Up until now, American International Pictures had been overseeing black and white features shot on a low budget. House of Usher would prove a vital turning point for the film production company, marking it as the first that would be shot in colour. It would also be the first in seven collaborations between director Roger Corman and the enigmatic Vincent Price based on American Gothic writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe’s work. Although it strains a little from this well-known piece, one which modern audiences would be familiar with through Mike Flanagan’s love song to the artist, it is well crafted and stylised to have generated a worthy audience at the box office.

When Philip Winthrop embarks on a visit to the titular house in order to see his fiance Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey) is greeted by her brother, Roderick (Price) instead. Roderick is hellbent on encouraging Philip to leave for fear that the usher curse that has been placed on the family and its household should further bring ruin to the couple. Philip does not take on this warning and instead aims to steal Madeline from the house. This plan falls awry though when Madeline slips into a catatonic state, and her fiance resigns with a heavy heart that his betrothed has died. Roderick meanwhile ebbs further into a state of madness, believing the curse to have struck again and entombing Madeline in the family crypt. This act is enough to send poor Madeline into hysteria, and thus the two siblings are joined in their own pandemonium.

Madness and its frailty is certainly exposed here as the core theme to the film and Vincent Price’s amplified performance is never more on song than here. From a bumper year in 1959, turning out in horror classics such as House on Haunted Hill; The Tingler; and The Bat, Price would cement his name in the dark genre and take great strides in the sixties and early seventies. This is very much his movie, ably supported by the visual chemistry of set design, gore and the quality of special effects for its time.

– Saul Muerte

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