicted, like
she does buy into the idea that she is sick
from a curse and terrible things could befall them if

(01:07:13):
she were to leave, but also you can tell that
she wants to leave. She's excited by the idea and
something kind of comes alive within her at the idea
of escaping with the man she loves. So she's sort
of in the middle position between the two other characters.
Roderick is fully convinced of the usher curse, Philip doesn't
believe it at all, and Madeleine is torn in between

(01:07:35):
the two ideas. But this scene takes an interesting turn
because Roderick suddenly appears at the door. Remember, he's got
super sensitive hearing, so he hears any time someone is
talking in the house. He's stern and angry at first
and tries to send Philip to bed, but after Madeleine
shows a bit of defiance, shows that maybe the spell

(01:07:56):
is breaking and she might want to leave the house
with Philip. Roderick then changes tack and he sort of
turns and becomes pathetic and pitiable, which I think you
could interpret multiple ways. As I've said, this movie and
Price's performance and contain a lot of ambiguities that you
could read in different directions. But I think you could

(01:08:19):
certainly interpret this as a kind of emotional manipulation. If
he can't convince her that she has to stay for
her own well being, you know, something bad will happen
to her if she leaves. I guess something bad is
going to happen to her anyway, maybe he can at
least recruit her to stay on behalf of his feelings
and his well being.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's important to note that this
is a film where have you just had it on
the background. You could think of it as just like, okay,
here's Vincent Price and Vincent Price role. But there are
a lot of little nuances to the way he plays
all of these decisions and all of these actions from
his character. I feel like any prime Vincent Price perform

(01:09:00):
is going to be, you know, a masterclass in its
own way. You know, sometimes he's more hamming it up,
sometimes there are more subtleties, but he's never just going
through the motions, so certainly at this period in his career. Yeah,
by the time we get to the Muppet Show, you know, maybe,
but but not not here.

Speaker 3 (01:09:19):
So later that night and yes, still the same twenty
four hour period, the scenes just keep piling up. Before daybreak,
Philip is lying in bed and then he hears a
bunch of weird sounds echoing through the house. So he
runs around, investigating the sounds and looking for Madeline. He
sees some creepy sights along the way, like wind blowing
in through the windows. There's a staircase railing that gives

(01:09:41):
way under his hand. There's a heavy door creaking open
and shut over and over. And Philip eventually follows the
sounds into the mansion's chapel. There's a chapel inside the house,
where he finds Madeline sprawled out I believe on the
altar asleep, and Bristol the comes in to tell him

(01:10:01):
that Madeleine often sleep walks and ends up here in
the chapel. Bristol says that she is obsessed by thoughts
of death and has been ever since her return from Boston.
So Bristol takes Madeline back to her bed and Then
the next morning, there's a scene where Philip comes into
the kitchen. Bristol is here again, and now he's boiling

(01:10:22):
a huge cauldron of gruel over an open fire, and
I'm looking at that. I'm thinking, I don't know how
many gallons of ruel that is, But who is going
to eat all that gruel? There are four people in
this house.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Well, you know you can free some for later, you know,
you give me want leftovers.

Speaker 3 (01:10:42):
So Philip says he's gonna take breakfast up up to
Madeline in bed. He's like, hey, how about some eggs
for my Madeline? And Bristol is like, oh no, no, no, sir,
not eggs much too threatening to the taste buds. She
will only want gruel. Eggs are one of the exotic flavors.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Eggs are too spicy for the ushers.

Speaker 3 (01:11:00):
Yes, so gruel it is. We also get more like
more of the crumbling house attacks, Like at one point,
Philip is standing by the gruel cauldron talking to Bristol,
and the cauldron like the wall is sort of shaking
and the cauldron swings toward him. But Bristol is like,
oh careful, sir.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Well, I mean if your gruel is pretty thick. You're
gonna get some bubbles and you could get splattered. I mean,
that's just that's just gruel one on one.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):
Yeah. So after this, there's a very funny scene where
Winthrop awkwardly tries to feed Madeline gruel in bed. He's like,
come on, eat up, honey. She's not hungry, not even
for gruel, and he tries to cheer her up by
opening the windows and letting sunshine in. Tries to convince
her once again to come back to Boston with him,
but in this scene, she seems to have regressed to

(01:11:49):
her original state of hopelessness. She tells him soon I
shall be dead, and he obviously does not like hearing this.
He tries to remind her of how happy and full
of life she was in Boston, but she says, maybe
you'll understand once you see see what. Well, it's time
to go investigate the family crypt. Here we're going to

(01:12:11):
get another kind of partial explanation of what is going on.
So underneath the mansion there is a subterranean crypt full
of bones of all of Madeline and Roderick Usher's ancestors.
She shows Philip the coffins one by one, going down
the line and listing their names and saying their relationship
to her, until finally she gets to the spot of

(01:12:33):
her own coffin, which is empty and waiting for her.
And Philip hates this. He's like, there's a coffin here
with your name on it. This is monstrous. She says,
it waits for me. And as a side note, I
think the crypt set here is nice by the way
the characters talk about how there's something wrong with the
air in the crypt. They never fully explain that, but

(01:12:54):
I like that just as a little like detail that
kind of excites the mind, like, Oh, could there be
something in the air that's causing a problem or are
they just saying like it is evil in here?

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
Mmm? Yeah, yeah, who knows what's like leaking up through
the earth into this mansion. No, it also also seems
like there's a lot of evil leaking out of this
mansion into the earth.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
Yeah, exactly. So once again, Madeleine says to Philip that
he just doesn't understand, and there is something I think
very effectively unsettling about this repeated theme that multiple times
characters tell Philip that there's something wrong but he doesn't understand,
and then they don't explain it immediately, like, you know,
I'm soon to die. This coffin waits for me, and

(01:13:36):
he's like, why would you say that you can live?
And she can't explain. All she can do is tell
him that he doesn't understand. I think the idea that
there is some understanding that would make sense of this
all but it can't be explained to him or can't
be explained yet, is very creepy.

Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
Yeah. Yeah, And I feel like Matheson in the script
here is really, you know, touching on the actual gap
that often exists between my experience and your experience, between
my mental state and your mental state, and it can
feel like there's something that can't be bridged there, you know,
at least not with the tools that one has immediately

(01:14:15):
at their disposal. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:16):
Yeah. Oh. In the scene we get another house attack,
there's a coffin scare, like a coffin falls out of
the wall nearly crushes the two of them, but they
dodge out of the way, and then Madeline faints once
again and Roderick arrives and carries her away. So in
the next scene we finally are going to get some explanation.

(01:14:37):
Roderick says it is time for Philip to understand. So
they go out on the balcony overlooking the twisted marsh below,
and Roderick says, the tarn is very deep. One of
the Usher women drowned herself in it. She was never found.
I dare say it's deep enough to swallow this house entire.
And then there's another little exchange, but Usher goes on

(01:14:59):
to I again want to quote his monologue here, because
I think it's great. Roderick says, once this land was fertile,
Farms abounded, earth yielded her riches at harvest time, there
were trees and plant life, flowers, fields of grain. There
was great beauty here. At that time. This water was
clear and fresh. Swans glided upon its crystal surface. Animals

(01:15:23):
came to its bank trustingly to drink. But this was
long before my time. And then something crept across the
land and blighted it. The trees lost their foliage, the
flowers languished and died. Shrubs grew brown and shriveled. The
grain fields perished. The lakes and ponds became black and stagnant,

(01:15:44):
and the land withered as before a plague, a plague
of evil, and here Roderick takes Philip inside to show
him the paintings, the paintings that we alluded to earlier,
of the portraits of his ancestors. So we go through
them one by one and we see each painting, and
then Roderick names his relative and then begins to list

(01:16:06):
sort of the high points of each relative's biography, which
are mostly negative epithets and lists of crimes. So it
turns out all of the Usher ancestors were horrible. They
were thieves, swindlers, betrayers, blackmailers, liars, exploiters, slave traders, murderers,

(01:16:28):
and assassins.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
Yeah. This this rundown reminds me a lot of the
card game Gloom. I don't know if you're familiar with
with with this one, Joe, it has kind of like
an Edward Gory kind of vibe to it, where you're
trying to like play the most cursed upper crust family.

Speaker 3 (01:16:45):
I've always about it, but I've never played it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
It's pretty fun, as Zarich, it's been a number of years,
but it has this kind of vibe like who can
out usher the other player.

Speaker 3 (01:16:53):
Who has the most evil ancestry.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
But oh yeah, this is this tour of the world.
First of the worst in the Ashuer family is tremendous,
and we have illustrations. Of course, we have those wonderful, dark,
grotesque portraits of each individual, each one not as much
a photorealistic image of the individual, but like a psychic
portrait of their soul.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
Yeah. So I included some screenshots of these paintings here
in the outline for you to look at. Robie, do
you want to comment on any individually. I think this
first one, mentioned Anthony Usher, is interesting because it is
this is supposed to be like an evil old man,
but this face looks almost childlike in a way, except
the face is rendered with these sort of jigsaw puzzle

(01:17:39):
lines running through it. But it's, you know, pictured with
these like large eyes with large dilated pupils, cannoting a
kind of I don't even know how to explain it.
It's it looks like a kind of evil innocence.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so, It's hard to really
put it in words. Yeah, but those eyes are wide
and curious, same kind of innocent. But the rest is
almost decade and patchwork.

Speaker 3 (01:18:06):
There's another one that shows a man whose eyes are
hidden in shadow, but it's like his outline is sort
of sort of shifting through the air so that he
actually does not have a fixed outline at the back
of his neck and his head. Instead, there are like
these multiple lines that just blur out into this cloud

(01:18:27):
of red, as if he is taking form out of
a mist of blood.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
Yeah, this one has has strong vampiric elements to it,
like get a sense of like biological disorder, like inner
disease or disease of the soul. And you know, virtually
no eyes, just dark pits as well, so less innocence
with this particular character.

Speaker 3 (01:18:49):
Yeah. And then we also see probably the most infernal
looking boat captain picture I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
Oh yes, oh my goodness. The boat Captain was like
just the burning eyes. Yeah, like this is the guy
who volunteers to bring Dragula to England. Like this is
he's like, yeah, bloaded him up.

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
But so the point is that going back through time
before Rohderick and Madeline, everyone in the Usher line seems
to have been, in one way or another, the worst
kind of person imaginable, someone who becomes rich by destroying
the lives of others and then, at least in terms
of the external world gets away with it. But do

(01:19:30):
they really get away with it because a lot of
these people were told end ups. It's something bad does
happen to them. But it's not like they face justice
from outside. It's like they go mad or they're taken
ill or something.

Speaker 4 (01:19:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
Yeah, like they don't. They don't get their come upance
in a real firm manner like they in the sense
that they they stay rich, they stay highly successful in
their own deplorable fields, and then the rest of our world,
the world just kind of looks on is like, well, yeah,
of course the Ushers got away with it. Again, that's
what they do. And here we are.

Speaker 3 (01:20:05):
So Philip protests. He is like, but sir, you cannot
believe that the sins of the father should be visited
upon the children. And Roderick says, you do not, sir.
Then the House of Usher seems to you normal, And
then Philip says it is neither normal nor abnormal. It
is only a house. And I think this plays on

(01:20:26):
another interesting theme in the movie, that the duality the
different meanings of the word house in English. So it
is the house of Usher that we're told is evil
and cursed, and house can mean the literal building an
ancestral family dwelling which seems infused with wickedness and crumbles
kind of pointedly with the intent to cause harm. But

(01:20:47):
also the word house is used to refer to a
lineage a family, usually an aristocratic or royal one, as
in the House of Windsor. Is kind of interesting that
you only use the word house to refer to a
family if it's like a prominent, rich family. And adding
to that, there's this kind of overlap with the idea
of the curse here in the two meanings of house,

(01:21:08):
because if the idea is that the ancestors of the
Usher line became rich by way of their sins, it
is their wickedness that generated the money to buy the
land and build the physical house, which are the physical
things that are now cursed. So the reason they have
a mansion and a vast estate is because of the

(01:21:29):
evil crimes of the past.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
Yeah, all of these things that were purchased and acquired
via that wealth is tainted by the acts that generated it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:41):
So Roderick explains his theory that evil is not just
a word, it is a substance, a living reality, and
like any living thing, it can be created and was
created by his ancestors, and now the evil they created
lives on within the house. Again the ambiguity, he says,
house that the building or the living descendants, or both,

(01:22:03):
and it will live on as long as the house
still exists, which is why Roderick insists that neither he
nor Madeleine should ever have children. It would be to
allow the evil to live on for another generation. So
Roderick says explicitly that all of the near fatal accidents
that have occurred since Philip arrived were not accidents. It

(01:22:24):
is the evil of the house lashing out trying to
kill Philip, and Philip violently rejects this. He says, no, Roderick,
the evil in this house is you. I will not
let your sickened fantasies destroy Madeleine's life. She leaves with
me today. And when he yells price again, he shows
the fragility. He clutches his ears and he shrinks in pain.

Speaker 1 (01:22:46):
You know, just a common response in films when there's
a new theory regarding the nature of evil. It reminds
me a little bit of the nineteen seventy three British
horror film The Creeping Flesh, which is not one of
my favorites. It's a little I don't know, I don't
like the mouthfeel of this particular one. But it has
Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in it, and one of

(01:23:07):
the characters at one point, it's like I have made
a breakthrough in the nature of evil. Evil is real
and we can put it under a microscope and study it.
Look look at the evil, and you know it's always
a controversial hye bosis.

Speaker 3 (01:23:28):
Now regarding the evil is you interpretation of the story
referring to Roderick here, one thing I think worth mentioning
is that it is never made explicit in the movie,
but there is sort of an unspoken theme that a
lot of viewers have picked up on in like film
critics literary critics talking about the story over the years.
It could be implied that Roderick is acting in a

(01:23:51):
way out of jealousy, that in fact, he has desire
for his own sister and he wants to control her
and keep her at the house because he can't stand
the thought of her going away and marrying Philip. I
think that's a plausible reading of the evil as you
interpretation of the story. Though the evil as you could
also be true about Roderick and simply be that he's

(01:24:14):
so wrapped up in his delusions about the physical manifestation
of evil, you know, caused by the horrible ancestors, that
he unknowingly projects this delusion onto Madeline and unnecessarily warps
her mind and ruins her life as well. But then
another interpretation is that the external evil is real and
Roderick is correct. And I think the interesting thing is

(01:24:35):
that it's possible to take the movie on any of
these interpretations.

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):
Yeah, though I think the middle is the more It's
the one I lean more towards. I think it's the
more interesting of the concepts, you know, because if it's
just him, you know, creeping on her and having designs
for her, I don't know, that's you know, that's gross
and all, but it's not matter. It only gives me
so far. And then like the actual physical reality of

(01:25:02):
evil too, I mean that, you know, definitely gets into
a nice supernatural zone. But it's that that middle area,
that idea that it's just like sheer projection of paranoia
and and and shame and and so forth from Roderick,
Like just this is the sheer power of his dark thoughts,

(01:25:23):
you know, uh, in a non supernatural way, Like I
feel like that's very compelling.

Speaker 3 (01:25:28):
I agree that is also my preferred interpretation. But I
thought it was worth mentioning the three different ways because
I've seen sort of, you know, people writing about this
movie that take it all three.

Speaker 1 (01:25:38):
Yeah, And I do like that ambiguity in a film,
you know, where you're open to your own interpretation.

Speaker 3 (01:25:45):
Anyway, after this confrontation between Philip and Roderick, Philip goes
to Madeleine's room and makes one last bid to convince her.
Remember she's been vacillating. She'll say like, yeah, okay, let's go,
and then like no, no, I'm cursed. I have to stay.
So he's like, you've got to leave with me. There
there is nothing wrong with you that leaving this house
won't cure. And hope kind of gathers in her mind
again and she says, yes, I will go, and they kiss.

(01:26:07):
She seems afraid but also excited. So they got to
pack their things and get ready to go. But while
they are packing their things and they're in their separate rooms,
Roderick goes into Madeleine's room and begins to argue with her.
Reminding her of all the evils and calamities that he
says will occur if she leaves the house. And tensions rise,
and you can hear Philip hears through the wall that

(01:26:29):
they begin to yell, which is, you know, that's not normal.
Normally everybody keeps the library voice in this house. And
Philip finally hears Madeleine's scream, and when he comes into
the room, Roderick is standing at the window and Madeleine
is lying on her sheets, apparently dead. Now Philip yells
at Roderick, you killed her, but Roderick says, no, there

(01:26:50):
is no mark on her. You are the one who
killed her. He's like, I warned you, and I warned you.
Her heart could not withstand the strain of leaving, the
strain put upon her. At least she's now been spared
the agony of trying to escape. One candle left to
burn now before the darkness.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
Comes way to go, Philip, you killed her.

Speaker 3 (01:27:10):
And the interesting thing is that Philip and Roderick have
been at opposite ends of this, and Madeleine's been in
the middle. Roderick's like, there's a curse. Madeline is sick.
Philip is like there's not a curse, she's not sick,
she's fine, And they're both sort of trying to convince Madeleine.
But now that Madeleine is apparently dead, you start to
see Philip succumbing to Roderick's interpretation. So they're like in

(01:27:33):
the family chapel praying over Madeleine's body, and you can
see Philip is filled with guilt, and he even asks
in a subsequent scene he's talking to Bristol later and
he's like, could it be that I that I did this,
that I, you know, excited her illness and I killed her?
Like he is starting to buy into the curse theory now.

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
M hm, he's been there too long. He's becoming a
part of the House of Usher.

Speaker 3 (01:27:57):
Yeah. Oh, and then there's a part that did make
you laugh out loud when they're there. The two of
them are in the chapel praying over Madeleine's dead body
with the open casket, and Roderic is like, oh, by
the way, she's not at peace now she's in hell.
All ushers go to hell.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
It is deliciously awful, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (01:28:16):
Yeah, And Philip's just like, shut up. But so they
start this vigorous bickering. But one thing we the audience see,
and Roderick sees, but Philip does not see, is that
Madeline's fingers begin to flex and stretch.

Speaker 1 (01:28:33):
Uh oh.

Speaker 3 (01:28:34):
So Roderick catches a glimpse of this, and he quickly
snaps the coffin lid shut. And it's like, okay, quickly,
let's carry her coffin down to the crypt. Hurry up now,
And so the mourners leave the chapel, they shut the crypt,
and we zoom slowly on the coffin until finally we
hear Madeline scream and and we have arrived at the
most classic of Edgar Allan Poe theme's premature burial. That's right,

(01:28:59):
So now everything is building up to the climax. The
next morning, Philip is getting ready to leave. He again
is buying into the Roderick theory. He's distraught. The ideas
have gotten to him, and he's worried that he really
did kill Madeleine by putting these ideas in her head
about leaving the house. But Bristol, the butler, is trying
to console Philip, and he lets slip that you know, Madeleine,

(01:29:21):
she suffered from many health conditions, and there were many
health conditions that run in the family. He starts to
list them, you know, nervous conditions, something you know, a
failure of the heart, and then he starts to say
but catches himself catalepsy, which is a condition where people
fall into a kind of unconscious trance or spontaneous coma

(01:29:41):
where they are immobile and can appear to be dead,
but they're not. Philip hears this, and he realizes what
it means. What if Madeleine was still alive and only
appeared to have died. What if she has been buried
alive in the crypt? So Philip he freaks out. He
runs down under the house into the chamber. He finds
Madeleine's coffin strangely wrapped shut with a padlocked chain, and

(01:30:05):
then he goes and finds an axe, breaks the chain open,
only to discover that the coffin is empty. That's not good,
so Philip goes and confronts Roderick, wanting to know where
Madeline is and Roderick he doesn't try to deny it.
He says she's in a secret place and he won't tell.
And Philip threatens Roderick with the axe, but Roderick is

(01:30:27):
not moved. He does not back down. He says, go on,
you would be doing me a great favor. And so
again it's interesting here how physically unthreatening Roderick is in
this scene. He has all the power, but he's so
physically weak, so fragile. He cringes and cowers in pain
when Philip yells at him, and when Philip threatens him

(01:30:48):
with an axe with violence, He's just like, go ahead
and do it. So it's a very unusual and fascinating
power dynamic in the drama.

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
It's like, you can kill me and you know, and
I'll go to hell where I belong, but just don't
raise your voice or touch my garments. And because I
just can't take.

Speaker 3 (01:31:06):
That right, so Philip is he's searching all over the
house looking for Madeline. He eventually he just becomes totally
exhausted and passes out. And here we get a great
dream sequence where Philip wanders through an altered version of
the House of Usher, filled with blue fog, and eventually
makes his way into the chapel, which has all of
the horrible Usher ancestors moaning at him and reaching out

(01:31:29):
to grab his flesh and When Philip goes to the
head of the chapel, he finds Madeleine's coffin occupied only
by a skeleton, and then he searches further and further
deeper into the dream, and somewhere in the dream he
can't find her, but he imagines Madeleine alive, still covered
in flesh, trapped in her coffin and screaming wide eyed
in terror. I love the dream.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
Sequence, absolutely wonderful. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:53):
Yeah, So anyway, when Philip wakes up, he goes to
Roderick's room, where Roderick is just sitting there plucking his lute,
and Philip's like, you murdered your sister, mister usher, and
I intend to see that you hang for it, and
Roderick says, arrange it quickly. Then the old house crumbles
the time window is closing, but Roderick goes on. He

(01:32:14):
starts another monologue where he's like, if you only knew
the agonies I have spared you in this world that
I have endured on your behalf. Did you know I
could hear the scratching of her fingernails on the casket lid?
Did you know I could hear her screaming my name?
For help, and then Roderick seems he suddenly like it's
like something seizes him and he calls out, be done,

(01:32:36):
be done, and Philip realizes what this means. Madeline is
still alive and Roderick can hear her screaming for help now,
so Roderick rants and raves in agony. He can hear
her scratching and all that, but Philip doesn't know where
to find her, and we cut away. We see a
chained coffin, a different chained coffin with Madeline's bloody fingers

(01:32:58):
reaching out through the crack. Ooh, a killing image. And
then finally Philip, Roderick and Bristol they run around, you know,
Philip is trying to find her. He makes his way
into another part of the crypt where the coffins of
the Ushers have all been pulled out of their places,
and the skeletons the bones are scattered across the floor,
and they find Madeleine's secret coffin thrown open. The chain's broken.

(01:33:22):
So here's the payoff of the monologue we got in
Act one where Roderick says, oh, she has the madness,
Remember the madness he mentioned earlier where his relatives all
go mad and gain the strength of many men. So
Philip at this point is running through the house, finding
and unlocking secret passageways to locate Madeleine. Roderick arms himself
with a pistol, but is that going to do any good?

(01:33:44):
Could you possibly imagine it? Would? We finally get the
the ultimate climax of the film, where I don't want
to spoil too much, but for a movie that is
mostly kind of visually subdued apart from like the paintings
and the dream dream sequence, when we finally see Madeleine
in her madness, in her glorious madness, with her hands

(01:34:05):
covered in rivulets of blood from where she has scratched
her fingernails away on the inside of the coffin. Her
eyes are just wide with absolute terror and insanity. Her
hair is thrown back and they cast these like these
amazing blue lights over her face. She is awesome to behold.

Speaker 1 (01:34:24):
Yeah, She's like a bansheet or a wraith, you know.
She has that kind of energy to her avengeful spirit.

Speaker 3 (01:34:30):
And of course we get avengeful final confrontation, whereas the
house is fully crumbling, everything's on fire. Now the House
of Usher is meeting its ultimate physical demise. Also, Madelene
confronts her brother and she takes him by the neck
and strangles Roderic amidst all the fire and the smoke
and the falling rubble. And it's a tremendous and terrifying climax.

Speaker 1 (01:34:55):
Absolutely yeah, oh my goodness, Like the mansion looked amazing
in the picture, and as a fiery husk consumed in
this cataclysm, it also looks amazing. The curse comes to
full fruition here, just absolutely apocalyptic.

Speaker 3 (01:35:12):
Yeah. And so Philip is the only one who survives.
The house burns and collapses, and then as he walks away,
comes out of the gate, wanders into the swamp, with
everything he loved destroyed. We see the final quote from
the original post story. The words appear on the screen,
and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed

(01:35:33):
sullenly and silently over the fragments of the house of Usher.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
Fabulous, fabulous. And of course the moral of the story
is never meet your significant other's family. Don't do it.

Speaker 3 (01:35:46):
So again, a different, a different kind of film, a
different kind of proposition than Mask of the Red Death,
which is wilder and more visually extravagant and you know,
has more kind of variety in it and all that,
but I think or what it is as a tighter,
cozier tale of the macabre, House of Usher is really strong.

Speaker 1 (01:36:06):
Yeah, this is a film that vibes hard. Again, It's
maybe not the ideal viewing experience for you, if you
if you want something a little more action based or
something that's gonna hit you a lot of jump scares.
But in terms of like just pure gothic horror po vibes,
it's hard to beat House of Usher.

Speaker 3 (01:36:27):
So happy Halloween, everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:36:29):
Yeah, yeah, this is a fun one. I enjoyed watching it.
I had never seen it before, and I originally enjoyed
the experience. It's a good film to really focus on.
But I mean, you could have it on in the
background and it would still be very visually pleasing. But
it's also a good one to really dive into. All Right, well,
we're gonna go ahead and close it out here, but

(01:36:49):
just a reminder that while Stuffed About Your Mind is
primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and
Thursday science and culture podcast on Fridays. You know, we
have to we have to release a little steam. We've
we've got to dive into some weird films and talk
about those. So, hey, you know, get stressful weeks ahead,
don't worry, Weird House Cinema, we'll be here for you.

(01:37:09):
In fact, next week's is going to be a nice
Halloween selection as well. I can't promise anything, but I'm
hoping we can maybe even get it out like just
a little after midnight on Halloween Eve, you know, so
it's technically on Friday, but it's but it's actually Thursday,
you know, that sort of thing. We'll see what we
can do.

Speaker 3 (01:37:29):
We'll do our best.

Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
Yeah, And if you want a full list of all
the movies we've covered on Weird House over the years,
where you can go to letterbox dot com. That's l
E T T E R b o xd dot com.
Our username is weird House. We have a nice list there.
You can explore that. If you're on Instagram, st b
ym podcast and that's where we also update you on
what's happening on Weird House. And if you go to

(01:37:51):
stuff to Bow Yourmind dot com or the link tree
on Instagram, you can eventually get to our tea public store.
We have some new Halloween designs in there that we've
been asked to promote, and I think they're pretty cool.
If you need a shirt, you need a sticker, it's fun.
It's there for fun. We don't need you to buy
a shirt or a sticker, but if you would like to,
it's there for you.

Speaker 3 (01:38:11):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:38:31):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: House of Usher (1960)

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: House of Usher (1960)

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang