Speaker 1: Hey, you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb. You've caught us on our fall Break week,
Speaker 1: but since fall Break is in October, we have loaded
Speaker 1: it up with October episodes from previous years. This episode
Speaker 1: is going to be one that originally published ten twenty
Speaker 1: five twenty twenty four. It is our discussion of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties House of Usher. So yes, another fabulous Corman Poe
Speaker 1: feature starring a platinum blonde Vincent Price. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And October continues, so we
Speaker 3: are still bringing you Halloween themed episodes of Weird House
Speaker 3: Cinema and also core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 3: Mind throughout this month. Today we are covering the nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty Roger Corman adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story
Speaker 3: The Fall of the House of Usher, starring who else,
Speaker 3: it's Vincent Price. This movie is sometimes billed with the
Speaker 3: full name of the story as its title, The Fall
Speaker 3: of the House of Usher, but sometimes you'll see it
Speaker 3: shortened to just House of Usher. In fact, I've seen
Speaker 3: it the latter format more times. I think it looks
Speaker 3: like that in all the classic Posters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is another one of those cases where there
Speaker 1: have been enough adaptations of the original post story in
Speaker 1: question that you should just go ahead and throw nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty on there whenever you're looking it up anywhere, just
Speaker 1: to be sure. Especially this is complicated since you don't
Speaker 1: know how this film is actually going to be titled
Speaker 1: in a given release.
Speaker 3: So this is one of a series of films from
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties that had three production elements in common.
Speaker 3: The first element is a script adapted from the works
Speaker 3: of Edgar Allan Poe, conveniently in the public domain by
Speaker 3: this time. The second element is it was directed by
Speaker 3: Drive in double feature god Roger Corman. And the third
Speaker 3: feature is that the movie starred the peerless Vincent Price,
Speaker 3: who I love the way Price fits into these Edgar
Speaker 3: Allan Poe characters. He just gets in there so perfectly.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think of an analogy, and what
Speaker 3: came to mind is it's like when you drop one
Speaker 3: of the game pieces into a Connect four set, you know,
Speaker 3: it just falls into place with this happy little click.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well it certainly clicks, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: So anyway, it was a three way collaboration, the Poe
Speaker 3: Price Corman collaboration that was so nice. They did it
Speaker 3: like seven or eight times, depending on how much of
Speaker 3: a stickler you are for accurate story credits. And we'll
Speaker 3: come back to the Corman post cycle later in the
Speaker 3: Connections part of this episode. But I wanted to start
Speaker 3: today by mentioning that we've cover one of these movies
Speaker 3: on the show before for a previous Halloween season Weird House,
Speaker 3: and that previous movie was The Mask of the Red
Speaker 3: Death from nineteen sixty four, a lavish satanic plague tale
Speaker 3: featuring Vincent Price as the wicked corruptor of innocence Prince Prospero.
Speaker 3: And I love Mask of the Red Death. If you
Speaker 3: go back and listen to that episode. I'm sure I'm
Speaker 3: just running out of positive things to say about it,
Speaker 3: but I still think about it all the time. I
Speaker 3: love the atmosphere of good and evil as almost physically
Speaker 3: embodied powers. I love the use of extravagant, brightly colored
Speaker 3: masquerade costumes set against this gray world. It creates this
Speaker 3: jewels on bone visual texture that I find so pleasing.
Speaker 3: Of course, I love Vincent Price, and I also love
Speaker 3: how Mask contrasts with Roger Corman's previous B movie work,
Speaker 3: stuff like Attack of the Crab, Monsters, Not of This
Speaker 3: Earth and It Conquered the World, all movies that I
Speaker 3: love and we have talked about lovingly on the show
Speaker 3: many times. But all of these previous movies I think
Speaker 3: you could say are self consciously schlock, Like Corman sort
Speaker 3: of knew he was making trash, but he was trying
Speaker 3: to make like fun, scrappy, sort of intelligent trash. Mask
Speaker 3: of the Red Death, on the other hand, I think
Speaker 3: is not schlock in the same way. You can argue
Speaker 3: that it has some subtle bits of self parody, but
Speaker 3: ultimately I think Mask is a very successful classic Gothic
Speaker 3: horror film when taken straightforwardly and it's made with real finesse,
Speaker 3: and then sort of on top of that, once you
Speaker 3: accept it at that level, you can unlock maybe second
Speaker 3: and third levels of pleasure by watching it with a
Speaker 3: more ironic lens.
Speaker 1: It is a very pleasurable film, and it is a
Speaker 1: prestige Roger Corman picture, And I would say Ultimately, if
Speaker 1: you're too good for Mask of the Red Death, then
Speaker 1: we probably don't have much in common. We probably I
Speaker 1: don't have even like a groundwork upon which to build
Speaker 1: out this friendship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but so anyway, I love to Mask of the
Speaker 3: Red Death so much. I wanted to come back to
Speaker 3: one of the Corman Poe Price movies this October, and
Speaker 3: I decided we should watch the one that started it all,
Speaker 3: the first of these collaborations. So here we are with
Speaker 3: House of Usher from nineteen sixty. So as a point
Speaker 3: of comparison, I think it's interesting how scaled back this
Speaker 3: movie feels compared to Mask. Mask has a big cast,
Speaker 3: a lot of extras, lots of location changes, you know,
Speaker 3: interior exterior. It has a lot of location changes within.
Speaker 3: The main castle, has bright colors, interesting costumes, big sets,
Speaker 3: and light effects that in some cases even border on psychedelic.
Speaker 3: You could say. Usher, by contrast, I think feels like
Speaker 3: a really good bottle episode of a TV show. The
Speaker 3: cast is small, there are only four characters, really, three
Speaker 3: principal characters in sort of a gruel boiling butler. The
Speaker 3: setting is mostly confined to the interior of one house.
Speaker 3: There's nothing too crazy visually, at least not until around
Speaker 3: the climax. Then toward the end there are some sights
Speaker 3: and sounds that get kind of weird. But in general,
Speaker 3: I would just say that Usher contains less flambuoyant original
Speaker 3: creativity than Mask, and it is a more disciplined attempt
Speaker 3: to capture the tone and plot of the original Pose story.
Speaker 3: But this is by no means a dig A lot
Speaker 3: of people cite Usher as their favorite of the Corman
Speaker 3: Price collaborations, and I think I can see why. Like
Speaker 3: the wildness of Mask is a bit more my speed,
Speaker 3: but Usher has a really good script and a chillingly
Speaker 3: effective and ambiguous performance by Price, who has bleach blonde hair.
Speaker 3: By the way, where else are you going to get that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, We'll come back to the look of
Speaker 1: the Price in this picture. That alone makes it stand out.
Speaker 1: But I agree this is a picture that in many
Speaker 1: ways makes it a smaller picture, but a smaller picture
Speaker 1: that's really allowed to breathe, you know, like the fewer
Speaker 1: elements involved all managed to sort of build up their
Speaker 1: own energy that by the end of the picture you
Speaker 1: don't feel like you've been slided at all. That being said,
Speaker 1: I think it is fair to say this is maybe
Speaker 1: a movie in which not as much happens compared to
Speaker 1: other pictures, and you've got to be on board with that.
Speaker 1: Like I watched this film zonked Out on an airplane,
Speaker 1: and it was the perfect perfect picture for that sort
Speaker 1: of setting. You know. I like a nice slow film
Speaker 1: like this. You can breathe in all the sights and sounds,
Speaker 1: especially the sites more so than the sounds here. But
Speaker 1: then also some strong performances in here as well. But
Speaker 1: like I say, if you want something that's really snappy,
Speaker 1: this is maybe not yet you've got to be on
Speaker 1: its wavelength. But if you're on its wavelength, a film
Speaker 1: like this is perfect.
Speaker 3: Oh this is a gloomy, languid, classic gothic haunted mansion story. Yeah, well,
Speaker 3: wait a minute now that I say haunted mansion. Actually
Speaker 3: I think a great thing. Maybe we can discuss the
Speaker 3: themes more when we get into the plot section, but
Speaker 3: I think this movie is interesting in that you could
Speaker 3: legitimately ask, at least for most of the runtime, whether
Speaker 3: there's actually anything supernatural happening or not, or whether it's
Speaker 3: all just kind of the the consequences of Vincent Price's
Speaker 3: character Roderick and his delusional behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if nothing out as else, it is a film
Speaker 1: haunted by multi generational human evil. Yeah, and it definitely
Speaker 1: ruminates on that.
Speaker 3: All right, we usually do an elevator pitch. I'll try
Speaker 3: to give a straightforward plot set up here. Philip Winthrop
Speaker 3: travels to the desolate and decomposing Usher Estate to visit
Speaker 3: his fiance, Madeleine, whom he courted and became engaged to
Speaker 3: during their time together in Boston. So she's gone ahead
Speaker 3: of him back to the Usher Estate and he's coming
Speaker 3: to beat her. But when he arrives, Philip discovers that
Speaker 3: Madeleine is in ill health and she is under the
Speaker 3: constant control of her strange and morose brother, Roderick played
Speaker 3: by Vincent Price. Over time, Philip begins to doubt what
Speaker 3: he's being told by Roderick and the household butler. Is
Speaker 3: Madeline really sick or is she having her will to
Speaker 3: live sapped by Roderick's psychic manipulations? Or is there something
Speaker 3: more sinister and ghostly operating underneath it all?
Speaker 1: We'll find out, all right, Let's go ahead and listen
Speaker 1: to a little trailer audio for House of Usher.
Speaker 4: Go take her man, now let me go.
Speaker 5: Only the incomparable genius of Edgar Allan Poe could knit
Speaker 5: them so closely together, the burning passions of the purest
Speaker 5: of loves, the deadly passions of the madly blurian.
Speaker 1: Hope when you're leaving this house with me tomorrow, Oh
Speaker 1: I God. For hundreds of years, evil thoughts and evil deeds.
Speaker 5: Have been committed within these walls.
Speaker 1: The house itself is evil.
Speaker 4: Now they all are ashes. This is monstrous.
Speaker 1: It waits for me because very soon I shall be dead.
Speaker 4: Oh, Madeline, come away with me. Now where is she?
Speaker 4: You buried your own sister alive?
Speaker 5: I did, but.
Speaker 1: She's dead now.
Speaker 5: The master hand of the maccab creates its masterpiece.
Speaker 1: All right. If you want to watch House of USh,
Speaker 1: or follow the House of USh, or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call this nineteen sixty film, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of ways to do it. If you're in the UK,
Speaker 1: I believe you have access to the Beautiful Arrow blu Ray.
Speaker 1: If you're in the US, I think you can find
Speaker 1: it in the Vincent Price Collection box set from Shout Factory.
Speaker 1: Off the top of my head, I'm not sure about
Speaker 1: the current production status of either of those, But that's
Speaker 1: kind of the beauty of physical media is that even
Speaker 1: if it's out of print, there's a good chance you'll
Speaker 1: be able to find a copy out there. And if
Speaker 1: you have a rental store in your neighborhood in your city,
Speaker 1: like Atlanta's own Videodrome, for example, you can just go
Speaker 1: and rent it. And that's so beautifully simple.
Speaker 3: I have that Vincent Price box set from Shout Factory,
Speaker 3: and that is how I watched this movie. It's also
Speaker 3: how I watched Pitt in the Pendulum. It's got Mask
Speaker 3: of the Red Death in there, and it's also got
Speaker 3: some other fun stuff like Witchfinder General and The Abominable
Speaker 3: Doctor Five. So highly recommend that collection. It's very solid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the witch Finder General film is said to be
Speaker 1: another great Price performance.
Speaker 3: That one I've only watched on mute while doing other things,
Speaker 3: but it looked interesting, so maybe I'll have to go
Speaker 3: back and turn the sound on sometime. It's by a
Speaker 3: filmmaker who we watched another movie by him. It was
Speaker 3: the guy who made that movie The Sorcerers, about the
Speaker 3: people like the old people who can get into the
Speaker 3: young guy's brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, short lived. Director died tragically young, but showed so
Speaker 1: much promise. Anyway, again, I watched this film. No doubt
Speaker 1: is Roger Corman intended on an iPhone in an airplane.
Speaker 1: But you know there are fewer distractions in some ways
Speaker 1: when watching a film in that format, so you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's the right time for that sort of treatment.
Speaker 3: Roger wouldn't hate on you for that. He don't love
Speaker 3: it all right.
Speaker 1: Well, since we're already talking about him, Yeah, let's get
Speaker 1: into the people behind this film, starting with Roger Corman,
Speaker 1: the director of the producer who lived nineteen twenty six
Speaker 1: through twenty twenty four. We've talked about him numerous times
Speaker 1: on the show, so we're going to try not to
Speaker 1: repeat too much of that instead sort of frame this
Speaker 1: within his output and within the history of weird House
Speaker 1: cinema shows. I believe this is our fifth Corman directed
Speaker 1: motion picture, but he also served as producer on some
Speaker 1: of the films we've covered. This, of course, is one
Speaker 1: of the films loosely classified as being part of the
Speaker 1: Pose cycle. In fact, again it is the film that
Speaker 1: kicked off the entire cycle. Usher came on the heels
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty nine's Eye Moobster, The Wasp Woman, and
Speaker 1: Bucket of Blood. Those all directed by Corman, and it
Speaker 1: was one of four Corman directed films that came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty, along with Ski Troop Attack, The Little
Speaker 1: Shop of Horrors, and Last Woman on Earth.
Speaker 3: Well, I know Little Shop of Horrors. Now I'm curious
Speaker 3: about Ski Troop Attack. Yeah, it's like real stands the
Speaker 3: test of time, I bet, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing about Corman's output is, you know,
Speaker 1: certain genre films have become a legendary of his, and
Speaker 1: you know, you instantly think of them when you think
Speaker 1: of Roger Corman. But for every one or two of those,
Speaker 1: there are three or four more in other genres, often
Speaker 1: that have just kind of fallen through the cracks. For many,
Speaker 1: except for the Roger Corman completest, I suppose. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: Corman post cycle is generally considered to run eight films.
Speaker 1: You have Usher, then you have sixty ones, The Pit
Speaker 1: in the Pendulum, sixty two's The Premature Burial and Tales
Speaker 1: of Terror, sixty threes the Raven and the Haunted Palace,
Speaker 1: and then sixty four is The Mask of the Red
Speaker 1: Death and the Tomb of Like. Of course, we should
Speaker 1: note that The Haunted Palace is actually based on a
Speaker 1: Lovecraft story and not a post story. It's just the
Speaker 1: title that ties into Poe's work. All of them Starvincent Price,
Speaker 1: except for the premature Burial.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I've seen three of these movies at this point.
Speaker 3: I've seen Usher, the Pit and the Pendulum, and Mask
Speaker 3: of the Red Death Mask is my favorite easily, though.
Speaker 3: All three of them I think are quite good, And
Speaker 3: maybe we'll have to come back to the Pit and
Speaker 3: the Pendulum sometime. Price's performance in that movie is a
Speaker 3: lot more unhinged and off the wall than in Usher.
Speaker 3: But let's see the premature Burial and Tales of Terror.
Speaker 3: I think, is that one movie or two movies? That's
Speaker 3: two Tales of Terror is supposed to be anthology?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the thing. These are Corman films,
Speaker 1: so sometimes there's two coming out a year, and those
Speaker 1: are inevitably not the only pictures he directed. It certainly
Speaker 1: not the only pictures he produced during a given year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then The Raven is interesting because that one
Speaker 3: is supposed to be a comedy. I have not seen it.
Speaker 3: I'm a little curious how that works. I feel like
Speaker 3: I would be less interested in an overt comedy with
Speaker 3: Price and po themes, but who knows, maybe it's great.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you have to acknowledge that that Vincent
Speaker 1: Price is terrific in everything. Oh so his kind of
Speaker 1: comedic timing is solid, so he may be able to
Speaker 1: deliver there. And you know, you do have some really
Speaker 1: good Roger Corman directed dark comedies such as Bucket of
Speaker 1: Blood or Little Shop of Horrors and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And frankly, I would say all of the movies
Speaker 3: of his I've seen that I've liked have some sense
Speaker 3: of humor about them. Probably House of Usher has the
Speaker 3: least humor of any of them, but he's always got
Speaker 3: a little bit of eye twinkling going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we of course have to drive home that this
Speaker 1: is an adaptation of the work of Edgar Allan Poe,
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen oh nine through eighteen forty nine, American writer, poet, editor,
Speaker 1: and literary critic, best remembered for his spooky poems and stories,
Speaker 1: not only in the United State dates but internationally.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, so I guess Rob is referring to there.
Speaker 3: There was an article that we were sharing off Mike
Speaker 3: that I read by a writer named winn Bin from
Speaker 3: I think it was just published a couple of days ago,
Speaker 3: at least published October of this year, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: about the popularity of Edgar Allan Poe among a lot
Speaker 3: of the writers and poets of Vietnam in the first
Speaker 3: half of the twentieth century. I think that's interesting, like
Speaker 3: what authors really resonate in different language cultures around the world,
Speaker 3: But apparently, like, yeah, a lot of Vietnamese writers in
Speaker 3: I think it would be around the nineteen twenties and
Speaker 3: thirties or so really really thought that Poe was just
Speaker 3: like the best of the American writers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And of course that reminds me a bit of
Speaker 1: a Japanese author that we've discussed in the show before,
Speaker 1: because we've discussed adaptations of his work in cinema, Edugawa Rampo,
Speaker 1: whose name is an allusion to the name Edgar Allan Pope.
Speaker 3: And he was a writer of detective stories.
Speaker 1: Wasn't Yeah, yeah, a lot of detective stories and the
Speaker 1: mysteries thriller is that sort of thing. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: So that's the source material. But then the screenplay, the
Speaker 1: adaptation comes to us via another name that we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the show before the legendary Richard Matheson, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty six through twenty thirteen. American writer who's
Speaker 1: best remembered, I would say as the author of the
Speaker 1: excellent nineteen fifty four novel I Am Legend, upon which
Speaker 1: three films have been based. One even had Vincent Price
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 3: I've been thinking we should do that on the show.
Speaker 3: By the way, Yeah, I think it's called Last Man
Speaker 3: on Earth.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and of course the others being I Am
Speaker 1: Legend with Will Smith and then The Omega Man with
Speaker 1: Chuck Huston.
Speaker 3: The Vincent Price one is it's got some really good
Speaker 3: things about it, and I really enjoyed. I sampled that
Speaker 3: one in some music that I was working on. It
Speaker 3: works out pretty good.
Speaker 1: The episodes where we discussed Richard Matheson previously there was
Speaker 1: the film The Devil Rides Out. He did the adaptation
Speaker 1: on that as well, adapting a weekly novel, and then
Speaker 1: we talked about the film adaptation The Incredible Shrinking Man.
Speaker 1: That's an adaptation by Matheson of one of Matheson's own books.
Speaker 1: If I remember correctly.
Speaker 3: This guy snuck up on me. I didn't realize it
Speaker 3: first but I think Matheson has written the scripts for
Speaker 3: a lot of the best movies or the movies with
Speaker 3: the best scripts that we've done from the mid twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he was excellent, excellent writer, worked on
Speaker 1: a lot of shows like the original Twilight Zone, Night Gallery,
Speaker 1: Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and had a big influence on an
Speaker 1: entire generation of horror and terror scribes, especially including Stephen King.
Speaker 1: Stephen King has frequently cited Richard Matheson as an influence.
Speaker 3: The Incredible Shrinking Man I remember in particular, had a
Speaker 3: really good script.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great picture. If you haven't seen that,
Speaker 1: when you haven't listened to our episode on that, go
Speaker 1: back to one or the other. Don't be afraid of
Speaker 1: that kind of goofy title and perhaps you know comedic
Speaker 1: idea of a tiny man inside a house being attacked
Speaker 1: by his cat, because it's much more than that. It's
Speaker 1: actually a pretty deep flip. Yeah, all right, onto the cast,
Speaker 1: and this is going to be a pretty short cast.
Speaker 1: There are really only four people in this for the
Speaker 1: most part. A few extras here and there, but really
Speaker 1: only four people. The lead of course, again being Vincent
Speaker 1: Price playing Roderick Usher Price lived nineteen eleven through nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three. We've talked about him plenty of times on
Speaker 1: the show because we keep coming back to Vincent Price
Speaker 1: films and you never know exactly what you're going to
Speaker 1: get from him. He was active on screen from the
Speaker 1: late thirties to the early nineties, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: a certain vision, a certain version of Vincent Price that
Speaker 1: I think is solidified in the horror canon that instantly
Speaker 1: comes to mind when you think about him, and a
Speaker 1: lot of it is defined by his look, Right, what
Speaker 1: do you think of? You think of like that dark
Speaker 1: or certainly in later life gray and even white, slicked
Speaker 1: back hair. You think about that sharpened mustache, an optional
Speaker 1: goatee add on, and then of course he's going to
Speaker 1: be wearing some sort of a suit, maybe an optional
Speaker 1: Dracula cape, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: If this makes any sense. He's somebody who really I
Speaker 3: think has the face of a character actor, a kind
Speaker 3: of interesting, memorable face you would see pop up playing
Speaker 3: like second build characters with a little bit of personality
Speaker 3: to them, but instead he more often ended up playing
Speaker 3: leading male characters or leading villains, and it works pretty
Speaker 3: well that way, because he can sort of manipulate his
Speaker 3: interesting look with just sort of an inversion of the
Speaker 3: slant of his eyebrows to look quite sympathetic or quite evil.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and as we were alluding to earlier, this film
Speaker 1: also gives us a rather different looking Price because he's
Speaker 1: clean shaven and he has bleached blonde hair. You might
Speaker 1: want to call him Peroxide Price or platinum blonde Price,
Speaker 1: you pick, but either way, a very distinctive look. It
Speaker 1: reminds me a bit of in the movie The Ten Commandments.
Speaker 1: He shows up in that, and he's clean shaven there
Speaker 1: as well, which can throw you off if you're used
Speaker 1: to Vincent Price with facial hair. But add in the
Speaker 1: screaming blonde hair in this picture, and yeah, he looks
Speaker 1: sufficiently different. It ends up influencing your entire reception of
Speaker 1: the character.
Speaker 3: I think I was thinking about Barbie's hair color, so
Speaker 3: I was thinking, like Malibu Price.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's fair. At this point
Speaker 1: in his career, Price had already taken on the mantle
Speaker 1: of horror star. I think by having already done House
Speaker 1: of Wax, which we've talked about in the show, that's
Speaker 1: one that really elevated him in the horror genre. But
Speaker 1: then also he'd already done fifty eight's The Fly, fifty
Speaker 1: nine's House on Haunted Hill, and Return of the Fly,
Speaker 1: as well as The Tingler and The bat oh Man.
Speaker 3: There's so many good Price roles in horror movies that
Speaker 3: sometimes you can't hold them all in your head. I
Speaker 3: was getting ready for this episode and I didn't even
Speaker 3: think of The Tingler until you just said it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a fun film as well. Yeah, but this
Speaker 1: is a really fun performance beyond just the different appearance
Speaker 1: for Vincent Price, because he's this character is firm but
Speaker 1: very fragile. You know. It's an interesting performance of emotional extremes,
Speaker 1: as we'll get into, Like there's a really strong will,
Speaker 1: but not if you're raising your voice or touching his
Speaker 1: garments or not taking your shoes off in the house
Speaker 1: it is. It is worth stressing that the House of
Speaker 1: Usher is a shoes off household, and you need to
Speaker 1: be prepared for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Roderick Usher is a character who I like how
Speaker 3: you us. This character is like you. For a long
Speaker 3: time in the movie, you're not clear if he's friend
Speaker 3: or foe. How dangerous he is what's going on, and
Speaker 3: even when it does become clear in some ways that
Speaker 3: he is dangerous and to be feared, at the same
Speaker 3: time he is so weak he could He's just easily
Speaker 3: physically bested, and yet that doesn't solve the problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's almost like a living ghost in that regard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, so that's the that's the lead. But then
Speaker 1: second billing, we have the personable Mark Damon as Philip Winthrop.
Speaker 1: This is the the individual that is engaged to the
Speaker 1: sister of Roderick Usher.
Speaker 3: By normal accounting, this is the protagonist, right, He is
Speaker 3: the good guy of the movie. Though I think you
Speaker 3: could still say that the main character is Vincent Prices
Speaker 3: as Roderick Usher, but that's you know, villain first framing.
Speaker 3: This is the supposed good guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, personable Mark Damon. We previously talked about him
Speaker 1: because he was in Mario Bava's Black Sabbath from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three, so that would be in the future of
Speaker 1: the Mark Damon that we're seeing here. This was apparently
Speaker 1: a big, big film for him. He actually won a
Speaker 1: Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer for this film, and
Speaker 1: it was a familiar face in motion pictures during the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, but he's probably best remembered for Usher
Speaker 1: and Sabbath, at least as far as acting goes. But then,
Speaker 1: as we discussed previously, went on to be a really
Speaker 1: major producer in Hollywood and had his hands in some
Speaker 1: major pictures of note, including dust Boat or dust Boot
Speaker 1: if you will, The never Ending Story, Clan of the
Speaker 1: Cave Bear nine and a half week short circuit Flight
Speaker 1: of the Navigator, The Lost Boys Beast Master two, as
Speaker 1: well as a pair of Universal Soldier sequels, among other pictures.
Speaker 1: When we last talked about him, he was still alive,
Speaker 1: but he actually passed away over the summer at the
Speaker 1: age of ninety one. He also, I have to mention again,
Speaker 1: he has one writing credit, and it's The Devil's Wedding
Speaker 1: Night from nineteen seventy three. This is essentially a Dracula
Speaker 1: movie despite the title. Oh and Joe Tomato apparently did
Speaker 1: some uncredited directing on it, but it's said to be
Speaker 1: pretty good. Actually I haven't.
Speaker 3: Seen it, okay, Yeah. Well, Also, in case you don't
Speaker 3: know what we're talking about when we keep calling him
Speaker 3: the personable, that's from the trailer for Mario Bava's Black Sabbath.
Speaker 3: So the announcers like, ooh, the chilling Boris Karloff, the
Speaker 3: personable Mark Damon.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe Mark Damon is fine in this. I'm
Speaker 1: not criticizing his work at all. It's more the sort
Speaker 1: of role this is. I guess I don't find it
Speaker 1: as personable as I would find like a Vincent Price
Speaker 1: character or you know, a Peter Lorie character and so forth.
Speaker 1: And then also I'm wondering, if you have to say
Speaker 1: the personable, an't name it, how personable is this performer?
Speaker 3: It makes it. It makes him seem less personable. It's
Speaker 3: like introducing somebody by calling them trustworthy. Immediately you start
Speaker 3: wondering should I trust them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he is good in this. I mean he's
Speaker 1: he is the straight man in this story where he's
Speaker 1: encountering like nothing but strange happenings and strange surroundings. So
Speaker 1: he's our grounding, our he's the point at the center
Speaker 1: of the dial, and so he's essential and it is
Speaker 1: essential that you have, you know, a square jowed, handsome
Speaker 1: young actor playing that role, really, especially during this time period.
Speaker 3: I agree, I think he does fine. I'm not trying
Speaker 3: to slam him at all. I think he's good in
Speaker 3: this role. He is somewhat upstaged by the more interesting performances,
Speaker 3: like especially of course by Vincent Price. But then I
Speaker 3: would say also later in the film, upstage somewhat by
Speaker 3: the performance of Murna Fay, he as Madeline Usher, who
Speaker 3: gets weirder as the movie goes on.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, mRNA Fay, who lived nineteen thirty three through
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, is the third build out of like
Speaker 1: four actors in this picture, and she is quite good.
Speaker 1: She's I think best remembered probably for this film role
Speaker 1: as well as various television works she did. She did
Speaker 1: a lot of TV work in addition to a handful
Speaker 1: of films like Disney Zoro. She was on that series.
Speaker 1: She was on Father of the Bride in the early sixties.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, it's a good role that it first
Speaker 1: maybe seems like a little subdued, and you might think
Speaker 1: that she's not going to have much agency, but stick
Speaker 1: with it because she does get she does get to
Speaker 1: get some work in towards the end.
Speaker 3: Of the picture, it gets kind of wild. I was
Speaker 3: reading a biography of her somewhere online that mentioned she
Speaker 3: did an interview I think it was in the year
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties, so the same year as House of Usher,
Speaker 3: where she was sort of complaining that she had been
Speaker 3: typecast in like moral upstanding roles. You know, she was always, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, tisk, tisk, I am very good, I am
Speaker 3: very low abiding, and she wanted to explore, you know,
Speaker 3: a more complicated, maybe darker roles, and well I think
Speaker 3: she got her wish.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: She also apparently went on to be in an episode
Speaker 3: of the TV anthology series Thriller, hosted by Boris Karloff.
Speaker 3: The episode is called Girl with the Secret, which is
Speaker 3: about her, which is about a character who has to
Speaker 3: keep a secret about her husband and is being blackmailed
Speaker 3: by someone. I haven't seen this episode of the show,
Speaker 3: but I pulled up like the IMDb listing for the episode,
Speaker 3: and the screenshot from it is somebody driving a car
Speaker 3: making this incredibly creepy grinning face. So now I'm tempted
Speaker 3: to look it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I haven't watched a lot of Thriller, but
Speaker 1: it's said to be a very good horror anthology series.
Speaker 3: I've seen at least one episode of Thriller. It was
Speaker 3: an adaptation of the Roberty Howard story Pigeons from Hell,
Speaker 3: which is like a ghost horror story.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, probably one of the rare non conan kin
Speaker 1: adaptations of his work. I pretty much The fourth and
Speaker 1: final human in this picture is the butler Bristol, played
Speaker 1: by American actor and Atlanta native Harry Ellerby, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen oh one through nineteen ninety two. He worked extensively
Speaker 1: in stage, screen, and TV, with his screen and TV
Speaker 1: credits going from the early nineteen thirties through the early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, though I understand he remained active in theater
Speaker 1: longer than that, especially in like local Atlanta theater. His
Speaker 1: film credits include nineteen sixty threes The Haunted Palace, and
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six's Chamber of Horrors. He appeared in an
Speaker 1: episode of the original Outer Limits as well. Okay, and
Speaker 1: you know he's good in this. He basically he's the middleman.
Speaker 1: Though he's the butler in a haunted mansion, so you
Speaker 1: kind of know what you're going to get.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is his job to help carry the coffins
Speaker 3: and boil the gruel.
Speaker 1: Yes. Oh, but we have a very interesting credit to
Speaker 1: share regarding this picture Now. I mentioned Night Gallery earlier
Speaker 1: and passing, and it's appropriate because this movie features a
Speaker 1: number of very creepy paintings that would look perfectly at
Speaker 1: home on the walls of the Night Gallery. These paintings
Speaker 1: are credited to Bert Schoenberg, who lived nineteen thirty three
Speaker 1: through nineteen seventy seven, American painter whose work could be
Speaker 1: described as surrealist or psychedelic, and he was certainly celebrated
Speaker 1: during the nineteen sixties, though he was also exploring this
Speaker 1: style in the fifties and seventies as well. In fact,
Speaker 1: I've seen some people argue that he was one of
Speaker 1: those artists working in California at the time that was
Speaker 1: kind of a precursor to the psychedelic art scene in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties California. So ultimately, when you get into like
Speaker 1: surrealism and strange art, there's plenty of stuff that seems
Speaker 1: ahead of its time and kind of informs that air.
Speaker 1: I suppose. So his work is, and you can look
Speaker 1: it up online. It's Schoenberg s H O N B
Speaker 1: E r G. His work is dreamy and weird at times,
Speaker 1: invoking occult imagery. Again, look it up because it's worth
Speaker 1: checking out, and certainly you get to see it a
Speaker 1: lot in this movie. It's not just it's not just
Speaker 1: an incidental detail. The paintings are important plot points and
Speaker 1: you really get to drink them in. I think they
Speaker 1: really contribute to the great vibe of this picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a this is never made explicit, but there
Speaker 3: is almost an implied picture of Dory and Gray kind
Speaker 3: of concept at work, where there are these paintings of
Speaker 3: the the you know, the patriarchs and matriarchs of the
Speaker 3: of the Usher household, and when we start to learn
Speaker 3: about their evils and their crimes, we see the paintings,
Speaker 3: and the paintings appear almost kind of warped or melted,
Speaker 3: as sort of altered in a way that reveals the
Speaker 3: evil of the character lying underneath.
Speaker 1: You know. It's interesting to think about the use of
Speaker 1: painted portraits in movies because it's often the case that
Speaker 1: you'll find either either a portrait actually does its job
Speaker 1: and you just buy it as being a portrait of
Speaker 1: a character. Generally it looks like one of the actors
Speaker 1: in the film, right, or it looks like the old
Speaker 1: count or the old baron that will inevitably come back
Speaker 1: to life. And is you know, played by Christopher Lee
Speaker 1: or something, so you know what they're supposed to look like.
Speaker 1: But then in other pictures you can tell, like the
Speaker 1: portrait just does not pass the sniff test. You know,
Speaker 1: you're like this, I'm not buying it. I'm not buying
Speaker 1: this as an historic work of art. Yes, this picture
Speaker 1: dodges those pitfalls and instead just goes for the utterly weird.
Speaker 1: These pictures feel like, you know, drawing on the door,
Speaker 1: the portrait drawing gray here. It's it's like they are
Speaker 1: like snapshots of the corrupted soul. They seem like they
Speaker 1: are dark, wrong, perhaps insane works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, and they're not subtle, you know all It's
Speaker 3: not like they look a little bit creepy. It's they
Speaker 3: are oozing evil, demonic energy and just advertising the wickedness
Speaker 3: of the people portrayed.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was reading a bit more about these on the
Speaker 1: excellent website Vincent Price Legacy dot uk, and the author
Speaker 1: there points out that Schoenberg provided five portraits and two
Speaker 1: additional paintings to this production, and again they certainly pulled
Speaker 1: their weight in delivering the film's vibe. Afterwards, two of
Speaker 1: these paintings apparently went to Roger Corman and then were
Speaker 1: subsequently stolen from his office. Another portrait was reportedly given
Speaker 1: to Vincent Price himself, who was an avid art collector,
Speaker 1: but according to the website Vincent Price Legacy, the whereabouts
Speaker 1: of this painting are unknown and it was never listed
Speaker 1: in the official estate documents concerning Price's extensive art collection,
Speaker 1: So it's unknown what happened to it, Like, did it
Speaker 1: you know, did he sell it? Is it lost? Is
Speaker 1: it I'm assuming at this point that all of these
Speaker 1: paintings are like on the Dark Side of the Moon,
Speaker 1: somewhere transported there through dark arcade magic.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's a wild story. I'm almost tempted to doubt it,
Speaker 3: but no, it's got to be true, right, these paintings
Speaker 3: were made to disappear mysteriously.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, to be clear, I'm not sure if all
Speaker 1: of the Schoenberg paintings for this picture are missing, but
Speaker 1: at least some of them are, which adds to the mystique.
Speaker 1: But that website, Vincent Price Legacy also has some other
Speaker 1: additional details about Schoenberg that are obtained from out there.
Speaker 1: The Transcendent Life and Art of Bert Schoenberg by Spencer
Speaker 1: Kanza and This is a book from twenty seventeen. The
Speaker 1: author points out that Schoenberg was very much a part
Speaker 1: of the occult and counterculture scene in LA at the time.
Speaker 1: In the LA area, he partially owned the controversial weirdo
Speaker 1: hippie coffee shop in Orange County that was known as
Speaker 1: Cafe Frankenstein. Definitely look up a picture of Cafe Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: It has this signature glass window piece, like a stained
Speaker 1: glass picture of Frankenstein's Monster in the front, and this
Speaker 1: was created by Schoenberg. He also had murals inside of
Speaker 1: the establishment, and it was apparently kind of like a
Speaker 1: notorious hangout for dangerous hippies, you know, like there's some
Speaker 1: art going on there, there's some coffee drinking, maybe there's
Speaker 1: some other substances, who knows, And the local squares were
Speaker 1: not amused. I read one anecdote that they did not
Speaker 1: like that he had the Frankestein's monster art in the
Speaker 1: front of the establishment, and when they pressured him, he
Speaker 1: was like, well, maybe I should do one of of
Speaker 1: Frankenstein's monster crucified. Maybe that would make everyone happy. So
Speaker 1: he was kind of a provocateur as well.
Speaker 3: I'm so sad this place no longer exists. I would
Speaker 3: want to go to California just to go here this.
Speaker 1: I believe the stained glass piece still though, I think
Speaker 1: that is in someone's collection. But at any rate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was apparently quite a character. At one point he
Speaker 1: was in a relationship with artist, poet and occultist Marjorie Cameron,
Speaker 1: who had previously been married to Jack Parsons. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and Schoenberg also provided paintings for the nineteen sixty two
Speaker 1: film The Premature Burial, and he served as art director
Speaker 1: on fifty eight's The Brain Eaters in nineteen sixties Code
Speaker 1: of Silence.
Speaker 3: Oh, we covered The brain Eaters is Let's see what
Speaker 3: were all the weird things about that one? I think
Speaker 3: it had Leonard Nimoy in a minor role and he
Speaker 3: never got paid for it or something. And was it
Speaker 3: maybe or maybe not based on a Robert heinlend story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it might have been. I remember, this is one
Speaker 1: that has a great poster that perhaps over sells the
Speaker 1: rest of the picture. But it was a still fun,
Speaker 1: fun one, still fun episode to check out.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think what was the hilarious character
Speaker 3: from it, and it was Senator Walter K. Powers you
Speaker 3: remember Walter k Powers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So anyway, we'll come back to these paintings
Speaker 1: because again they are vital parts of the picture and
Speaker 1: they're great. Okay, two more credits, just to run through
Speaker 1: really quickly before we get to the main plot. But
Speaker 1: the cinematography is by Floyd Crosby, who I can't remember
Speaker 1: if we talked about him before, but he lived eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine through nineteen eighty five. Academy Award winning cinematographer
Speaker 1: and father of musician David Crosby. He worked on a
Speaker 1: number of Corman pictures, including Attack of the Crab Monsters
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 3: You know, I've never really analyzed the cinematography of Attack
Speaker 3: of the Crab Monsters, but you know I love the movie.
Speaker 3: That's got to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: And then finally, the music is by Les Baxter, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety six. So he's
Speaker 1: popped up on the show before because we have considered
Speaker 1: other scores by the master of exotica music, and none
Speaker 1: of these scores have been examples of exotica. Like if
Speaker 1: you look, I do recommend if you're having a tropical
Speaker 1: drink and you want to have a nice like loungy vibe,
Speaker 1: you know. Pull up some Less Baxter play some of
Speaker 1: his exotica work. It's a great sound, but we don't
Speaker 1: really get that sound as far as I know, out
Speaker 1: of any of the scores he did. If you know
Speaker 1: of a Less Baxter score that is actually an exotica score,
Speaker 1: let me know about it, because I want to dig
Speaker 1: into that picture.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if House of Usher had exoticas they
Speaker 3: go into Roderick Usher has got like a drink with
Speaker 3: a toothpick that's got three different kinds of fruit on it.
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, I want to say it
Speaker 1: would be completely inappropriate. But on the other hand, like
Speaker 1: a lot of Baxter's exotica work, it has this kind
Speaker 1: of like a dark undertone. There's a sense of like
Speaker 1: rumbling volcanoes, you know, and slow moving lava. So in
Speaker 1: a way it might it might have lined up with
Speaker 1: some of those sort of geologic sensibilities of House of Usher.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure. But again, this is not an
Speaker 1: exotica score or this is more of just like a
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty style orchestral score. But there are other example
Speaker 1: like for instance, Frogs from nineteen seventy two, which we
Speaker 1: talked about in the show before. That one has a
Speaker 1: minimalist electronic score from Les Baxter, and I think maybe
Speaker 1: arguably it could have benefitted from an Exotica score as well.
Speaker 1: I don't know. All right, well, why don't we go
Speaker 1: ahead and just jump right into the plot of House.
Speaker 3: Of Usher, As is often the case with Roger Korman movies.
Speaker 3: I like the effect of the credits, and there are
Speaker 3: not a whole lot of credits to get to in
Speaker 3: this movie, as we've already alluded to, I guess a
Speaker 3: shorter credit sequence than usual. But the effect behind them
Speaker 3: is this swirling mix mixing of clouds of colored mists.
Speaker 3: So you've got pink, green, violet, red, and blue, seemingly
Speaker 3: timed with the appearance of different actors' names. Like I'm
Speaker 3: not sure if there is any intended signific against that.
Speaker 3: There's suddenly a blast of sprite canned green across the
Speaker 3: picture when the name of the personable Mark Damon splashes up.
Speaker 3: But that is what we get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very colorful. I mean it's a color picture.
Speaker 1: We might as well enjoy the color.
Speaker 3: That's right, And it is something that we should appreciate
Speaker 3: that at this time, making this kind of movie, it
Speaker 3: was still a question like would you pony up for
Speaker 3: the to make this movie in color or would you
Speaker 3: just shoot it in black and white? You know, today
Speaker 3: that's not really much of a I mean, some films
Speaker 3: are still made in black and white, but for the
Speaker 3: most part, it's just assumed, Yeah, you're making a movie,
Speaker 3: you will make it in color. In nineteen sixty, making
Speaker 3: a movie of this sword, it was like a toss up,
Speaker 3: you know, you could go either way. It was a
Speaker 3: different type of investment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and you could have made a strong case.
Speaker 1: You know, got the car, gloomy setting, maybe that does
Speaker 1: need to be in black and white. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe they did feel like they needed to prove themselves
Speaker 1: a little bit with the title sequence.
Speaker 3: So after the credits, the action opens on a barren
Speaker 3: landscape of brown and gray swampland you've got mud, fog,
Speaker 3: matted tufts of dead grass, withered tree limbs without a
Speaker 3: single leaf. All of the dead plants are also wrapped
Speaker 3: in these brittle, dead vines. So the land is it
Speaker 3: appears totally strangled, just death upon death. And then a
Speaker 3: character enters the picture. It is Mark Damon playing the
Speaker 3: character of Philip Winthrop, and he is on horseback in
Speaker 3: a heavy purple riding cloak and a tall top hat.
Speaker 3: He makes his way through the swamp on horseback along
Speaker 3: a sodden dirt path to reach his ultimate destination, the
Speaker 3: titular House of Usher, which is shown to us as
Speaker 3: a dark, decrepit mansion with curtains drawn across the windows,
Speaker 3: no light emanating from it, and mist surrounding the foundation
Speaker 3: like a white blanket.
Speaker 1: Ah. And this just looks tremendous. I can't drive home
Speaker 1: enough just how incredible this house looks. It is like
Speaker 1: it is, Yes, it is a great, big, old Gothic
Speaker 1: hulk of a mansion, but it also looks kind of
Speaker 1: like just a decaying whale carcass, you know, just you know,
Speaker 1: a heap of excess in a ruin that is literally
Speaker 1: poisoning the surrounding landscape is on the verge of falling
Speaker 1: into hell itself. Like this is like wealth and over
Speaker 1: indulgence dragged across the centuries, you know, pulling souls down
Speaker 1: into darkness with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Winthrop approaches this, this whale carcass, the mansion
Speaker 3: passing through a broken stone gate, and he goes in
Speaker 3: between these black, twisted, almost melted looking trees. And I
Speaker 3: actually read a production note that somewhere in here the
Speaker 3: designers used some trees that had partially burned in a
Speaker 3: recent California wildfire when the film was made. I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's in this shot, but if it were,
Speaker 3: that would make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know. I recently was in California. We
Speaker 1: did a lot of driving through the countryside. We saw
Speaker 1: a number of these sorts of trees, and this, well,
Speaker 1: not a landscape like the Fall of the House of Usher,
Speaker 1: but trees landscapes that had these sorts of trees in them,
Speaker 1: And yeah, you can certainly lean into a haunted interpretation
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 3: So Philip comes to the front door, which is wreathed
Speaker 3: in cobwebs, and he raps with the giant bronze knocker.
Speaker 3: The door is answered by a gray haired servant in
Speaker 3: a black coat, and he's got a sad, apprehensive face
Speaker 3: framed by these silver sideburns. Philip introduces himself to the
Speaker 3: servant as Madeline Usher's fiance and asks to see her.
Speaker 3: But the butler, whose name is Bristol tells him that
Speaker 3: she is confined to her bed because she is taken ill.
Speaker 3: So Bristol tries to deny Philip Entree, saying that Madeleine's
Speaker 3: brother Roderick, has forbidden any visitors, but Philip is very pushy.
Speaker 3: He won't take no for an answer, so Bristol leads
Speaker 3: him inside.
Speaker 1: And already we are seeing some red candles. This film
Speaker 1: is all about the red Candle's only red candles in
Speaker 1: the house of Usher, That's right.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the interior of the house is a little
Speaker 3: more inviting than the outside, but there's still some threatening energy.
Speaker 3: One thing that this is not really a complaint about
Speaker 3: the movie. It's rather just sort of a fact about
Speaker 3: how movies are made, especially at this time, based on
Speaker 3: things the characters say. I think we're supposed to understand
Speaker 3: that it is always kept very dark inside the Usher mansion.
Speaker 3: Even candlelight is weak and scarce, but it doesn't really
Speaker 3: look that way like for the audience looking at the sets,
Speaker 3: everything is usually quite brightly lit. There may just be
Speaker 3: no way around that. It's kind of like suspending your
Speaker 3: disbelief for a play. You know that this is really
Speaker 3: taking place in a room even though you're looking up
Speaker 3: at a stage. But this does raise an interesting ongoing
Speaker 3: problem even in movies today, with the art of visual storytelling,
Speaker 3: how do you convincingly show that a scene is dark
Speaker 3: but also allow the audience to see what's happening. It's
Speaker 3: kind of a oxymoron, but it's a thing different filmmakers
Speaker 3: have tried to tackle in different ways. Sometimes they just brightly,
Speaker 3: you know, they just brightly light it anyway and then
Speaker 3: ask you to suspend your disbelief. Other times the scene
Speaker 3: is actually dark and that contributes to a kind of
Speaker 3: emotional or atmospheric effect, but it can create frustrations when
Speaker 3: trying to follow the drama.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was there was a time or two watching
Speaker 1: this film where they were talking about how dark the
Speaker 1: room was, and I was like, well, even I can
Speaker 1: really make out everything. Maybe the lighting is off on
Speaker 1: my phone or something. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think this is still just a tension that visual
Speaker 3: storytellers struggle with eve until today. You know, I remember
Speaker 3: people talking about stuff in the last season of Game
Speaker 3: of Thrones, you know, apart from any like writing issues
Speaker 3: about that, but questions about certain scenes and episodes that
Speaker 3: were like very very dimly lit and dark scenes, and
Speaker 3: even that does highlight like, yeah, you can do that,
Speaker 3: and that can be good in some ways. It can
Speaker 3: create and intended at spheric effect. It can make you
Speaker 3: feel a certain way, But then you're going to have
Speaker 3: a lot of viewers complaining that they can't tell what's
Speaker 3: going on, or they can't follow what's what's supposed to
Speaker 3: be happening in a scene.
Speaker 1: I've also read I'm I can't one percent match my
Speaker 1: experience up with this, but I've I've observed some conversations
Speaker 1: about how really dark scenes in movies, especially modern movies,
Speaker 1: perhaps don't play as well on streaming platforms versus physical media,
Speaker 1: you know, And I'm not enough of a tech head
Speaker 1: on all of that to really weigh in, but if
Speaker 1: listeners out there have any feedback on that, I'd love
Speaker 1: to I'd love to hear from you. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of like all in on any argument for physical
Speaker 1: media over depending entirely on streamers, so when it comes
Speaker 1: to films.
Speaker 3: Or I would wonder also just about watching things on
Speaker 3: home video versus in the movie theater. The movie theater
Speaker 3: might be a case where more dimly lit scenes come
Speaker 3: across better.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, that's the in theater. Propaganda is
Speaker 1: really big on telling me that the darks are darker,
Speaker 1: and you know, having watched Son of Frankenstein on the
Speaker 1: big screen, I mean those those really those dark shadows
Speaker 1: are really luscious up there, so I got kind of
Speaker 1: buy into it.
Speaker 3: Anyway, that's not what's going on in House of Usher.
Speaker 3: Everything is very well lit here. But so we come
Speaker 3: inside and yes, we do have these these red candles everywhere,
Speaker 3: cherry red candles. And I like this little moment where
Speaker 3: Bristol the butler asks Philip to take off his boots
Speaker 3: and he's like, what for, and he just says, you know,
Speaker 3: mister Roderick will explain, and Bristol disappears mysteriously for a
Speaker 3: moment here, but then reappears with slippers for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some real culture shock being asked to take your
Speaker 1: shoes off in this shoes off household here, which which
Speaker 1: I really I really appreciated this because I prior to
Speaker 1: watching the film, I'd been meeting up with some family
Speaker 1: and it was clearly like a mix of shoes on
Speaker 1: households and shoes off households. Meeting in a rental home,
Speaker 1: you know, where you're like what why are people in
Speaker 1: the kitchen with their shoes on? What's happening? And you
Speaker 1: know their different approaches?
Speaker 3: Wait, if you're comfortable sharing, which way are you? I
Speaker 3: don't even know? Do you all take shoes off in
Speaker 3: the house?
Speaker 1: We're shoes off house? Okay? Cool? But you know, I
Speaker 1: mean if someone comes and I forget to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you can take your shoes off, and they're wearing their shoes,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to freak out. It's like that's on
Speaker 1: me because I didn't give you a heads up. Also,
Speaker 1: as comedian Shang Wang points out, there are certain circumstances
Speaker 1: where you may have to like run through the house
Speaker 1: with the shoes on to do something, you know, like
Speaker 1: turn the alarm system off or something. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There are circumstances that the demand you keep them on.
Speaker 3: Well, what is totally a commonplace in some cultures and
Speaker 3: some families is treated as quite strange.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: This is not something that Philip Winthrop is used to.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we're told that Roderick will explain. So Philip
Speaker 3: is led up the grand staircase. So he goes along
Speaker 3: this carved banister and hand rail past these tapestries. Again,
Speaker 3: the cherry red candles to an upper hallway and eventually
Speaker 3: to Roderick's room. And ooh, there's a very good boo
Speaker 3: scare right at the first time we meet Vincent Price.
Speaker 3: So Bristol goes to knock on the bedroom door, but
Speaker 3: before his knuckles can touch the wood, the door swings
Speaker 3: inward and into the doorway bursts Roderick. It is a
Speaker 3: fierce looking, clean shaven Vincent Price with platinum blonde hair,
Speaker 3: wearing a red velvet jacket and a black tie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seeming to tower over him as well. Here.
Speaker 3: Yes, Price does come off as very physically large in
Speaker 3: this movie, and I think that'll be interesting to talk
Speaker 3: about maybe later when we I don't talk about the
Speaker 3: weird contrasting aspects of his physical presence and whether or
Speaker 3: not he should be taken as threatening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because he seems physically imposing that we learned that
Speaker 1: he's actually quite fragile.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll get to that soon. So Roderick is initially
Speaker 3: furious that Bristol has admitted a visitor. He's furious but
Speaker 3: soft spoken, so he's like, how dare you? But in
Speaker 3: a library voice, and Philip explains that he insisted he
Speaker 3: believed he had the right. So Roderick brings Philip into
Speaker 3: his room to discuss, and in here Philip starts talking,
Speaker 3: but before he can even finish a sentence, Roderick winces,
Speaker 3: covering his ears and saying, mister Winthrop, if you please,
Speaker 3: an affliction of the hearing. Sounds of any exaggerated degree
Speaker 3: cut into my brain like knives, So you have to
Speaker 3: be you have to use your inside voice when speaking
Speaker 3: to Roderick. He cannot stand a raised voice. It causes
Speaker 3: him such pain. So Roderick goes to rest in a
Speaker 3: high back chair and Philip begins to explain what's going on.
Speaker 3: He says that he must be allowed to see Madeline
Speaker 3: since they are engaged to be married. Roderick seems disturbed
Speaker 3: by this news and tells him that it's impossible. Madeleine
Speaker 3: is confined to her bed and their engagement has to
Speaker 3: be called off. It was He should think of it
Speaker 3: just as an unform fortunate mistake, and Philip must leave
Speaker 3: the estate at once. He says, it is not a
Speaker 3: healthy place for you to be. Philip, of course, does
Speaker 3: not accept this, and it would be a strange thing
Speaker 3: if he just conformed. He's like, no, I don't understand
Speaker 3: why you're saying this, and he says he's not going
Speaker 3: to leave without seeing Madeleine. Multiple times in this argument,
Speaker 3: again Philip raises his voice and whenever he gets louder,
Speaker 3: Price closes his eyes and grits his teeth in pain.
Speaker 3: So he reacts every time. But while they're going back
Speaker 3: and forth, their dispute is cut short when Madeleine herself
Speaker 3: appears in the doorway of Roderick's room, and again this
Speaker 3: is mRNA Fahe Now, she's obviously very happy to see
Speaker 3: Philip and flattered that he made the journey here to
Speaker 3: the mansion. But there is some kind of cloud hanging
Speaker 3: over their reunion, somewhat literally, in the form of Roderick himself,
Speaker 3: who cuts it short to escort Madeleine back to her room,
Speaker 3: explaining that she must go back to bed.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is another film where people are sent to
Speaker 1: bed a very strict bedtime schedule here in the House
Speaker 1: of Usher.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they go, and Philip is left alone in
Speaker 3: Roderick's room, And here is where we see one of
Speaker 3: the first of the Bert Schoenberg paintings, not of a
Speaker 3: person in this case, but of the house itself. In
Speaker 3: a wild impressionistic style. I was trying to think of
Speaker 3: a way to describe this. It's this is a great painting.
Speaker 3: It looks so it's so colorful and almost happy in
Speaker 3: the way the colors are jumbled, but also does look
Speaker 3: quite evil. It's like a cross between a haunted mansion,
Speaker 3: a monet painting of a big pile of Halloween candies,
Speaker 3: and also sort of a boss from Legend of Zelda
Speaker 3: Ocarina of Time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty fabulous. So again, very strong night Gallery vibes.
Speaker 1: You know, I can basically hear the theme music in
Speaker 1: my head. You know. It looks like a like a
Speaker 1: decaying anson made out of meat, with like an eye
Speaker 1: opening in the center of it.
Speaker 3: It's tremendous, the eye in the center. That's what I'm
Speaker 3: reacting to with the Zelda comparison. It looks like the
Speaker 3: first boss you fight in Okarina of Time, that thing
Speaker 3: in the tree. Anyway, While Philip is looking at the
Speaker 3: painting waiting for Roderick to return, the fireplace suddenly spits
Speaker 3: a bunch of cinders onto his legs, and this will
Speaker 3: be the first of many attempts by the house to
Speaker 3: murder the characters. But he just kind of brushes it off.
Speaker 3: Roderick comes back and asks with concern what happened, But
Speaker 3: Philip is not worried about it. He's just like, I
Speaker 3: think your fireplace needs a screen, and Price says, does it.
Speaker 3: After this, they pick up the conversation sort of where
Speaker 3: they left off. We learn that Roderick is a man
Speaker 3: of the arts. He paints. The painted work we were
Speaker 3: just talking about is his own, and Roderick also plays
Speaker 3: the lute. But here the conversation gets weirder. Roderick wants
Speaker 3: to know if Philip really intends to marry Madeleine. Philip says,
Speaker 3: of course he does, and Roderick says, do you intend
Speaker 3: to have children? And Philip says, god willing. Then Roderick
Speaker 3: gasps with despair and he says god willing. He explains
Speaker 3: that this would be a nightmare and it cannot happen. Why. Well,
Speaker 3: here we get one of Vincent Price's many lovely tortured monologues.
Speaker 3: So I just want to read from part of what
Speaker 3: he says here with some abridgments. Price says, because the
Speaker 3: usher line is tainted, you saw Madeleine and you see me.
Speaker 3: We are dying mister Winthrop, as you saw her today,
Speaker 3: she is and will remain. Which, by the way, again,
Speaker 3: in suspension of disbelief, I will say, nothing looked all
Speaker 3: that unhealthy about Madeleine. Like she looked fine. But by
Speaker 3: the way the characters talk, we're supposed to understand that
Speaker 3: when we saw her in the previous scene, she looks
Speaker 3: sickly and like like she is about to die.
Speaker 1: But really she just looks like she still has her
Speaker 1: night down on and it's had time to put on
Speaker 1: all her makeup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Madeleine is supposed to look sick in the
Speaker 3: same way that these brightly rooms are supposed to look dark.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, Price continues. Believe me, sir, I bear you
Speaker 3: no malice were things otherwise I should welcome you into
Speaker 3: our family joyously. But under the circumstances it is quite impossible.
Speaker 3: And then a little later he says, Madeline and I
Speaker 3: are like figures of fine glass. The slightest touch and
Speaker 3: we may shatter. Both of us suffer from a morbid
Speaker 3: acuteness of the senses. Mine is the worse for having
Speaker 3: existed the longer, but both of us are afflicted with it.
Speaker 3: Any sort of food more exotic than the most pallid
Speaker 3: mash is unendurable to my taste buds. Any sort of
Speaker 3: garment other than the softest is agony to my flesh.
Speaker 3: My eyes are tormented by all but the faintest illumination.
Speaker 3: Odors assail me constantly, and as I've said, sounds of
Speaker 3: any degree whatsoever inspire me with terror. And then Philip reasons, ah,
Speaker 3: that's why your servant asked me to remove my boots,
Speaker 3: and Roderick says yes. And even so, I could hear
Speaker 3: your coming, every footstep, every rustle of your clothes. I
Speaker 3: could hear your horse approaching, hear the clatter of its
Speaker 3: hoofs across the courtyard, Your knock, the grating of the
Speaker 3: door bolt was like a sword stroke to my ears.
Speaker 3: I can hear the scratch of rat claws within the
Speaker 3: stone wall. Mister Winthrop, three quarters of my family have
Speaker 3: fallen into madness, and in their madness have acquired a
Speaker 3: superhuman strength, so that it took the power of many
Speaker 3: to subdue them. Oh excellent, and I love this for
Speaker 3: many reasons. First of all, the evincent Price's delivery in
Speaker 3: the scene is great, but I also thought it was
Speaker 3: really interesting the relationship between the supposedly afflicted characters and
Speaker 3: the senses. I think a lot of times characters in
Speaker 3: horror stories like this seem to be suffering from some
Speaker 3: kind of vague affliction are presented in the opposite way.
Speaker 3: They're presented as insensate or unconscious, kind of detached from reality.
Speaker 3: The Ushers instead are hyper sensitive to all stimulize, sound, light,
Speaker 3: and taste, and they are thus more present and more
Speaker 3: vulnerable to every little bit of life. And there's also
Speaker 3: an interesting relationship of this to their cursed super strength.
Speaker 3: And warning there will be spoilers ahead, So if you
Speaker 3: want to see this movie without anything spoiled, you know,
Speaker 3: go ahead and watch it for yourself. But spoiler's incoming.
Speaker 3: Later in the film, when Madeline does finally succumb to
Speaker 3: the Usher madness, we see that she's able to break
Speaker 3: metal chains and she kind of becomes a goth hulk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is like there, the multi generational evil of
Speaker 1: the Usher family has reached terminal velocity, and you can
Speaker 1: tap into that velocity if you want to, if you
Speaker 1: have the willpower, I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So it's like at the same time that they
Speaker 3: are dying and incredibly fragile. They're also becoming Superman. They're
Speaker 3: gain they're gaining all of Superman's sensory powers, like his
Speaker 3: superhering and everything, and they're gaining Superman's strength.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Winthrop of course reacts to this with extreme skepticism.
Speaker 3: And then he's like, it is so dark in here, Roderick,
Speaker 3: can you light a candle? And so Roderick goes and
Speaker 3: lights two red candles on the mantle above the fireplace,
Speaker 3: and then he says, two pale drops of fire guttering
Speaker 3: in the vast, consuming darkness, my sister and myself. Shortly
Speaker 3: they will burn no more.
Speaker 1: I think this may have been the scene where I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, I can see every corner of this room.
Speaker 1: I think you're overreacting, Roderick, but you know, he kind
Speaker 1: of does a lot of the time.
Speaker 3: But so here the sort of the central dispute between
Speaker 3: the characters is established. Roderick says, hey, our family line
Speaker 3: is cursed. Madeleine and I are suffering from a physical
Speaker 3: and mental decomposition as a result of this curse. And
Speaker 3: Madeleine cannot be allowed to leave this house, cannot have children,
Speaker 3: or she will pass the curse along to them. And
Speaker 3: the evil will continue. Philip, on the other hand, does
Speaker 3: not believe in the idea of this curse. He's dismissive
Speaker 3: of the whole thing and says, if Madeleine still wishes
Speaker 3: to marry him and wishes to have children, they will
Speaker 3: do so and they will leave the house together. This
Speaker 3: is something that Philip does bring up. It is the
Speaker 3: fact that he does already know her. Yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 3: like they have a relationship already. They you know, It's like,
Speaker 3: it's just that now he is on Roderick's turf and
Speaker 3: he he has come to meet her family and is
Speaker 3: therefore encountering different dynamics. I do think that's actually very
Speaker 3: interesting because this is an exaggerated horror version of a
Speaker 3: real dynamic, which is that, you know, people often act
Speaker 3: different when they're around their family. Can meet a person
Speaker 3: in one setting, and then when you go to meet
Speaker 3: their family, they just changed a little bit. They act
Speaker 3: a little bit different. I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: have probably experienced this with like the family of a
Speaker 3: significant other, you know, with their in laws or whatever.
Speaker 3: Of course, this takes that too monstrous dimensions.
Speaker 1: Yes, but but yeah, it does plan some real dynamics
Speaker 1: I think, you know, like even in my own life,
Speaker 1: you know, I recognize that. Yeah, you know, I love
Speaker 1: my family, but if I'm visiting with them more than
Speaker 1: a couple of days, I feel myself falling back into
Speaker 1: a former self. You know. I feel like I can
Speaker 1: only maintain who I am outside of that dynamic for
Speaker 1: like a day or so, and then I begin to
Speaker 1: slip into this former self. And you know, I just
Speaker 1: observing the way that I change or regress when I
Speaker 1: am in this environment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a really common experience. But so
Speaker 3: Philip here, he says, I'm going to stay at the
Speaker 3: house until Madeline is well enough to leave. And Roderick
Speaker 3: is like, you know, okay, but now now that you know,
Speaker 3: whatever consequences fall upon you here, that's not my responsibility.
Speaker 3: That's on you, you know.
Speaker 1: And he's gonna have some time to kill in the
Speaker 1: House of Usher here. He's going to start pointing out
Speaker 1: some problems with the foundation and so forth. And I
Speaker 1: couldn't help, but think, wouldn't it be an interesting read
Speaker 1: on this if Philip was a real fixer upper, you know,
Speaker 1: like a handyman type, and he was like, let me
Speaker 1: get it. Roderick let me go over to the home depot.
Speaker 1: I'm going to pick up a few things I can.
Speaker 1: I can spackle this crack up. We'll get sho up
Speaker 1: and running a noe time.
Speaker 3: Now pards to the lab and.
Speaker 1: Roderick would be like, you can try, but this home
Speaker 1: is beyond repair because of the curves.
Speaker 3: Oh you know what Roderick is. He's like Homer Simpson
Speaker 3: in that episode where he's like, you know, the problem
Speaker 3: was water damage. A simple five cent washer will get out.
Speaker 3: So anyway, one of the weird things. The first time
Speaker 3: I was watching this, I was confused about I thought
Speaker 3: Philip arrived late at night, but I think he's supposed
Speaker 3: to have arrived earlier in the day, because we see
Speaker 3: like time pass and then it's like later in the
Speaker 3: evening and Philip is alone in his guest room getting
Speaker 3: ready to go down for supper. And here we see
Speaker 3: the first of the Poultergeist. Ye stuff like he's got
Speaker 3: a chamber stick that's like a little candle holder with
Speaker 3: a dish on the bottom. You know, He's got that
Speaker 3: sitting on a table and it starts to scoot across
Speaker 3: the surface of the table by itself. Now, when I
Speaker 3: first saw this, I was like, ah, okay, so there
Speaker 3: are definitely ghosts here. But then Philip hears a rumbling
Speaker 3: sound and he goes to look out his window and
Speaker 3: sees there is a giant crack running up from the
Speaker 3: foundation up the side of the house. Part of the
Speaker 3: frame of the house seems to be shifting, so maybe
Speaker 3: that's what made the candle inside move. Maybe it wasn't
Speaker 3: a ghost. And we get some nice creepy close ups
Speaker 3: of the crack running along the length of the exterior wall.
Speaker 3: It's just drooling cobweb and dust.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this house is not up to cut. We're we're
Speaker 1: we're learning.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: As Philip is coming down for supper, he nearly gets
Speaker 3: squashed by a falling chandelier, you know, just misses him.
Speaker 3: He dodges out of the way, and Madeline comes out
Speaker 3: and sees this, and she begs him to leave the
Speaker 3: house for his own safety, but he's like, no, it's fine.
Speaker 3: It's just an old creaky chandelier. Everything's okay. So they
Speaker 3: have dinner and they're sitting at the strange dinner table.
Speaker 3: Apparently again the Ushers can only eat unseasoned mash and
Speaker 3: white bread, but Roderick does appear to have a taste
Speaker 3: for wine served in nearly opaque blood red goblets. I
Speaker 3: guess maybe wine is not too exotic a flavor.
Speaker 1: No, no, you know, especially if you're just having potatoes
Speaker 1: and molasses for dinner and you can you can handle
Speaker 1: slightly spicy wine.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Philip notices that Madeleine is not eating at all.
Speaker 3: He's also like, hey, Roderick, are you going to get
Speaker 3: that crack in the wall fixed? What you're talking about?
Speaker 3: And I do not think Roderick is planning on it.
Speaker 3: Other topics of conversation at dinner are that the soil
Speaker 3: around the mansion is turned sour, no plants will grow
Speaker 3: in the usherlands, and then also that friends in Boston
Speaker 3: keep asking about Madeline, and she seems encouraged by this,
Speaker 3: but Roderick looks irritated at the delivery of this news.
Speaker 3: So after supper, Philip and Madeleine they go up to
Speaker 3: the sitting room, I guess with Roderick, and they listen
Speaker 3: to him giving a little concert. He plays his lute,
Speaker 3: Remember the lute from earlier. Roderick says, yes, I play
Speaker 3: the lute, but I don't know listening in this scene
Speaker 3: does he play it either sounds like he is just
Speaker 3: now learning and kind of improvising, or he is so
Speaker 3: advanced as a lute player that now he is only
Speaker 3: interested in non rhythmic twelve tone compositions.
Speaker 1: At the very least. It's it's you know, he can
Speaker 1: only handle these very soft sounds. He gentle music, So yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe he's into some sort of like weird or deep
Speaker 1: ambient kind of a thing, or or yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: I don't need to learn to play this lute all
Speaker 1: that much because this is about all I can handle anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am cursed. It is forbidden for me to
Speaker 3: play in a key, so I shall only pluck the
Speaker 3: notes at random. And then Philip says, remarkable, you composed
Speaker 3: it yourself. But Philip kind of like he can't get
Speaker 3: enough of the twelve tone lude. He's like, give me another,
Speaker 3: let's hear another song, but Roderick insists with a severe
Speaker 3: expression that now Madeleine must go to sleep. In fact,
Speaker 3: all three of them must go to sleep.
Speaker 1: It is nice seven thirty p m. All too bad.
Speaker 3: So there's another scene later that night where Philip sneaks
Speaker 3: into Madeleine's room to talk with her in secret. He
Speaker 3: tells her that in the morning he wants to take
Speaker 3: her away from the house if she'll let him. What
Speaker 3: is Madeleine's state of mind again, She seems conflicted, like
Speaker 3: she does buy into the idea that she is sick
Speaker 3: from a curse and terrible things could befall them if
Speaker 3: she were to leave, but also you can tell that
Speaker 3: she wants to leave. She's excited by the idea and
Speaker 3: something kind of comes alive within her at the idea
Speaker 3: of escaping with the man she loves. So she's sort
Speaker 3: of in the middle position between the two other characters.
Speaker 3: Roderick is fully convinced of the usher curse, Philip doesn't
Speaker 3: believe it at all, and Madeleine is torn in between
Speaker 3: the two ideas. But this scene takes an interesting turn
Speaker 3: because Roderick suddenly appears at the door. Remember, he's got
Speaker 3: super sensitive hearing, so he hears any time someone is
Speaker 3: talking in the house. He's stern and angry at first
Speaker 3: and tries to send Philip to bed, but after Madeleine
Speaker 3: shows a bit of defiance, shows that maybe the spell
Speaker 3: is breaking and she might want to leave the house
Speaker 3: with Philip. Roderick then changes tack and he sort of
Speaker 3: turns and becomes pathetic and pitiable, which I think you
Speaker 3: could interpret multiple ways. As I've said, this movie and
Speaker 3: Price's performance and contain a lot of ambiguities that you
Speaker 3: could read in different directions. But I think you could
Speaker 3: certainly interpret this as a kind of emotional manipulation. If
Speaker 3: he can't convince her that she has to stay for
Speaker 3: her own well being, you know, something bad will happen
Speaker 3: to her if she leaves. I guess something bad is
Speaker 3: going to happen to her anyway, maybe he can at
Speaker 3: least recruit her to stay on behalf of his feelings
Speaker 3: and his well being.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it's important to note that this
Speaker 1: is a film where have you just had it on
Speaker 1: the background. You could think of it as just like, okay,
Speaker 1: here's Vincent Price and Vincent Price role. But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of little nuances to the way he plays
Speaker 1: all of these decisions and all of these actions from
Speaker 1: his character. I feel like any prime Vincent Price perform
Speaker 1: is going to be, you know, a masterclass in its
Speaker 1: own way. You know, sometimes he's more hamming it up,
Speaker 1: sometimes there are more subtleties, but he's never just going
Speaker 1: through the motions, so certainly at this period in his career. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by the time we get to the Muppet Show, you know, maybe,
Speaker 1: but but not not here.
Speaker 3: So later that night and yes, still the same twenty
Speaker 3: four hour period, the scenes just keep piling up. Before daybreak,
Speaker 3: Philip is lying in bed and then he hears a
Speaker 3: bunch of weird sounds echoing through the house. So he
Speaker 3: runs around, investigating the sounds and looking for Madeline. He
Speaker 3: sees some creepy sights along the way, like wind blowing
Speaker 3: in through the windows. There's a staircase railing that gives
Speaker 3: way under his hand. There's a heavy door creaking open
Speaker 3: and shut over and over. And Philip eventually follows the
Speaker 3: sounds into the mansion's chapel. There's a chapel inside the house,
Speaker 3: where he finds Madeline sprawled out I believe on the
Speaker 3: altar asleep, and Bristol the comes in to tell him
Speaker 3: that Madeleine often sleep walks and ends up here in
Speaker 3: the chapel. Bristol says that she is obsessed by thoughts
Speaker 3: of death and has been ever since her return from Boston.
Speaker 3: So Bristol takes Madeline back to her bed and Then
Speaker 3: the next morning, there's a scene where Philip comes into
Speaker 3: the kitchen. Bristol is here again, and now he's boiling
Speaker 3: a huge cauldron of gruel over an open fire, and
Speaker 3: I'm looking at that. I'm thinking, I don't know how
Speaker 3: many gallons of ruel that is, But who is going
Speaker 3: to eat all that gruel? There are four people in
Speaker 3: this house.
Speaker 1: Well, you know you can free some for later, you know,
Speaker 1: you give me want leftovers.
Speaker 3: So Philip says he's gonna take breakfast up up to
Speaker 3: Madeline in bed. He's like, hey, how about some eggs
Speaker 3: for my Madeline? And Bristol is like, oh no, no, no, sir,
Speaker 3: not eggs much too threatening to the taste buds. She
Speaker 3: will only want gruel. Eggs are one of the exotic flavors.
Speaker 1: Eggs are too spicy for the ushers.
Speaker 3: Yes, so gruel it is. We also get more like
Speaker 3: more of the crumbling house attacks, Like at one point,
Speaker 3: Philip is standing by the gruel cauldron talking to Bristol,
Speaker 3: and the cauldron like the wall is sort of shaking
Speaker 3: and the cauldron swings toward him. But Bristol is like,
Speaker 3: oh careful, sir.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean if your gruel is pretty thick. You're
Speaker 1: gonna get some bubbles and you could get splattered. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just that's just gruel one on one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So after this, there's a very funny scene where
Speaker 3: Winthrop awkwardly tries to feed Madeline gruel in bed. He's like,
Speaker 3: come on, eat up, honey. She's not hungry, not even
Speaker 3: for gruel, and he tries to cheer her up by
Speaker 3: opening the windows and letting sunshine in. Tries to convince
Speaker 3: her once again to come back to Boston with him,
Speaker 3: but in this scene, she seems to have regressed to
Speaker 3: her original state of hopelessness. She tells him soon I
Speaker 3: shall be dead, and he obviously does not like hearing this.
Speaker 3: He tries to remind her of how happy and full
Speaker 3: of life she was in Boston, but she says, maybe
Speaker 3: you'll understand once you see see what. Well, it's time
Speaker 3: to go investigate the family crypt. Here we're going to
Speaker 3: get another kind of partial explanation of what is going on.
Speaker 3: So underneath the mansion there is a subterranean crypt full
Speaker 3: of bones of all of Madeline and Roderick Usher's ancestors.
Speaker 3: She shows Philip the coffins one by one, going down
Speaker 3: the line and listing their names and saying their relationship
Speaker 3: to her, until finally she gets to the spot of
Speaker 3: her own coffin, which is empty and waiting for her.
Speaker 3: And Philip hates this. He's like, there's a coffin here
Speaker 3: with your name on it. This is monstrous. She says,
Speaker 3: it waits for me. And as a side note, I
Speaker 3: think the crypt set here is nice by the way
Speaker 3: the characters talk about how there's something wrong with the
Speaker 3: air in the crypt. They never fully explain that, but
Speaker 3: I like that just as a little like detail that
Speaker 3: kind of excites the mind, like, Oh, could there be
Speaker 3: something in the air that's causing a problem or are
Speaker 3: they just saying like it is evil in here?
Speaker 1: Mmm? Yeah, yeah, who knows what's like leaking up through
Speaker 1: the earth into this mansion. No, it also also seems
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of evil leaking out of this
Speaker 1: mansion into the earth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So once again, Madeleine says to Philip that
Speaker 3: he just doesn't understand, and there is something I think
Speaker 3: very effectively unsettling about this repeated theme that multiple times
Speaker 3: characters tell Philip that there's something wrong but he doesn't understand,
Speaker 3: and then they don't explain it immediately, like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm soon to die. This coffin waits for me, and
Speaker 3: he's like, why would you say that you can live?
Speaker 3: And she can't explain. All she can do is tell
Speaker 3: him that he doesn't understand. I think the idea that
Speaker 3: there is some understanding that would make sense of this
Speaker 3: all but it can't be explained to him or can't
Speaker 3: be explained yet, is very creepy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I feel like Matheson in the script
Speaker 1: here is really, you know, touching on the actual gap
Speaker 1: that often exists between my experience and your experience, between
Speaker 1: my mental state and your mental state, and it can
Speaker 1: feel like there's something that can't be bridged there, you know,
Speaker 1: at least not with the tools that one has immediately
Speaker 1: at their disposal. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh. In the scene we get another house attack,
Speaker 3: there's a coffin scare, like a coffin falls out of
Speaker 3: the wall nearly crushes the two of them, but they
Speaker 3: dodge out of the way, and then Madeline faints once
Speaker 3: again and Roderick arrives and carries her away. So in
Speaker 3: the next scene we finally are going to get some explanation.
Speaker 3: Roderick says it is time for Philip to understand. So
Speaker 3: they go out on the balcony overlooking the twisted marsh below,
Speaker 3: and Roderick says, the tarn is very deep. One of
Speaker 3: the Usher women drowned herself in it. She was never found.
Speaker 3: I dare say it's deep enough to swallow this house entire.
Speaker 3: And then there's another little exchange, but Usher goes on
Speaker 3: to I again want to quote his monologue here, because
Speaker 3: I think it's great. Roderick says, once this land was fertile,
Speaker 3: Farms abounded, earth yielded her riches at harvest time, there
Speaker 3: were trees and plant life, flowers, fields of grain. There
Speaker 3: was great beauty here. At that time. This water was
Speaker 3: clear and fresh. Swans glided upon its crystal surface. Animals
Speaker 3: came to its bank trustingly to drink. But this was
Speaker 3: long before my time. And then something crept across the
Speaker 3: land and blighted it. The trees lost their foliage, the
Speaker 3: flowers languished and died. Shrubs grew brown and shriveled. The
Speaker 3: grain fields perished. The lakes and ponds became black and stagnant,
Speaker 3: and the land withered as before a plague, a plague
Speaker 3: of evil, and here Roderick takes Philip inside to show
Speaker 3: him the paintings, the paintings that we alluded to earlier,
Speaker 3: of the portraits of his ancestors. So we go through
Speaker 3: them one by one and we see each painting, and
Speaker 3: then Roderick names his relative and then begins to list
Speaker 3: sort of the high points of each relative's biography, which
Speaker 3: are mostly negative epithets and lists of crimes. So it
Speaker 3: turns out all of the Usher ancestors were horrible. They
Speaker 3: were thieves, swindlers, betrayers, blackmailers, liars, exploiters, slave traders, murderers,
Speaker 3: and assassins.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This this rundown reminds me a lot of the
Speaker 1: card game Gloom. I don't know if you're familiar with
Speaker 1: with with this one, Joe, it has kind of like
Speaker 1: an Edward Gory kind of vibe to it, where you're
Speaker 1: trying to like play the most cursed upper crust family.
Speaker 3: I've always about it, but I've never played it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fun, as Zarich, it's been a number of years,
Speaker 1: but it has this kind of vibe like who can
Speaker 1: out usher the other player.
Speaker 3: Who has the most evil ancestry.
Speaker 1: But oh yeah, this is this tour of the world.
Speaker 1: First of the worst in the Ashuer family is tremendous,
Speaker 1: and we have illustrations. Of course, we have those wonderful, dark,
Speaker 1: grotesque portraits of each individual, each one not as much
Speaker 1: a photorealistic image of the individual, but like a psychic
Speaker 1: portrait of their soul.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I included some screenshots of these paintings here
Speaker 3: in the outline for you to look at. Robie, do
Speaker 3: you want to comment on any individually. I think this
Speaker 3: first one, mentioned Anthony Usher, is interesting because it is
Speaker 3: this is supposed to be like an evil old man,
Speaker 3: but this face looks almost childlike in a way, except
Speaker 3: the face is rendered with these sort of jigsaw puzzle
Speaker 3: lines running through it. But it's, you know, pictured with
Speaker 3: these like large eyes with large dilated pupils, cannoting a
Speaker 3: kind of I don't even know how to explain it.
Speaker 3: It's it looks like a kind of evil innocence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so, It's hard to really
Speaker 1: put it in words. Yeah, but those eyes are wide
Speaker 1: and curious, same kind of innocent. But the rest is
Speaker 1: almost decade and patchwork.
Speaker 3: There's another one that shows a man whose eyes are
Speaker 3: hidden in shadow, but it's like his outline is sort
Speaker 3: of sort of shifting through the air so that he
Speaker 3: actually does not have a fixed outline at the back
Speaker 3: of his neck and his head. Instead, there are like
Speaker 3: these multiple lines that just blur out into this cloud
Speaker 3: of red, as if he is taking form out of
Speaker 3: a mist of blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one has has strong vampiric elements to it,
Speaker 1: like get a sense of like biological disorder, like inner
Speaker 1: disease or disease of the soul. And you know, virtually
Speaker 1: no eyes, just dark pits as well, so less innocence
Speaker 1: with this particular character.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then we also see probably the most infernal
Speaker 3: looking boat captain picture I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, oh my goodness. The boat Captain was like
Speaker 1: just the burning eyes. Yeah, like this is the guy
Speaker 1: who volunteers to bring Dragula to England. Like this is
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, bloaded him up.
Speaker 3: But so the point is that going back through time
Speaker 3: before Rohderick and Madeline, everyone in the Usher line seems
Speaker 3: to have been, in one way or another, the worst
Speaker 3: kind of person imaginable, someone who becomes rich by destroying
Speaker 3: the lives of others and then, at least in terms
Speaker 3: of the external world gets away with it. But do
Speaker 3: they really get away with it because a lot of
Speaker 3: these people were told end ups. It's something bad does
Speaker 3: happen to them. But it's not like they face justice
Speaker 3: from outside. It's like they go mad or they're taken
Speaker 3: ill or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like they don't. They don't get their come upance
Speaker 1: in a real firm manner like they in the sense
Speaker 1: that they they stay rich, they stay highly successful in
Speaker 1: their own deplorable fields, and then the rest of our world,
Speaker 1: the world just kind of looks on is like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course the Ushers got away with it. Again, that's
Speaker 1: what they do. And here we are.
Speaker 3: So Philip protests. He is like, but sir, you cannot
Speaker 3: believe that the sins of the father should be visited
Speaker 3: upon the children. And Roderick says, you do not, sir.
Speaker 3: Then the House of Usher seems to you normal, And
Speaker 3: then Philip says it is neither normal nor abnormal. It
Speaker 3: is only a house. And I think this plays on
Speaker 3: another interesting theme in the movie, that the duality the
Speaker 3: different meanings of the word house in English. So it
Speaker 3: is the house of Usher that we're told is evil
Speaker 3: and cursed, and house can mean the literal building an
Speaker 3: ancestral family dwelling which seems infused with wickedness and crumbles
Speaker 3: kind of pointedly with the intent to cause harm. But
Speaker 3: also the word house is used to refer to a
Speaker 3: lineage a family, usually an aristocratic or royal one, as
Speaker 3: in the House of Windsor. Is kind of interesting that
Speaker 3: you only use the word house to refer to a
Speaker 3: family if it's like a prominent, rich family. And adding
Speaker 3: to that, there's this kind of overlap with the idea
Speaker 3: of the curse here in the two meanings of house,
Speaker 3: because if the idea is that the ancestors of the
Speaker 3: Usher line became rich by way of their sins, it
Speaker 3: is their wickedness that generated the money to buy the
Speaker 3: land and build the physical house, which are the physical
Speaker 3: things that are now cursed. So the reason they have
Speaker 3: a mansion and a vast estate is because of the
Speaker 3: evil crimes of the past.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all of these things that were purchased and acquired
Speaker 1: via that wealth is tainted by the acts that generated it.
Speaker 3: So Roderick explains his theory that evil is not just
Speaker 3: a word, it is a substance, a living reality, and
Speaker 3: like any living thing, it can be created and was
Speaker 3: created by his ancestors, and now the evil they created
Speaker 3: lives on within the house. Again the ambiguity, he says,
Speaker 3: house that the building or the living descendants, or both,
Speaker 3: and it will live on as long as the house
Speaker 3: still exists, which is why Roderick insists that neither he
Speaker 3: nor Madeleine should ever have children. It would be to
Speaker 3: allow the evil to live on for another generation. So
Speaker 3: Roderick says explicitly that all of the near fatal accidents
Speaker 3: that have occurred since Philip arrived were not accidents. It
Speaker 3: is the evil of the house lashing out trying to
Speaker 3: kill Philip, and Philip violently rejects this. He says, no, Roderick,
Speaker 3: the evil in this house is you. I will not
Speaker 3: let your sickened fantasies destroy Madeleine's life. She leaves with
Speaker 3: me today. And when he yells price again, he shows
Speaker 3: the fragility. He clutches his ears and he shrinks in pain.
Speaker 1: You know, just a common response in films when there's
Speaker 1: a new theory regarding the nature of evil. It reminds
Speaker 1: me a little bit of the nineteen seventy three British
Speaker 1: horror film The Creeping Flesh, which is not one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. It's a little I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: like the mouthfeel of this particular one. But it has
Speaker 1: Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in it, and one of
Speaker 1: the characters at one point, it's like I have made
Speaker 1: a breakthrough in the nature of evil. Evil is real
Speaker 1: and we can put it under a microscope and study it.
Speaker 1: Look look at the evil, and you know it's always
Speaker 1: a controversial hye bosis.
Speaker 3: Now regarding the evil is you interpretation of the story
Speaker 3: referring to Roderick here, one thing I think worth mentioning
Speaker 3: is that it is never made explicit in the movie,
Speaker 3: but there is sort of an unspoken theme that a
Speaker 3: lot of viewers have picked up on in like film
Speaker 3: critics literary critics talking about the story over the years.
Speaker 3: It could be implied that Roderick is acting in a
Speaker 3: way out of jealousy, that in fact, he has desire
Speaker 3: for his own sister and he wants to control her
Speaker 3: and keep her at the house because he can't stand
Speaker 3: the thought of her going away and marrying Philip. I
Speaker 3: think that's a plausible reading of the evil as you
Speaker 3: interpretation of the story. Though the evil as you could
Speaker 3: also be true about Roderick and simply be that he's
Speaker 3: so wrapped up in his delusions about the physical manifestation
Speaker 3: of evil, you know, caused by the horrible ancestors, that
Speaker 3: he unknowingly projects this delusion onto Madeline and unnecessarily warps
Speaker 3: her mind and ruins her life as well. But then
Speaker 3: another interpretation is that the external evil is real and
Speaker 3: Roderick is correct. And I think the interesting thing is
Speaker 3: that it's possible to take the movie on any of
Speaker 3: these interpretations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though I think the middle is the more It's
Speaker 1: the one I lean more towards. I think it's the
Speaker 1: more interesting of the concepts, you know, because if it's
Speaker 1: just him, you know, creeping on her and having designs
Speaker 1: for her, I don't know, that's you know, that's gross
Speaker 1: and all, but it's not matter. It only gives me
Speaker 1: so far. And then like the actual physical reality of
Speaker 1: evil too, I mean that, you know, definitely gets into
Speaker 1: a nice supernatural zone. But it's that that middle area,
Speaker 1: that idea that it's just like sheer projection of paranoia
Speaker 1: and and and shame and and so forth from Roderick,
Speaker 1: Like just this is the sheer power of his dark thoughts,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, in a non supernatural way, Like I
Speaker 1: feel like that's very compelling.
Speaker 3: I agree that is also my preferred interpretation. But I
Speaker 3: thought it was worth mentioning the three different ways because
Speaker 3: I've seen sort of, you know, people writing about this
Speaker 3: movie that take it all three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I do like that ambiguity in a film,
Speaker 1: you know, where you're open to your own interpretation.
Speaker 3: Anyway, after this confrontation between Philip and Roderick, Philip goes
Speaker 3: to Madeleine's room and makes one last bid to convince her.
Speaker 3: Remember she's been vacillating. She'll say like, yeah, okay, let's go,
Speaker 3: and then like no, no, I'm cursed. I have to stay.
Speaker 3: So he's like, you've got to leave with me. There
Speaker 3: there is nothing wrong with you that leaving this house
Speaker 3: won't cure. And hope kind of gathers in her mind
Speaker 3: again and she says, yes, I will go, and they kiss.
Speaker 3: She seems afraid but also excited. So they got to
Speaker 3: pack their things and get ready to go. But while
Speaker 3: they are packing their things and they're in their separate rooms,
Speaker 3: Roderick goes into Madeleine's room and begins to argue with her.
Speaker 3: Reminding her of all the evils and calamities that he
Speaker 3: says will occur if she leaves the house. And tensions rise,
Speaker 3: and you can hear Philip hears through the wall that
Speaker 3: they begin to yell, which is, you know, that's not normal.
Speaker 3: Normally everybody keeps the library voice in this house. And
Speaker 3: Philip finally hears Madeleine's scream, and when he comes into
Speaker 3: the room, Roderick is standing at the window and Madeleine
Speaker 3: is lying on her sheets, apparently dead. Now Philip yells
Speaker 3: at Roderick, you killed her, but Roderick says, no, there
Speaker 3: is no mark on her. You are the one who
Speaker 3: killed her. He's like, I warned you, and I warned you.
Speaker 3: Her heart could not withstand the strain of leaving, the
Speaker 3: strain put upon her. At least she's now been spared
Speaker 3: the agony of trying to escape. One candle left to
Speaker 3: burn now before the darkness.
Speaker 1: Comes way to go, Philip, you killed her.
Speaker 3: And the interesting thing is that Philip and Roderick have
Speaker 3: been at opposite ends of this, and Madeleine's been in
Speaker 3: the middle. Roderick's like, there's a curse. Madeline is sick.
Speaker 3: Philip is like there's not a curse, she's not sick,
Speaker 3: she's fine, And they're both sort of trying to convince Madeleine.
Speaker 3: But now that Madeleine is apparently dead, you start to
Speaker 3: see Philip succumbing to Roderick's interpretation. So they're like in
Speaker 3: the family chapel praying over Madeleine's body, and you can
Speaker 3: see Philip is filled with guilt, and he even asks
Speaker 3: in a subsequent scene he's talking to Bristol later and
Speaker 3: he's like, could it be that I that I did this,
Speaker 3: that I, you know, excited her illness and I killed her?
Speaker 3: Like he is starting to buy into the curse theory now.
Speaker 1: M hm, he's been there too long. He's becoming a
Speaker 1: part of the House of Usher.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, and then there's a part that did make
Speaker 3: you laugh out loud when they're there. The two of
Speaker 3: them are in the chapel praying over Madeleine's dead body
Speaker 3: with the open casket, and Roderic is like, oh, by
Speaker 3: the way, she's not at peace now she's in hell.
Speaker 3: All ushers go to hell.
Speaker 1: It is deliciously awful, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Philip's just like, shut up. But so they
Speaker 3: start this vigorous bickering. But one thing we the audience see,
Speaker 3: and Roderick sees, but Philip does not see, is that
Speaker 3: Madeline's fingers begin to flex and stretch.
Speaker 1: Uh oh.
Speaker 3: So Roderick catches a glimpse of this, and he quickly
Speaker 3: snaps the coffin lid shut. And it's like, okay, quickly,
Speaker 3: let's carry her coffin down to the crypt. Hurry up now,
Speaker 3: And so the mourners leave the chapel, they shut the crypt,
Speaker 3: and we zoom slowly on the coffin until finally we
Speaker 3: hear Madeline scream and and we have arrived at the
Speaker 3: most classic of Edgar Allan Poe theme's premature burial. That's right,
Speaker 3: So now everything is building up to the climax. The
Speaker 3: next morning, Philip is getting ready to leave. He again
Speaker 3: is buying into the Roderick theory. He's distraught. The ideas
Speaker 3: have gotten to him, and he's worried that he really
Speaker 3: did kill Madeleine by putting these ideas in her head
Speaker 3: about leaving the house. But Bristol, the butler, is trying
Speaker 3: to console Philip, and he lets slip that you know, Madeleine,
Speaker 3: she suffered from many health conditions, and there were many
Speaker 3: health conditions that run in the family. He starts to
Speaker 3: list them, you know, nervous conditions, something you know, a
Speaker 3: failure of the heart, and then he starts to say
Speaker 3: but catches himself catalepsy, which is a condition where people
Speaker 3: fall into a kind of unconscious trance or spontaneous coma
Speaker 3: where they are immobile and can appear to be dead,
Speaker 3: but they're not. Philip hears this, and he realizes what
Speaker 3: it means. What if Madeleine was still alive and only
Speaker 3: appeared to have died. What if she has been buried
Speaker 3: alive in the crypt? So Philip he freaks out. He
Speaker 3: runs down under the house into the chamber. He finds
Speaker 3: Madeleine's coffin strangely wrapped shut with a padlocked chain, and
Speaker 3: then he goes and finds an axe, breaks the chain open,
Speaker 3: only to discover that the coffin is empty. That's not good,
Speaker 3: so Philip goes and confronts Roderick, wanting to know where
Speaker 3: Madeline is and Roderick he doesn't try to deny it.
Speaker 3: He says she's in a secret place and he won't tell.
Speaker 3: And Philip threatens Roderick with the axe, but Roderick is
Speaker 3: not moved. He does not back down. He says, go on,
Speaker 3: you would be doing me a great favor. And so
Speaker 3: again it's interesting here how physically unthreatening Roderick is in
Speaker 3: this scene. He has all the power, but he's so
Speaker 3: physically weak, so fragile. He cringes and cowers in pain
Speaker 3: when Philip yells at him, and when Philip threatens him
Speaker 3: with an axe with violence, He's just like, go ahead
Speaker 3: and do it. So it's a very unusual and fascinating
Speaker 3: power dynamic in the drama.
Speaker 1: It's like, you can kill me and you know, and
Speaker 1: I'll go to hell where I belong, but just don't
Speaker 1: raise your voice or touch my garments. And because I
Speaker 1: just can't take.
Speaker 3: That right, so Philip is he's searching all over the
Speaker 3: house looking for Madeline. He eventually he just becomes totally
Speaker 3: exhausted and passes out. And here we get a great
Speaker 3: dream sequence where Philip wanders through an altered version of
Speaker 3: the House of Usher, filled with blue fog, and eventually
Speaker 3: makes his way into the chapel, which has all of
Speaker 3: the horrible Usher ancestors moaning at him and reaching out
Speaker 3: to grab his flesh and When Philip goes to the
Speaker 3: head of the chapel, he finds Madeleine's coffin occupied only
Speaker 3: by a skeleton, and then he searches further and further
Speaker 3: deeper into the dream, and somewhere in the dream he
Speaker 3: can't find her, but he imagines Madeleine alive, still covered
Speaker 3: in flesh, trapped in her coffin and screaming wide eyed
Speaker 3: in terror. I love the dream.
Speaker 1: Sequence, absolutely wonderful. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So anyway, when Philip wakes up, he goes to
Speaker 3: Roderick's room, where Roderick is just sitting there plucking his lute,
Speaker 3: and Philip's like, you murdered your sister, mister usher, and
Speaker 3: I intend to see that you hang for it, and
Speaker 3: Roderick says, arrange it quickly. Then the old house crumbles
Speaker 3: the time window is closing, but Roderick goes on. He
Speaker 3: starts another monologue where he's like, if you only knew
Speaker 3: the agonies I have spared you in this world that
Speaker 3: I have endured on your behalf. Did you know I
Speaker 3: could hear the scratching of her fingernails on the casket lid?
Speaker 3: Did you know I could hear her screaming my name?
Speaker 3: For help, and then Roderick seems he suddenly like it's
Speaker 3: like something seizes him and he calls out, be done,
Speaker 3: be done, and Philip realizes what this means. Madeline is
Speaker 3: still alive and Roderick can hear her screaming for help now,
Speaker 3: so Roderick rants and raves in agony. He can hear
Speaker 3: her scratching and all that, but Philip doesn't know where
Speaker 3: to find her, and we cut away. We see a
Speaker 3: chained coffin, a different chained coffin with Madeline's bloody fingers
Speaker 3: reaching out through the crack. Ooh, a killing image. And
Speaker 3: then finally Philip, Roderick and Bristol they run around, you know,
Speaker 3: Philip is trying to find her. He makes his way
Speaker 3: into another part of the crypt where the coffins of
Speaker 3: the Ushers have all been pulled out of their places,
Speaker 3: and the skeletons the bones are scattered across the floor,
Speaker 3: and they find Madeleine's secret coffin thrown open. The chain's broken.
Speaker 3: So here's the payoff of the monologue we got in
Speaker 3: Act one where Roderick says, oh, she has the madness,
Speaker 3: Remember the madness he mentioned earlier where his relatives all
Speaker 3: go mad and gain the strength of many men. So
Speaker 3: Philip at this point is running through the house, finding
Speaker 3: and unlocking secret passageways to locate Madeleine. Roderick arms himself
Speaker 3: with a pistol, but is that going to do any good?
Speaker 3: Could you possibly imagine it? Would? We finally get the
Speaker 3: the ultimate climax of the film, where I don't want
Speaker 3: to spoil too much, but for a movie that is
Speaker 3: mostly kind of visually subdued apart from like the paintings
Speaker 3: and the dream dream sequence, when we finally see Madeleine
Speaker 3: in her madness, in her glorious madness, with her hands
Speaker 3: covered in rivulets of blood from where she has scratched
Speaker 3: her fingernails away on the inside of the coffin. Her
Speaker 3: eyes are just wide with absolute terror and insanity. Her
Speaker 3: hair is thrown back and they cast these like these
Speaker 3: amazing blue lights over her face. She is awesome to behold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, She's like a bansheet or a wraith, you know.
Speaker 1: She has that kind of energy to her avengeful spirit.
Speaker 3: And of course we get avengeful final confrontation, whereas the
Speaker 3: house is fully crumbling, everything's on fire. Now the House
Speaker 3: of Usher is meeting its ultimate physical demise. Also, Madelene
Speaker 3: confronts her brother and she takes him by the neck
Speaker 3: and strangles Roderic amidst all the fire and the smoke
Speaker 3: and the falling rubble. And it's a tremendous and terrifying climax.
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, oh my goodness, Like the mansion looked amazing
Speaker 1: in the picture, and as a fiery husk consumed in
Speaker 1: this cataclysm, it also looks amazing. The curse comes to
Speaker 1: full fruition here, just absolutely apocalyptic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so Philip is the only one who survives.
Speaker 3: The house burns and collapses, and then as he walks away,
Speaker 3: comes out of the gate, wanders into the swamp, with
Speaker 3: everything he loved destroyed. We see the final quote from
Speaker 3: the original post story. The words appear on the screen,
Speaker 3: and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed
Speaker 3: sullenly and silently over the fragments of the house of Usher.
Speaker 1: Fabulous, fabulous. And of course the moral of the story
Speaker 1: is never meet your significant other's family. Don't do it.
Speaker 3: So again, a different, a different kind of film, a
Speaker 3: different kind of proposition than Mask of the Red Death,
Speaker 3: which is wilder and more visually extravagant and you know,
Speaker 3: has more kind of variety in it and all that,
Speaker 3: but I think or what it is as a tighter,
Speaker 3: cozier tale of the macabre, House of Usher is really strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a film that vibes hard. Again, It's
Speaker 1: maybe not the ideal viewing experience for you, if you
Speaker 1: if you want something a little more action based or
Speaker 1: something that's gonna hit you a lot of jump scares.
Speaker 1: But in terms of like just pure gothic horror po vibes,
Speaker 1: it's hard to beat House of Usher.
Speaker 3: So happy Halloween, everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is a fun one. I enjoyed watching it.
Speaker 1: I had never seen it before, and I originally enjoyed
Speaker 1: the experience. It's a good film to really focus on.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you could have it on in the
Speaker 1: background and it would still be very visually pleasing. But
Speaker 1: it's also a good one to really dive into. All Right, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close it out here, but
Speaker 1: just a reminder that while Stuffed About Your Mind is
Speaker 1: primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and
Speaker 1: Thursday science and culture podcast on Fridays. You know, we
Speaker 1: have to we have to release a little steam. We've
Speaker 1: we've got to dive into some weird films and talk
Speaker 1: about those. So, hey, you know, get stressful weeks ahead,
Speaker 1: don't worry, Weird House Cinema, we'll be here for you.
Speaker 1: In fact, next week's is going to be a nice
Speaker 1: Halloween selection as well. I can't promise anything, but I'm
Speaker 1: hoping we can maybe even get it out like just
Speaker 1: a little after midnight on Halloween Eve, you know, so
Speaker 1: it's technically on Friday, but it's but it's actually Thursday,
Speaker 1: you know, that sort of thing. We'll see what we
Speaker 1: can do.
Speaker 3: We'll do our best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And if you want a full list of all
Speaker 1: the movies we've covered on Weird House over the years,
Speaker 1: where you can go to letterbox dot com. That's l
Speaker 1: E T T E R b o xd dot com.
Speaker 1: Our username is weird House. We have a nice list there.
Speaker 1: You can explore that. If you're on Instagram, st b
Speaker 1: ym podcast and that's where we also update you on
Speaker 1: what's happening on Weird House. And if you go to
Speaker 1: stuff to Bow Yourmind dot com or the link tree
Speaker 1: on Instagram, you can eventually get to our tea public store.
Speaker 1: We have some new Halloween designs in there that we've
Speaker 1: been asked to promote, and I think they're pretty cool.
Speaker 1: If you need a shirt, you need a sticker, it's fun.
Speaker 1: It's there for fun. We don't need you to buy
Speaker 1: a shirt or a sticker, but if you would like to,
Speaker 1: it's there for you.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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