Weirdhouse Cinema: House of Usher (1960)

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe return to the world of Corman/Poe features with 1960’s “House of Usher” starring a platinum-blond Vincent Price, Mark Damon and Myrna Fahey.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I am Joe McCormick. And October continues. So we
are still bringing you Halloween themed episodes of Weird House
Cinema and also core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your
Mind throughout this month. Today we are covering the nineteen
sixty Roger Corman adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story

(00:37):
The Fall of the House of Usher, starring who else,
it's Vincent Price. This movie is sometimes billed with the
full name of the story, as it's titled The Fall
of the House of Usher, but sometimes you'll see it
shortened to just House of Usher. In fact, I've seen
it the latter format more times. I think it looks
like that in all the classic posters.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, this is another one of those cases where there
have been enough at ats of the original post story
in question that you should just go ahead and throw
nineteen sixty on there whenever you're looking it up anywhere,
just to be sure. And especially this is complicated since
you don't know how this film is actually going to
be titled in a given release.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
So this is one of a series of films from
the nineteen sixties that had three production elements in common.
The first element is a script adapted from the works
of Edgar Allan Poe, conveniently in the public domain by
this time. The second element is it was directed by
Drive in double feature god Roger Corman. And the third

(01:38):
feature is that the movie starred the peerless Vincent Price,
who I love the way Price fits into these Edgar
Allan Poe characters. He just gets in there so perfectly.
I was trying to think of an analogy, and what
came to mind is it's like when you drop one
of the game pieces into a Connect four set, you know,
it just falls into place with this happy little clip.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah. Yeah, well it certainly clicks, that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
So anyway, it was a three way collaboration, the Po
Price Corman collaboration that was so nice. They did it
like seven or eight times, depending on how much of
a stickler you are for accurate story credits. And we'll
come back to the Corman post cycle later in the
Connections part of this episode. But I wanted to start
today by mentioning that we've covered one of these movies

(02:24):
on the show before for a previous Halloween season Weird House,
and that previous movie was The Mask of the Red
Death from nineteen sixty four, a lavish satanic plague tale
featuring Vincent Price as the wicked corruptor of innocence Prince Prospero.
And I love Mask of the Red Death. If you

(02:47):
go back and listen to that episode. I'm sure I'm
just running out of positive things to say about it,
but I still think about it all the time. I
love the atmosphere of good and evil as almost physically
embodied power. I love the use of extravagant, brightly colored
masquerade costumes set against this gray world. It creates this

(03:07):
jewels on bone visual texture that I find so pleasing.
Of course, I love Vincent Price, and I also love
how Mask contrasts with Roger Corman's previous B movie work,
stuff like Attack of the Crab, Monsters, Not of This
Earth and It Conquered the World. All movies that I love,
and we have talked about lovingly on the show many times,

(03:30):
But all of these previous movies, I think you could
say are self consciously schlock. Like Corman sort of knew
he was making trash, but he was trying to make
like fun, scrappy, sort of intelligent trash. Mask at the
Red Death, on the other hand, I think is not
schlock in the same way. You can argue that it
has some subtle bits of self parody, but ultimately I

(03:52):
think Mask is a very successful classic Gothic horror film
when taken straightforwardly and it's made with real finesse, and
then sort of on top of that, once you accept
it at that level, you can unlock maybe second and
third levels of pleasure by watching it with a more
ironic lens.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
It is a very pleasurable film, and it is it
is a prestige Roger Corman picture. And I would say, ultimately,
if you're too good for Mask of the Red Death,
then we probably don't have much in common. We probably
probably don't have even like a groundwork upon which to
build out this friendship.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah, but so anyway, I love to Mask of the
Red Death so much. I wanted to come back to
one of the Corman Poe Price movies this October, and
I decided we should watch the one that started it all,
the first of these collaborations. So here we are with
House of Usher, from nineteen sixty. So as a point

(04:49):
of comparison, I think it's interesting how scaled back this
movie feels compared to Mask. Mask has a big cast,
a lot of extra lots of location changes, you know,
interior exterior. It has a lot of location changes within
the main castle as bright colors, interesting costumes, big sets,

(05:12):
and light effects that in some cases even border on psychedelic.
You could say. Usher, by contrast, I think, feels like
a really good bottle episode of a TV show. The
cast is small, there are only four characters, really three
principal characters in sort of a gruel boiling Butler. The

(05:33):
setting is mostly confined to the interior of one house.
There's nothing too crazy visually, at least not until around
the climax. Then toward the end there are some sites
and sounds that get kind of weird. But in general
I would just say that Usher contains less flambuoyant original
creativity than Mask, and it is a more disciplined attempt

(05:53):
to capture the tone and plot of the original Pose story.
But this is by no means. A dig lot of
people cite Usher as their favorite of the Corman Price collaborations,
and I think I can see why, like the wildness
of Mask is a bit more my speed, but Usher
has a really good script and a chillingly effective and

(06:14):
ambiguous performance by Price, who has bleach blonde hair. By
the way, where else are you going to get that?

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, that's right, We'll come back to the look of
Vincent Price in this picture. That alone makes it stand out.
But I agree this is a picture that in many
ways makes it a smaller picture, but a smaller picture
that's really allowed to breathe, you know, like the fewer
elements involved all managed to sort of build up their

(06:42):
own energy that by the end of the picture you
don't feel like you've been slided at all. That being said,
I think it is fair to say this is maybe
a movie in which not as much happens compared to
other pictures, and you've got to be on board with that.
Like I watched this film zonked Out on an airplane
and was the perfect perfect picture for that sort of setting,

(07:03):
you know. I like a nice slow film like this.
You can breathe in all the sights and sounds, especially
the sites more so than the sounds here, but then
also some strong performances in here as well. But like
I say, if you want something that's really snappy, this
is maybe not yet, so you've got to be on

(07:23):
its wavelength. But if you're on its wavelength, a film
like this is perfect.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Oh this is a gloomy, languid, classic gothic haunted mansion story. Yeah,
well wait a minute now that I say haunted mansion,
actually I think a great thing. Maybe we can discuss
the themes more when we get into the plot section,
but I think this movie is interesting in that you
could legitimately ask, at least for most of the runtime,

(07:49):
whether there's actually anything supernatural happening or not, or whether
it's all just kind of the consequences of Vincent Price's
character Roderick and his delusional behave.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, if nothing out as Ilset is a film haunted
by multi generational human evil. Yeah, and it definitely ruminates
on that.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
All right, we usually do an elevator pitch. I'll try
to give a straightforward plot set up here. Philip Winthrop
travels to the desolate and decomposing Usher Estate to visit
his fiancee, Madeleine, whom he courted and became engaged to
during their time together in Boston. So she's gone ahead
of him back to the Usher estate, and he's coming

(08:31):
to beat her. But when he arrives, Philip discovers that
Madeleine is in ill health and she is under the
constant control of her strange and morose brother, Roderick played
by Vincent Price. Over time, Philip begins to doubt what
he's being told by Roderick and the household butler. Is
Madeline really sick or is she having her will to

(08:53):
live sapped by Roderick's psychic manipulations, or is there something
more sinister and ghostly operating underneath it all?

Speaker 2 (09:02):
We'll find out, all right. Let's go ahead and listen
to a little trailer audio for House of Usher.

Speaker 4 (09:14):
Don't take her man now, let me go in there.

Speaker 5 (09:20):
Only the incomparable genius of Edgar Allen Poe could knit
them so closely together, the burning passions of the purest
of loves, the deadly passions of the madly buriant.

Speaker 4 (09:37):
Hope when you're leaving this house with me tomorrow, Only
I could.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
For hundreds of years, evil thoughts and evil deeds have
been committed within these walls.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
The house itself is evil.

Speaker 5 (09:50):
Now they all are ashes.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
It's monstrous.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
It waits for me, because very soon I shall be dead.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
Oh medline, come away with me?

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Now?

Speaker 5 (10:27):
Where is she? You buried your own sister alive?

Speaker 4 (10:32):
I did, but she's dead now. The master hand of
the macap creates its masterpiece, all right.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
If you want to watch House of USh or follow
the House of USh, or whatever you want to call
this nineteen sixty film, there are a couple of ways
to do it. If you're in the UK, I believe
you have access to the beautiful Arrow Blue. If you're
in the US, I think you can find it in
the Vincent Price Collection box set from Shout Factory. Off
the top of my head, I'm not sure about the
current production status of either of those, but that's kind

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

Speaker 3 (11:28):
I have that Vincent Price box set from Shout Factory,
and that is how I watched this movie. It's also
how I watched Pitt in the Pendulum. It's got Mask
of the Red Death in there, and it's also got
some other fun stuff like Witchfinder General and The Abominable
Doctor Five. So highly recommend that collection. It's very solid.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah, the Witchfinder General film is said to be another
great price performance.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
That one I've only watched on mute while doing other things,
but it looked interesting, so maybe I'll have to go
back and turn the sound on. Sometimes it's by a
filmmaker who we watched another movie by him. He was
the guy who made that movie The Sorcerers about the
people like the old people who can get into the
young guy's brain.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, short lived director died tragically young, but showed so
much promise. Anyway, again, I watched this film. No doubt
is Roger Corman intended on an iPhone in an airplane.
But you know there are fewer distractions in some ways
when watching a film in that format, so you know,

(12:32):
sometimes it's the right time for that sort of treatment.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
Roger wouldn't hate on you for that.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
You don't know it all right, Well, since we're already
talking about him, Yeah, let's get into the people behind
this film, starting with Roger Corman, the director, the producer
who lived nineteen twenty six through twenty twenty four. We've
talked about him numerous times on the show, so we're
going to try not to repeat too much of that
instead sort of frame this within his output and within

(12:58):
the history of Weird House. I believe this is our
fifth Corman directed motion picture, but he also served as
producer on some of the films we've covered. This, of course,
is one of the films loosely classified as being part
of the Pose cycle. In fact, again it is the
film that kicked off the entire cycle. Usher came on
the heels of nineteen fifty nine's Eye, Moobster, The Wasp Woman,

(13:21):
and Bucket of Blood. Those all directed by Corman, and
it was one of four Corman directed films that came
out in nineteen sixty, along with Ski Troop Attack, The
Little Shop of Horrors, and Last Woman on Earth.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
Well, I know Little Shop of Horrors. Now I'm curious
about Ski Troop Attack. Yeah, it's like real stands the
test of time. I bet, yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
I mean that's the thing about Corman's output is, you know,
certain genre films have become a legendary of his and
you know, you instantly think of them when you think
of Roger Corman. But for every one or two of those,
there are three or four more in other genres, often
that have just kind of fallen through the cracks for many,
except for the Roger Corman completest, I suppose. Anyway, the

(14:04):
Corman post cycle is generally considered to run eight films.
You have Usher, then you have sixty ones, The Pitt
in the Pendulum, sixty two's the Premature Burial and Tales
of Terror, sixty threes the Raven and the Haunted Palace,
and then sixty four is The Mask of the Red
Death and The Tomb of Lagia. Of course, we should

(14:26):
note that the Haunted Palace is actually based on a
Lovecraft story and not a post story. It's just the
title that ties into pose work. All of them star
Vincent Price, except for the Premature Burial.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
Yeah, so I've seen three of these movies at this point.
I've seen Usher, the Pit and the Pendulum, and Mask
of the Red Death. Mask is my favorite, easily, though
all three of them I think are quite good, and
maybe we'll have to come back to the Pit and
the Pendulum sometime. Price's performance in that movie is a
lot more unhinged and off the wall than in Usher.

(14:57):
But let's see the premature Aerial and Tales of Terror.
I think, is that one movie or two movies?

Speaker 2 (15:04):
That's true?

Speaker 3 (15:05):
Tales of Terror is supposed to be anthology.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. These are Corman films,
so sometimes there's two coming out a year, and those
are inevitably not the only pictures he directed, certainly didn't
not the only pictures he produced heuring a given year.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, and then The Raven is interesting because that one
is supposed to be a comedy. I have not seen it.
I'm a little curious how that works. I feel like
I would be less interested in an overt comedy with
Price and po themes. But who knows. Maybe it's great.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Well, I mean you have to acknowledge that that Vincent
Price is terrific in everything. Oh, so he's kind of comedic.
Timing is solid, so he may be able to deliver there.
And you know, you do have some really good Roger
Corman directed dark comedies such as Bucket of Blood or
Little Shop of Horrors and so forth.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, And frankly, I would say all of the movies
of his I've seen that I've liked have some sense
of humor about them. Probably House of Usher has the
least humor of any of them, but he's always got
a little bit of eye twinkling going on.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, we of course have to drive home that this
is an adaptation of the work of Edgar Allan Poe,
who have eighteen oh nine through eighteen forty nine American writer, poet, editor,
and literary critic, best remembered for his spooky poems and stories,
not only in the United States but internationally.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
Oh yeah, well, so, I guess Rob is referring to there.
There was an article that we were sharing off Mike
that I read by a writer named Wynn Bin from
I think it was just published a couple of days ago,
at least published October of this year, twenty twenty four,
about the popularity of Edgar Allan Poe among a lot
of the writers and poets of Vietnam in the first

(16:48):
half of the twentieth century. I think that's interesting, like
what authors really resonate in different language cultures around the world,
but apparently, like, yeah, a lot of Vietnamese writers in
I think it would be around the nineteen twenties and
thirties or so, really really thought that Poe was just
like the best of the American writers.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, And of course that reminds me a bit of
a Japanese author that we've discussed in the show before,
because we've discussed adaptations of his work in cinema, Edugawa Ranpo,
whose name is an allusion to the name Edgar Allan.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Poe, and he was a writer of detective stories, wasn't.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of detective stories and the mysteries
thriller is that sort of thing. Yeah, all right, So
that's the source material. But then the screenplay, the adaptation
comes to us via another name that we've talked about
on the show before, the legendary Richard Matheson, who lived
nineteen twenty six through twenty thirteen. American writer who's best remembered,

(17:49):
I would say, as the author of the excellent nineteen
fifty four novel I Am Legend, upon which three films
have been based. One even had Vincent Price in it.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
I've been thinking we should do that on the show.
By the way, I think it's called Last Man on Earth.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yes, yeah, And of course the others being I Am
Legend with Will Smith and then The Omega Man with
Chuck Huston.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
The Vincent Price one is it's got some really good
things about it, and I really enjoyed. I sampled that
one in some music that I was working on. It
works out pretty good.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
The episodes where we discussed Richard Matheson previously there was
the film The Devil Rides Out. He did the adaptation
on that as well, adapting a weekly novel. And then
we talked about the film adaptation The Incredible Shrinking Man.
That's an adaptation by Matheson of one of Matheson's own books.
If I remember correctly.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
This guy snuck up on me. I didn't realize it first,
but I think Matheson has written the scripts for a
lot of the best movies or the movies with the
best scripts that we've done from the mid twentieth century.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, I mean he was excellent, excellent writer, worked on
a lot of shows like Original Twilight Zone, Night Gallery,
Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and had a big influence on an
entire generation of horror and terror scribes, especially including Stephen King.
Stephen King has frequently cited Richard Matheson as an influence.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
The Incredible Shrinking man I remember in particular, had a
really good script.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah, that's a great picture. If you haven't seen that one,
you haven't listened to our episode on that, go back
to one or the other. Don't be afraid of that
kind of goofy title and perhaps you know comedic idea
of a tiny man inside a house being attacked by
his cat, because it's much more than that. It's actually
a pretty deep flip. Yeah, all right, onto the cast,

(19:49):
and this is going to be a pretty short cast.
There are really only four people in this for the
most part. A few extras here and there, but really
only four people. The lead, of course, again being Vincent
Prize playing Roderick Usher. Price lived nineteen eleven through nineteen
ninety three. We've talked about him plenty of times on
the show because we keep coming back to Vincent Price

(20:10):
films and you never know exactly what you're going to
get from him. He was active on screen from the
late thirties to the early nineties. And you know, there's
a certain vision, a certain version of Vincent Price that
I think is solidified in the horror canon that instantly
comes to mind when you think about him, and a
lot of it is defined by his look, Right, what

(20:31):
do you think of? You think of like that dark
or certainly in later live gray and even white, slicked
back hair. You think about that sharpened mustache, an optional
goatee add on, and then of course he's going to
be wearing some sort of a suit, maybe an optional
Dracula cape, that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
If this makes any sense, He's somebody who, really I
think has the face of a character actor, a kind
of interesting memorable face you would see pop up playing
like second build characters with a little bit of personality
to them, but instead he more often ended up playing
leading male characters or leading villains. And it works pretty

(21:09):
well that way, because he can sort of manipulate his
interesting look with just sort of an inversion of the
slant of his eyebrows to look quite sympathetic or quite evil.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Absolutely, and as we were alluding to earlier, this film
also gives us a rather different looking price because he's
clean shaven and he has bleached blonde hair. You might
want to call him peroxide Price or platinum blonde Price,
you pick, but either way, a very distinctive look. It

(21:43):
reminds me a bit of in the movie The Ten Commandments,
he shows up in that, and he's clean shaven there
as well, which can throw you off if you're used
to Vincent Price with facial hair. But add in the
screaming blonde hair in this picture, and yeah, he looks
sufficiently different. It ends up influencing your entire reception of

(22:05):
the character.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
I think I was thinking about Barbie's hair color, so
I was thinking, like Malibu Price.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's fair. At this point
in his career, Price had already taken on the mantle
of horror star. I think by having already done House
of Wax, which we've talked about in the show, that's
one that really elevated him in the horror genre. But
then also he'd already done fifty eight's The Fly, fifty
nine's House on Haunted Hill, and Return of the Fly,

(22:32):
as well as The Tingler and The bat oh Man.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
There's so many good Price roles in horror movies that
sometimes you can't hold them all in your head. I
was getting ready for this episode and I didn't even
think of The Tingler until you just said it.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, that's a fun film as well. Yeah, but this
is a really fun performance beyond just the different appearance
for Vincent Price because he's this character is firm but fragile.
You know, it's an interesting performance of emotional extremes as
we'll get into, like there's a really strong will, but

(23:08):
not if you're raising your voice or touching his garments
or not taking your shoes. Shoes off in the house
it is it is worth stressing that the house of
Usher is a shoes off household and you need to
be prepared for that.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yeah, Roderick Usher is a character who I like how
ambiguous this character is, Like you, for a long time
in the movie, you're not clear if he's friend or foe,
how dangerous he is, what's going on. And even when
it does become clear in some ways that he is
dangerous and to be feared, at the same time, he
is so weak he could he's just easily physically bested,

(23:42):
and yet that doesn't solve the problem.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah, he's almost like a living ghost in that regard. Yeah,
all right, so that's the that's the lead. But then
second billing, we have the personal Mark Damon as Philip Winthrop.
This is the the individual that is engaged to the
sister of Roderick Usher.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
By normal accounting, This is the protagonist, right, He is
the good guy of the movie. Though I think you
could still say that the main character is Vincent Price
as Roderick Usher, but that's you know, villain first framing.
This is the supposed good guy.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah, yeah, personable Mark Damon. We previously talked about him
because he was in Mario Bava's Black Sabbath from nineteen
sixty three, so that would be in the future of
the Mark Damon that we're seeing here. This was apparently
a big, big film for him. He actually won a
Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer for this film and

(24:38):
when I was a familiar face in motion pictures during
the fifties and sixties. But he's probably best remembered for
Usher and Sabbath, at least as far as acting goes.
But then, as we discussed previously, went on to be
a really major producer in Hollywood and had his hands
in some major pictures of note, including dust Boat or

(24:58):
dust Boot if you will, The Never Ending Story Clan
of the Cave Bear nine and a half week short
circuit Fly to the Navigator, The Lost Boys, beast Master two,
and as well as a pair of Universal Soldier sequels,
among other pictures. When we last talked about him, he
was still alive, but he actually passed away over the

(25:20):
summer at the age of ninety one. He also, I
have to mention again he has one writing credit, and
it's The Devil's Wedding Night from nineteen seventy three. This
is essentially a Dracula movie, despite the title. Oh and
Joe Tomato apparently did some uncredited directing on it. But

(25:41):
it's said to be pretty good. Actually I haven't.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Seen it, Okay, Yeah, Well, in case you don't know
what we're talking about when we keep calling him the personable,
that's from the trailer for Mario Bava's Black Sabbath. So
the announcers like, ooh, the chilling Boris Karloff, the personable
Mark Damon.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
You know, maybe Mark Damon is fine in this. I'm
not criticizing his work at all. It's more the sort
of role this is. I guess I don't find it
as personable as I would find like a Vincent Price
character or you know, a Peter Lourie character and so forth.
But and then also I'm wondering, if you have to

(26:22):
say the personable Mark Damon, how personable. Is this performer right?

Speaker 3 (26:26):
It makes it, It makes him seem less personable. It's
like introducing somebody by calling them trustworthy. Immediately you start
wondering should I trust them?

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah, but he is good in this I mean he's
he is the straight man in this story where he's
encountering like nothing but strange happenings and strange surroundings. So
he's our grounding, he's our he's the point at the
center of the dial. And so he's essential and it
is essential that you have, you know, a square jowed,
handsome young actor playing that role really, especially during this

(26:58):
time period.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
I agree, I think he does fine. I'm not trying
to slam him at all. I think he's good in
this role. He is somewhat upstaged by the more interesting performances,
especially of course by Vincent Price. But then I would
say also later in the film, upstage somewhat by the
performance of Murna Fay, he as Madeline Usher, who gets
weirder as the movie goes on.

Speaker 4 (27:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah. mRNA Fay, who lived nineteen thirty three through nineteen
seventy three, is the third build out of like four
actors in this picture, and she is quite good. She's
I think best remembered probably for this film role, as
well as various television works she did. She did a
lot of TV work in addition to a handful of
films like Disney Zoro. She was on that series. She

(27:42):
was on Father of the Bride in the early sixties.
But yeah, yeah, it's a good role that it first
maybe seems like a little subdued, and you might think
that she's not going to have much agency, but stick
with it because she does get she does get to
get some work in towards the end of the picture, it.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
Gets kind of I was reading a biography of her
somewhere online that mentioned she did an interview I think
it was in the year nineteen sixty, so the same
year as House of Usher, where she was sort of
complaining that she had been typecast in like moral upstanding roles.
You know, she was always, oh, you know, tisk tisk,
I am very good, I am very law abiding, and

(28:21):
she wanted to explore, you know, more complicated, maybe darker roles,
and well, I think she got her wish.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
She also apparently went on to be in an episode
of the TV anthology series Thriller hosted by Boris Karloff.
The episode is called Girl with the Secret, which is
about Her, which is about a character who has to
like keep a secret about her husband and is being
blackmailed by someone. I haven't seen this episode of the show,
but I pulled up like the IMDb listing for the episode,

(28:52):
and the screenshot from it is somebody driving a car
making this incredibly creepy grinning face. So now I'm tempted
to it up.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Yeah, yeah, I haven't watched a lot of Thriller, but
it's said to be a very good horror anthology series.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
I've seen at least one episode of Thriller. It was
an adaptation of the Roberty Howard story Pigeons from Hell,
which is like a ghost horror story.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Oh yeah, probably one of the rare non conan kin
adaptations of his work. All right, pretty much. The fourth
and final human in this picture is the Butler Bristol,
played by American actor and Atlanta native Harry Ellerby, who
lived nineteen oh one through nineteen ninety two. He worked

(29:37):
extensively in stage, screen and TV, with his screen and
TV credits going from the early nineteen thirties through the
early nineteen seventies, though I understand he remained active in
theater longer than that, especially in like local Atlanta theater.
His film credits include nineteen sixty threes, The Haunted Palace
and nineteen sixty six's Chamber of Horrors. He appeared in

(29:58):
an episode of the original Outer Limits as well. Okay,
and you know he's good in this He basically he's
the middleman. Though he's the butler in a haunted mansion,
so you kind of know what you're going to get.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yeah, it is his job to help carry the coffins
and boil the gruel.

Speaker 5 (30:14):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Oh, but we have a very interesting credit to share
regarding this picture. Now. I mentioned Night Gallery earlier in passing,
and it's appropriate because this movie features a number of
very creepy paintings that would look perfectly at home on
the walls of the Night Gallery. These paintings are credited

(30:38):
to Bert Schoenberg, who live nineteen thirty three through nineteen
seventy seven, American painter whose work could be described as
surrealist or psychedelic, and he was certainly celebrated during the
nineteen sixties, though he was also exploring the style in
the fifties and seventies as well. In fact, I've seen

(31:01):
some people argue that he was one of those artists
working in California at the time that was kind of
a precursor to the psychedelic art scene in nineteen sixties California.
You know. So ultimately, when you get into like surrealism
and strange art, there's plenty of stuff that seems ahead
of its time and kind of informs that era. I suppose.

(31:25):
So his work is, and you can look it up online.
It's Schoenberg s H O. N. B.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
E Erg.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
His work is dreamy and weird at times, invoking occult imagery. Again,
look it up because it's worth checking out. And certainly
you get to see it a lot in this movie.
It's not just an incidental detail. The paintings are important
plot points, and you really get to drink them in.

(31:50):
I think they really contribute to the great vibe of
this picture.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
Yeah, there's this is never made explicit, but there is
almost an Clyde a Picture of Dory and Gray kind
of concept at work, where there are these paintings of
the the you know, the patriarchs and matriarchs of the
of the Usher household, and when we start to learn
about their evils and their crimes, we see the paintings,
and the paintings appear almost kind of warped or melted,

(32:19):
as sort of altered in a way that reveals the
evil of the character lying underneath.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
You know, it's interesting to think about the use of
painted portraits in movies because it's often the case that
you'll find either either a portrait actually does its job
and you just buy it as being a portrait of
a character. Generally it looks like one of the actors
in the film, right, or it looks like the old
count or the old baron that will inevitably come back
to life and is you know, played by Christopher Lee

(32:45):
or something, so you know what they're supposed to look like.
But then in other pictures you can tell like the
portrait just does not pass the sniff test. You know,
you're like this, I'm not buying it. I'm not buying
this as an historic work of art. This picture dodges
those pitfalls and instead just goes for the utterly weird.

(33:07):
These pictures feel like, you know, drawing on the door,
the portrait drawing gray here. It's like they are like
snapshots of the corrupted soul. They seem like they are dark, wrong,
perhaps insane works.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah, absolutely, and they're not subtle. You know, It's not
like they look a little bit creepy. It's they are
oozing evil, demonic energy and just advertising the wickedness of
the people portrayed.

Speaker 5 (33:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
I was reading a bit more about these on the
excellent website Vincent Price Legacy dot UK, and the author
there points out that Schoenberg provided five portraits and two
additional paintings to this production, and again they certainly pull
their weight in delivering the film's vibe. Afterwards, two of
these paintings apparently went to Roger Corman and then were

(33:57):
subsequently stolen from his office. Another portrait was reportedly given
to Vincent Price himself, who was an avid art collector,
but according to the website Vincent Price Legacy, they whereabouts
of this painting are unknown and it was never listed
in the official estate documents concerning Price's extensive art collection,

(34:18):
so it's unknown what happened to it, Like, did it
you know, did he sell it? Is it lost? Is it?
I'm assuming at this point that all of these paintings
are like on the dark side of the moon somewhere,
you know, transported there through dark arcade magic.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Wow, that's a wild story. I'm almost tempted to doubt it,
but no, it's got to be true, right, These paintings
were made to disappear mysteriously.

Speaker 5 (34:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Now, to be clear, I'm not sure if all of
the Schoenberg paintings for this picture are missing, but at
least some of them are, which adds to the mystique.
But that website, Vincent Price Legacy also has some other
dish details about Schoenberg that were obtained from out there.
The Transcendent Life and Art of Bert Schoenberg by Spencer

(35:08):
Kanza and this is a book from twenty seventeen. The
author points out that Schoenberg was very much a part
of the occult and counterculture scene in LA at the time.
In the LA area, he partially owned the controversial weirdo
hippie coffee shop in Orange County that was known as
Cafe Frankenstein. Definitely look up a picture of Cafe Frankenstein

(35:31):
has this signature glass window piece like a stained glass
picture of Frankenstein's monster in the front, and this was
created by Schoenberg. He also had murals inside of the establishment,
and it was apparently kind of like a notorious hangout
for dangerous hippies, you know, like there's some art going
on there, there's some coffee drinking, maybe there's some other substances,

(35:53):
who knows, and the local squares were not amused. I
read one anecdote that they did not like that he
had the Frankstein's Monster art in the front of the establishment,
and when they pressured him, he was like, well, maybe
I should do one of Frankenstein's Monster crucified. Maybe that
would make everyone happy. So he was kind of a
provocateur as well.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
I'm so sad this place no longer exists. I would
want to go to California just to go here.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
I believe the stained glass piece still exists, though I
think that isn't someone's collection, But at any rate, Yeah,
he was apparently quite a character. At one point he
was in a relationship with artist, poet and occultist Marjorie Cameron,
who had previously been married to Jack Parsons. Oh yeah,
and Schoenberg also provided paintings for the nineteen sixty two

(36:42):
film The Premature Burial, and he served as art director
on fifty Eights The Brain Eaters in nineteen sixties Code
of Silence.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
Oh, we covered the brain Eaters is Let's see what
were all the weird things about that one? I think
it had Leonard Nimoy in a minor role and he
never got paid for it or something. And was it
maybe or maybe not based on a Robert Heinlend story.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, it might have been. I remember, this is one
that has a great poster that perhaps over sells the
rest of the picture. But it was a still fun,
fun one, still a fun episode to check out.

Speaker 5 (37:15):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
I was trying to think what was the hilarious character
from it, and it was Senator Walter k. Powers. You
remember Walter k Powers.

Speaker 4 (37:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
So anyway, we'll come back to these paintings because again
they are vital parts of the picture and they're great. Okay,
two more credits, just to run through really quickly before
we get to the main plot. But the cinematography is
by Floyd Crosby, who I can't remember if we talked
about him before, but he lived eighteen ninety nine through
nineteen eighty five. Academy Award winning cinematographer and father of

(37:48):
musician David Crosby. He worked on a number of Corman pictures,
including Attack of the Crab Monsters in nineteen fifty seven.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
You know, it never really analyzed the cinematography of Attack
of the Crab Monster, but you know, I love the movie.
That's got to be a part of it.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
And then finally, the music is by Les Baxter, who
lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety six. So he's
popped up on the show before because we have considered
other scores by the master of exotica music, and none
of these scores have been examples of exotica. Like if
you look, I do recommend if you're having like a
tropical drink and you want to have a nice, like

(38:26):
loungy vibe, you know, pull up some Less Baxter play
some of his exotica work. It's a great sound, but
we don't really get that sound as far as I know,
out of any of the scores he did. If you
know of a Less Baxter score that is actually an
exotica score, let me know about it, because I want
to dig into that picture.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
Can you imagine if House of Usher had exotica going
to Roderick Usher has got like a drink with a toothpick.
That's got three different kinds of fruit on it.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
I mean, on one hand, I want to say it
would be completely inappropriate, But on the other hand, like
a lot of Baxter's exotica work, it has this kind
of like a dark undertone. There's a sense of like
rumbling volcanoes, you know, and slow moving lava. So in
a way it might it might have lined up with
some of those sort of geologic sensibilities of House of Usher.

(39:20):
So I'm not sure. But again, this is not an
exotica score. This is more of just like a nineteen
fifty style orchestral score. But there are other example like,
for instance, Frogs from nineteen seventy two, which we talked
about in the show before, that one has a minimalist
electronic score from Les Baxter, and I think maybe arguably
it could have benefited from an exotica score as well.

(39:42):
I don't know. All right, well, why don't we go
ahead and just jump right into the plot of House
of Usher?

Speaker 3 (39:56):
As is often the case with Roger Korman movies. I
like the effect the credits, and there are not a
whole lot of credits to get to in this movie,
as we've already alluded to. I guess a shorter credit
sequence than usual. But the effect behind them is this
swirling mixing of clouds of colored mists. So you've got pink, green, violet, red,
and blue, seemingly timed with the appearance of different actors' names.

(40:20):
Like I'm not sure if there is any intended significance
that there's suddenly a blast of sprite canned green across
the picture when the name of the personable Mark Damon
splashes up, But that is what we get.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah, it's very colorful. It's a color picture. We might
as well enjoy the color.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
That's right, and it is something that we should appreciate
that at this time making this kind of movie, it
was still a question like would you pony up for
the to make this movie in color or would you
just shoot it in black and white? You know, today
that's not really much of a I mean, some films
are still made in black and white, but for the
most part, it's just assumed, Yeah, you're making a movie,

(40:58):
you will make it in color. In nineteen sixty making
a movie of this sword, it was like a toss up,
you know, you could go either way. It was a
different type of investment.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah, yeah, and you could have made a strong case,
you know, gothic car gloomy setting. Maybe that does need
to be in black and white. So I don't know.
Maybe they did feel like they needed to prove themselves
a little bit with the title sequence.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
So after the credits, the action opens on a barren
landscape of brown and gray swampland you've got mud, fog,
matted tufts of dead grass, withered tree limbs without a
single leaf. All of the dead plants are also wrapped
in these brittle, dead vines. So the land is it
appears totally strangled, just death upon death. And then a

(41:43):
character enters the picture. It is Mark Damon, playing the
character of Philip Winthrop, and he is on horseback in
a heavy purple riding cloak and a tall top hat.
He makes his way through the swamp on horseback along
a sodden dirt path to reach his ultimate destiny nation,
the titular House of Usher, which is shown to us

(42:04):
as a dark, decrepit mansion with curtains drawn across the windows,
no light emanating from it, and mist surrounding the foundation
like a white blanket.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Oh and this just looks tremendous. I can't drive home enough,
just how incredible this house looks. It is like a
it is, yes, it is a great, big, old Gothic
hulk of a mansion, but it also looks kind of
like just a decaying whale carcass, you know, just you know,
a heap of excess in ruin that is literally poisoning

(42:38):
the surrounding landscape is on the verge of falling into
hell itself. Like this is like wealth and over indulgence
dragged across the centuries, you know, pulling souls down into
darkness with it.

Speaker 4 (42:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
So Winthrop approaches this, this whale carcass, the mansion, passing
through a broken stone gate, and he goes in between
these black, twisted, almost melted looking trees. And I actually
read a production note that somewhere in here the designers
used some trees that had partially burned in a recent
California wildfire when the film was made. I don't know

(43:14):
if it's in this shot, but if it were, that
would make sense.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Yeah. Yeah, I recently was in California. We did a
lot of driving through the countryside. We saw a number
of these sorts of trees, and this, well, not a
landscape like the fall of the House of Usher, but
trees landscapes that had these sorts of trees in them,
and yeah, you can certainly lean into a haunted interpretation
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
So Philip comes to the front door, which is wreathed
in cobwebs, and he wraps with the giant bronze knocker.
The door is answered by a gray haired servant in
a black coat, and he's got a sad, apprehensive face
framed by these silver sideburns. Philip introduces himself to the
servant as Madeline Usher's fiance and asks to see her,

(43:59):
but the butler, whose name is Bristol, tells him that
she is confined to her bed because she is taken ill.
So Bristol tries to deny Philip entry, saying that Madeleine's
brother Roderick, has forbidden any visitors, but Philip is very pushy.
He won't take no for an answer, so Bristol leads
him inside.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
And already we are seeing some red candles. This film
is all about the red candles. Only red candles in
the House of Usher, that's right.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
So yeah, the interior of the house is a little
more inviting than the outside, but there's still some threatening energy.
One thing that this is not really a complaint about
the movie. It's rather just sort of a fact about
how movies are made, especially at this time, based on
things the characters say. I think we're supposed to understand

(44:47):
that it is always kept very dark inside the Usher mansion.
Even candlelight is weak and scarce, but it doesn't really
look that way like for the audience looking at the sets,
everything is usually quite brightly lit. There may just be
no way around that. It's kind of like suspending your
disbelief for a play. You know that this is really
taking place in a room, even though you're looking up

(45:09):
at a stage. But this does raise an interesting ongoing
problem even in movies today, with the art of visual storytelling,
how do you convincingly show that a scene is dark
but also allow the audience to see what's happening. It's
kind of an oxymoron, but it's a thing different filmmakers
have tried to tackle in different ways. Sometimes they just brightly,

(45:32):
you know, they just brightly light it anyway and then
ask you to suspend your disbelief. Other Times the scene
is actually dark and that contributes to a kind of
emotional or atmospheric effect, but it can create frustrations when
trying to follow the drama.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, there was a time or two watching this film
where they were talking about how dark the room was,
and I was like, well, even I can really make
out everything. Maybe the lighting is off on my phone
or something.

Speaker 5 (45:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
I think this is still just a tension that visual
storytellers struggle with even until today. You know, I remember
people talking about stuff in the the last season of
Game of Thrones, you know, apart from any like writing
issues about that, but questions about certain scenes and episodes
that were like very very dimly lit and dark scenes,
and even that does highlight, Like, yeah, you can do that,

(46:20):
and that can be good in some ways. It can
create an intended atmospheric effect. It can make you feel
a certain way, but then you're going to have a
lot of viewers complaining that they can't tell what's going on,
or they can't follow what's what's supposed to be happening
in a scene.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
I've also read I'm I can't one percent match my
experience up with this, but I've I've observed some conversations
about how really dark scenes in movies, especially modern movies,
perhaps don't play as well on streaming platforms versus physical media,
you know, And I'm not enough of a tech head

(46:55):
on all of that to really weigh in, but if
listeners out there have any feedback on that, I'd love
to I love to hear from you. I mean, I'm
kind of like all in on any argument for physical
media over depending entirely on streamers. So when it comes
to films.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
Or I would wonder also just about watching things on
home video versus in the movie theater, the movie theater
might be a case where more dimly lit scenes come
across better.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
I don't know, Yeah, that's the in theater propaganda is
really big on telling me that the darks are darker,
and you know, having watched Son of Frankenstein on the
big screen, I mean those those really those dark shadows
are really luscious up there, so I kind of buy
into it.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Anyway, That's not what's going on in House of Usher.
Everything is very well lit here. But so we come
inside and yes, we do have these these red candles everywhere,
cherry red candles. And I like this little moment where
Bristol the butler asks Philip to take off his boots
and he's like, what for and he just says, you know,
mister Roderick will explain, and Bristol disappears mysteriously for a

(47:56):
moment here, but then reappears with slippers for him.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, some real culture show being asked to take your
shoes off in this shoes off household here, which I
really I really appreciated this because I prior to watching
the film, I've been meeting up with some family and
it was clearly like a mix of shoes on households
and shoes off households. Meeting in a rental home, you know,

(48:18):
where you're like, what, why are people in the kitchen
with their shoes on? What's happening? And you know it
just they're different approaches.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Wait, if you're comfortable sharing, which way are you? I
don't even know? Do you all take shoes off in
the house?

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Were shoes off households?

Speaker 3 (48:30):
Okay?

Speaker 4 (48:31):
Cool?

Speaker 2 (48:31):
But you know I mean if someone comes and I
forget to say, hey, you can take your shoes off
and they're wearing their shoes, I'm not going to freak out.
It's like, that's on me because I didn't give you
a heads up. Also, as comedian Shang Wang points out,
there are certain circumstances where you may have to like
run through the house with the shoes on to do something,
you know, like turn the alarm system off or something

(48:52):
I don't know. There are circumstances that the demands you
keep them on.

Speaker 3 (48:59):
Well, what is totally commonplace in some cultures and some
families is treated as quite strange here. This is not
something that Philip Winthrop is used to. But yeah, we're
told that Roderick will explain. So Philip is led up
the grand staircase. So he goes along this carved banister
and hand rail past these tapestries again the cherry red candles,

(49:19):
to an upper hallway and eventually to Roderick's room and ooh,
there's a very good boo scare right at the first
time we meet Vincent Price. So Bristol goes to knock
on the bedroom door, but before his knuckles can touch
the wood, the door swings inward and into the doorway
bursts Roderick. It is a fierce looking, clean shaven Vincent

(49:40):
Price with platinum blonde hair, wearing a red velvet jacket
and a black tie.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Yeah, seeming to tower over him as well. Here.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
Yes, Price does come off as very physically large in
this movie, and I think that'll be interesting to talk
about maybe later when we I don't talk about the
weird contrasting aspects of his physical presence and whether or
not he should be taken as threatening.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Yeah, because he seems physically imposing that we've learned that
he's actually quite fragile.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
Yeah, we'll get to that soon. So Roderick is initially
furious that Bristol has admitted a visitor. He's furious but
soft spoken, so he's like, how dare you? But in
a library voice, and Philip explains that he insisted he
believed he had the right. So Roderick brings Philip into
his room to discuss, and in here Philip starts talking,

(50:36):
but before he can even finish a sentence, Roderick winces,
covering his ears and saying, mister Winthrop, if you please,
an affliction of the hearing sounds of any exaggerated degree
cut into my brain like knives. So you have to
be you have to use your inside voice when speaking
to Roderick. He cannot stand a raised voice. It causes

(50:58):
him such pain. So Roderick goes to rest in a
high back chair and Philip begins to explain what's going on.
He says that he must be allowed to see Madeline
since they are engaged to be married. Roderick seems disturbed
by this news and tells him that it's impossible. Madeleine
is confined to her bed and their engagement has to

(51:20):
be called off. It was he should think of it
just as an unfortunate mistake, and Philip must leave the
estate at once. He says, it is not a healthy
place for you to be. Philip, of course, does not
accept this, and it would be a strange thing if
he just conformed. He's like, no, I don't understand why
you're saying this, and he says he's not going to

(51:40):
leave without seeing Madeline. Multiple times in this argument, again
Philip raises his voice and whenever he gets louder, Price
closes his eyes and grits his teeth in pain. So
he reacts every time. But while they're going back and forth,
their dispute is cut short when Madeleine herself appears in
the doorway of Roderick's and again this is mRNA Fahe now,

(52:03):
she's obviously very happy to see Philip and flattered that
he made the journey here. To the mansion, but there
is some kind of cloud hanging over their reunion, somewhat literally,
in the form of Roderick himself, who cuts it short
to escort Madeleine back to her room, explaining that she
must go back to bed.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Yes, this is another film where people are sent to
bed a very strict bedtime schedule here in House of USh.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
Yeah, so they go and Philip is left alone in
Roderick's room, and here is where we see one of
the first of the Bert Schoenberg paintings, not of a
person in this case, but of the house itself in
a wild impressionistic style. I was trying to think of
a way to describe this. This is a great painting.

(52:52):
It looks so it's so colorful and almost happy in
the way the colors are jumbled, but also does look
quite evil. It's like a cross between a haunted mansion,
a monet painting of a big pile of Halloween candies,
and also sort of a boss from Legend of Zelda
Ocarina of Time.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Yeah, it's pretty fabulous again, very strong night Gallery vibes.
You know, I can basically hear the theme music in
my head. You know, it looks like a like a
decaying mansion made out of meat, with like an eye
opening in the center of it.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
It's tremendous, the eye in the center. That's what I'm
reacting to with the Zelda comparison. It looks like the
first boss you fight in Okarina of Time. That thing
in the tree. Anyway, While Philip is looking at the
painting waiting for Roderick to return, the fireplace suddenly spits
a bunch of cinders onto his legs, and this will
be the first of many attempts by the house to

(53:48):
murder the characters, but he just kind of brushes it off.
Roderick comes back and asks with concern what happened, but
Philip is not worried about it. He's just like, I
think your fireplace needs a screen, and Price says, does it.
After this, they pick up the conversation sort of where
they left off. We learn that Roderick is a man

(54:10):
of the arts. He paints. The painted work we were
just talking about is his own, and Roderick also plays
the lute. But here the conversation gets weirder. Roderick wants
to know if Philip really intends to marry Madeleine, if
Philip says, of course he does, and Roderick says, do
you intend to have children? And Philip says, god willing?

(54:33):
Then Roderick gasps with despair, and he says god willing.
He explains that this would be a nightmare and it
cannot happen. Why, well, here we get one of Vincent
Price's many lovely tortured monologues. So I just want to
read from part of what he says here with some abridgements.
Price says, because the usher line is tainted, you saw Madeleine,

(54:56):
and you see me, we are dying, mister Winthrop. As
you saw her today, she is and will remain, which,
by the way, again, in suspension of disbelief, I will say,
nothing looked all that unhealthy about Madeline. Like she looked fine.
But we are by the way the characters talk, we're
supposed to understand that when we saw her in the
previous scene, she looks sickly and like like she is

(55:19):
about to die.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
But really she just looks like she still has her
night down on, yeah, and has had time to put
on all her makeup.

Speaker 4 (55:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
So Madeleine is supposed to look sick in the same
way that these brightly. Rooms are supposed to look dark. Yeah,
but anyway, price continues. Believe me, sir, I bear you
no malice were things otherwise I should welcome you into
our family joyously. But under the circumstances it is quite impossible.
And then a little later he says, Madeleine and I

(55:48):
are like figures of fine glass. The slightest touch and
we may shatter. Both of us suffer from a morbid
acuteness of the senses. Mine is the worse for having
existed the longer, but both of us are afflicted with it.
Any sort of food more exotic than the most pallid
mash is unendurable to my taste buds. Any sort of

(56:10):
garment other than the softest is agony to my flesh.
My eyes are tormented by all but the faintest illumination.
Odors assail me constantly, and as I've said, sounds of
any degree whatsoever inspire me with terror. And then Philip reasons, ah,
that's why your servant asked me to remove my boots,

(56:32):
and Roderick says yes. And even so I could hear
your coming, every footstep, every rustle of your clothes. I
could hear your horse approaching. Hear the clatter of its
hoofs across the courtyard. Your knock, the grating of the
door bolt was like a sword stroke to my ears.
I can hear the scratch of rat claws within the
stone wall. Mister Winthrop, three quarters of my family have

(56:56):
fallen into madness, and in their madness have acquired a
super human strength, so that it took the power of
many to subdue them. Oh excellent, and I love this
for many reasons. First of all, the eventsid Price's delivery
in the scene is great, but I also thought it
was really interesting the relationship between the supposedly afflicted characters

(57:18):
and the senses. I think a lot of times characters
in horror stories like this who seem to be suffering
from some kind of vague affliction are presented in the
opposite way. They're presented as insensate or unconscious, kind of
detached from reality. The ushers instead are hyper sensitive to

(57:38):
all stimuliz sound, light, and taste, and they are thus
more present and more vulnerable to every little bit of life.
And there's also an interesting relationship of this to their
cursed super strength. And warning there will be spoilers ahead,
so if you want to see this movie without things spoiled,

(58:00):
you know, go ahead and watch it for yourself. But uh,
a spoiler's incoming. Later in the film, when Madeline does
finally succumb to the Usher madness, we see that she's
able to break metal chains and she kind of becomes
a goth hulk.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
Yeah. It's it is like they're the multi generational evil
of the Usher family has reached terminal velocity, and you
can tap into that velocity if you want to, if
you have the willpower, I guess.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
Yeah. So it's like, at the same time that they
are dying and incredibly fragile, they're also becoming Superman. They're
gain they're gaining all of Superman's sensory powers, like his
superheroing and everything, and they're gaining Superman's strength.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
So Winthrop of course reacts to this with extreme skepticism.

Speaker 5 (58:45):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
And then he's like, it is so dark in here, Roderic,
can you light a candle? And so Roderick goes and
lights two red candles on the mantle above the fireplace,
and then he says, two pale drops of fire guttering
in the vast, consuming darkness. My sister and myself. Shortly
they will burn no more.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
I think this may have been the scene where I
thought to myself, I can see every corner of this room.
I think you're over reacting, Roderick, but you know, he
kind of is a lot of the time.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
But so here the sort of the central dispute between
the characters is established. Roderick says, hey, our family line
is cursed. Madeleine and I are suffering from a physical
and mental decomposition as a result of this curse. And
Madeleine cannot be allowed to leave this house, cannot have children,
or she will pass the curse along to them and

(59:35):
the evil will continue. Philip, on the other hand, does
not believe in the idea of this curse. He's dismissive
of the whole thing and says, if Madeleine still wishes
to marry him and wishes to have children, they will
do so and they will leave the house together.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
This is something that Philip does bring up. It is
the fact that he does already know her. Yes, it's
you know, like they have a relationship already they you know.
It's like it's just that now he is on Roderick's turf,
and here he has come to meet her family and
is therefore encountering different dynamics.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
I do think that's actually very interesting because this is
an exaggerated horror version of a real dynamic, which is that,
you know, people often act different when they're around their family.
You can meet a person in one setting, and then
when you go to meet their family, they just change
a little bit. They act a little bit different. I
think a lot of people have probably experienced this with

(01:00:34):
like the family of a significant other, you know, with
their in laws or whatever. Of course, this takes that
to monstrous dimensions.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Yes, but but yeah, it does plan on some real dynamics.
I think, you know, like even in my own life,
you know, I recognize that, Yeah, you know, I love
my family, But if I'm visiting with them more than
a couple of days, I feel myself falling back into
a former self. You know. I feel like I can
only main pin who I am outside of that dynamic

(01:01:03):
for like a day or so, and then I begin
to slip into this former self, and you know, I
just observing the way that I change or regress when
I am in this environment.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Yeah, I think it's a really common experience. But so
Philip here he says, I'm going to stay at the
house until Madeline is well enough to leave. And Roderick
is like, you know, okay, but now now that you know,
whatever consequences fall upon you here, that's not my responsibility.
That's on you, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
And he's gonna have some time to kill in the
House of Usher here. He's gonna start pointing out some
problems with the foundation and so forth. And I couldn't help,
but think, wouldn't it be an interesting read on this
if Philip was a real fixer upper, you know, like
a handyman type, and he was like, let me get it, Roderck,
let me go over to the home depot. I'm going
to pick up a few things. I can spackle this

(01:01:56):
crack up. We'll get shoup and running a noe time
now pards the lab and Roderick would be like, you
can try, but this home is beyond repair because of
the curves.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Oh you know what Roderick is. He's like Homer Simpson
in that episode where it's like, you know, the problem
was water damage. A simple five cent washer will get out.
So anyway, one of the weird things. The first time
I was watching this, I was confused about I thought
Philip arrived late at night, but I think he's supposed

(01:02:29):
to have arrived earlier in the day, because we see
like time pass and then it's like later in the
evening and Philip is alone in his guest room getting
ready to go down for supper, and here we see
the first of the Poltergeistye stuff, Like he's got a
chamber stick that's like a little candle holder with a
dish on the bottom, you know, He's got that sitting

(01:02:49):
on a table, and it starts to scoot across the
surface of the table by itself. Now, when I first
saw this, I was like, ah, okay, so there are
definitely ghosts here. But then Philip hears a rumbling sound
and he goes to look out his window and sees
there is a giant crack running up from the foundation
up the side of the house. Part of the frame

(01:03:09):
of the house seems to be shifting, so maybe that's
what made the candle inside move. Maybe it wasn't a ghost,
And we get some nice creepy close ups of the
crack running along the length of the exterior wall. It's
just drooling cobwebs and dust.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Yeah, this house is not up to cut. We are learning.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
Yeah. Oh, as Philip is coming down for supper, he
nearly gets squashed by a falling chandelier, you know, just
misses him. He dodges out of the way, and Madeline
comes out and sees this, and she begs him to

(01:03:49):
leave the house for his own safety. But he's like, no,
it's fine. It's just an old, creaky chandelier. Everything's okay.
So they have dinner and they're sitting at the strange
dinner table. Apparently again the ushers can only eat unseasoned
mash and white bread. But Roderick does appear to have
a taste for wine served in nearly opaque blood red goblets.

(01:04:11):
I guess maybe wine is not too exotic a flavor.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
No, no, you know, especially if you're just having potatoes
and molasses for dinner and you can handle slightly spicy wine.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
Yeah. Philip notices that Madeline is not eating at all.
He's also like, hey, Roderick, are you going to get
that crack in the wall fixed? What you're talking about?
And I do not think Roderick is planning on it.
Other topics of conversation at dinner are that the soil
around the mansion is turned sour. No plants will grow
in the usherlands. And then also that friends in Boston

(01:04:44):
keep asking about Madeline, and she seems encouraged by this,
but Roderick looks irritated at the delivery of this news.
So after supper, Philip and Madeline they go up to
the sitting room I guess with Roderick, and they listen
to him giving a little concert. He places loot. Remember
the lute from earlier. Roderick says, yes, I play the lute,
but I don't know listening in this scene, does he

(01:05:06):
play it Either sounds like he is just now learning
and kind of improvising, or he is so advanced as
a lute player that now he is only interested in
like non rhythmic twelve tone compositions.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
At the very least, it's it's you know, he can
only handle these very soft sounds. He gentle music. So yeah,
maybe it's he's into some sort of like weird or
deep ambient kind of a thing. Or or yeah, it's
like I don't need to learn to play this lute
all that much because this is about all I can
handle anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
Yeah, I am I am cursed. It is forbidden for
me to play in a key, so I shall only
pluck the notes at random, and then Philip says, remarkable,
you composed it yourself. But Philip kind of like he
can't get enough of the twelve tone lute. He's like,
give me another, let's hear song. But Roderick insists with

(01:06:02):
a severe expression, that now Madeleine must go to sleep.
In fact, all three of them must go to sleep.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
It is nice seven point thirty p m. All to bed.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
So there's another scene later that night where Philip sneaks
into Madeleine's room to talk with her in secret. He
tells her that in the morning he wants to take
her away from the house if she'll let him. What
is Madeleine's state of mind again, She seems conflicted, Like
she she does buy into the idea that she is
sick from a curse and terrible things could befall them

(01:06:36):
if she were to leave, But also you can tell
that she wants to leave. She's excited by the idea,
and something kind of comes alive within her at the
idea of escaping with the man she loves. So she's
sort of in the middle position between the two other characters.
Roderick is fully convinced of the Usher curse, Philip doesn't
believe it at all, and Madeleine is torn in between

(01:06:58):
the two ideas. But this scene takes an interesting turn
because Roderick suddenly appears at the door. Remember he's got
super sensitive hearing, so he hears anytime someone is talking
in the house. He's stern and angry at first, and
tries to send Philip to bed, but after Madeleine shows
a bit of defiance, shows that maybe the spell is

(01:07:20):
breaking and she might want to leave the house with Philip,
Roderick then changes tack, and he sort of turns and
becomes pathetic and pitiable, which I think you could interpret
multiple ways. As I've said, this movie and Price's performance
and contain a lot of ambiguities that you could read
in different directions. But I think you could certainly interpret

(01:07:43):
this as a kind of emotional manipulation. If he can't
convince her that she has to stay for her own wellbeing,
you know something bad will happen to her if she leaves.
I guess something bad is going to happen to her anyway,
Maybe he can at least recruit her to stay on
behalf of his feelings and his well being.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's important to note that this
is a film where you just had it on the background.
You could think of it as just like, okay, here's
Vincent Price and Vincent Price role. But there are a
lot of little nuances to the way he plays all
of these decisions and all of these actions from his character.
I feel like any prime Vincent Price performance is going

(01:08:24):
to be, you know, a masterclass in its own way.
You know, sometimes he's more hamming it up. Sometimes there
are more subtleties, but he's never just going through the motions.
So certainly at this period in his career. Yeah, by
the time we get to them up at show, you know,
maybe but not here.

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
So later that night and yes, still the same twenty
four hour period, the scenes just keep piling up. Before daybreak,
Philip is lying in bed and then he hears a
bunch of weird sounds echoing through the house. So he
runs around, investigating the sounds and looking for Madeline. He
sees some creepy sits along the way, like wind blowing
in through the windows. There's a staircase railing that gives

(01:09:05):
way under his hand, there's a heavy door creaking open
and shut over and over, and Philip eventually follows the
sounds into the mansion's chapel. There's a chapel inside the
house where he finds Madeline sprawled out I believe, on
the altar, asleep, and Bristol, the butler, comes in to
tell him that Madeleine often sleep walks and ends up

(01:09:27):
here in the chapel. Bristol says that she is obsessed
by thoughts of death and has been ever since her
return from Boston. So Bristol takes Madeline back to her bed,
and then the next morning there's a scene where Philip
comes into the kitchen. Bristol is here again, and now
he's boiling a huge cauldron of gruel over and open fire.

(01:09:50):
And I'm looking at that. I'm thinking, I don't know
how many gallons of ruel that is, but who is
going to eat all that gruel? There are four people
in this house.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
Well, freeesome for later, you know, you give me want leftovers.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
So Philip says he's gonna take breakfast up to up
to Madeline in bed. He's like, hey, how about some
eggs for my Madeline? And Bristol is like, oh no, no, no, sir,
not eggs much too threatening to the taste buds. She
will only want gruel. Eggs are one of the exotic flavors.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Eggs are too spicy for the ushers.

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
Yes, so gruel it is. We also get more, like
more of the crumbling house attacks, like at one point,
Philip is standing by the gruel cauldron talking to Bristol
and the cauldron like the wall is sort of shaking
and the cauldron swings toward him, but Bristol is like,
oh careful, sir.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
Well, I mean, if your gruel is pretty thick, you're
gonna get some bubbles and you could get splattered. I mean,
that's just that's just gruel one on one.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
Yeah. So after this, there's a very funny scene where
Winthrop awkwardly tries to feed Madeline gruel in bed. He's like,
come on, eat up, honey. She's not angry, not even
for gruel, and he tries to cheer her up by
opening the windows and letting sunshine in. Tries to convince
her once again to come back to Boston with him,
but in this scene she seems to have regressed to

(01:11:13):
her original state of hopelessness. She tells him soon I
shall be dead, and he obviously does not like hearing this.
He tries to remind her of how happy and full
of life she was in Boston, but she says, maybe
you'll understand once you see see what. Well, it's time
to go investigate the family crypt here. We're going to

(01:11:34):
get another kind of partial explanation of what is going on.
So underneath the mansion there is a subterranean crypt full
of bones of all of Madeline and Roderick Usher's ancestors.
She shows Philip the coffins one by one, going down
the line and listing their names and saying their relationship
to her, until finally she gets to the spot of

(01:11:57):
her own coffin, which is empty and waiting for her.
And Philip hates this. He's like, there's a coffin here
with your name on it. This is monstrous. She says,
it waits for me. And as a side note, I
think the crypt set here is nice. By the way
the characters talk about how there's something wrong with the
air in the crypt. They never fully explain that, but

(01:12:18):
I like that just as a little like detail that
kind of excites the mind, like, oh, could there be
something in the air that's causing a problem. Or are
they just saying like it is evil in here Mmm?

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
Yeah, yeah, who knows what's like leaking up through the
earth into this mansion, though it also also seems like
there's a lot of evil leaking out of this mansion
into the earth.

Speaker 3 (01:12:38):
Yeah, exactly. So, once again, Madeleine says to Philip that
he just doesn't understand. And there is something I think
very effectively unsettling about this repeated theme that multiple times
characters tell Philip that there's something wrong but he doesn't understand,
and then they don't explain it immediately, like you know,
I'm soon to die. This coffin waits for me, and

(01:13:00):
he's like, why would you say that you can live?
And she can't explain. All she can do is tell
him that he doesn't understand. I think the idea that
there is some understanding that would make sense of this
all but it can't be explained to him or can't
be explained yet, is very creepy.

Speaker 5 (01:13:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
Yeah, And I feel like Matheson in the script here
is really, you know, touching on the actual gap that
often exists between my experience and your experience, between my
mental state and your mental state, and it can feel
like there's something that can't be bridged there, you know,
at least not with the tools that one has immediately

(01:13:38):
at their disposal.

Speaker 5 (01:13:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:40):
Yeah, Oh. In the scene we get another house attack.
There's a coffin scare, like a coffin falls out of
the wall, nearly crushes the two of them, but they
dodge out of the way, and then Madeline faints once again,
and Roderick arrives and carries her away. So in the
next scene we finally are going to get some explanation.

(01:14:00):
Roderick says it is time for Philip to understand. So
they go out on the balcony overlooking the twisted marsh below,
and Roderick says, the tarn is very deep. One of
the Usher women drowned herself in it. She was never found.
I dare say, it's deep enough to swallow this house entire.
And then there's another little exchange, but Usher goes on

(01:14:22):
to I again want to quote his monologue here because
I think it's great. Roderick says, once this land was fertile,
farms abounded, earth yielded her riches. At harvest time, there
were trees and plant life, flowers, fields of grain. There
was great beauty here at that time. This water was
clear and fresh. Swans glided upon its crystal surface. Animals

(01:14:46):
came to its bank trustingly to drink. But this was
long before my time. And then something crept across the
land and blighted it. The trees lost their foliage, the
flowers languished, and shrubs grew brown and shriveled. The grain
fields perished, the lakes and ponds became black and stagnant,

(01:15:07):
and the land withered as before a plague, a plague
of evil. And here Roderick takes Philip inside to show
him the paintings, the paintings that we alluded to earlier,
of the portraits of his ancestors. So we go through
them one by one and we see each painting, and
then Roderick names his relative and then begins to list

(01:15:30):
sort of the high points of each relative's biography, which
are mostly negative epithets and lists of crimes. So it
turns out all of the Usher ancestors were horrible. They
were thieves, swindlers, betrayers, blackmailers, liars, exploiters, slave traders, murderers,

(01:15:51):
and assassins.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
Yeah, this Rundown reminds me a lot of the card
game Gloom. I don't know if you're familiar with with
this one. It has kind of like an Edward Gory
kind of vibe to it, where you're trying to like
play the most cursed upper crust family.

Speaker 3 (01:16:08):
I'm alware of it, but I've never played it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
It's pretty fun, as Zarich, it's been a number of years,
but it has this kind of vibe like who can
out usher the other player.

Speaker 3 (01:16:17):
Who has the most evil ancestor?

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
But oh yeah, this tour of the worst of the
worst in the Usher family is tremendous, and we have illustrations.
Of course, we have those wonderful, dark, grotesque portraits of
each individual, each one not as much a photorealistic image
of the individual, but like a psychic portrait of their soul.

Speaker 3 (01:16:39):
Yeah. So I included some screenshots of these paintings here
in the outline for you to look at. Robie, do
you want to comment on any individually. I think this
first one mentioned Anthony Usher, is interesting because it is
h This is supposed to be like an evil old man,
but this face looks almost childlike in a way, except
the face rendered with these sort of jigsaw puzzle lines

(01:17:03):
running through it. But it's you know, pictured with these
like large eyes with large dilated pupils, cannoting a kind
of I don't even know how to explain it. It's
it looks like a kind of evil innocence.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. It's it's hard to
really put it in words. Yeah, but those those eyes
are wide and curious and kind of innocent. But the
rest is almost decade and patchwork.

Speaker 3 (01:17:29):
There's another one that shows a man who whose eyes
are hidden in shadow, but it's like his outline is
sort of sort of shifting through the air so that
he actually does not have a fixed outline at the
back of his neck and his head. Instead, there are
like these multiple lines that just blur out into this

(01:17:50):
cloud of red, as if he is taking form out
of a mist of blood.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):
Yeah, this one has a has strong vampiric elements to it,
like get a sense of like biological disorder, like inner
disease or disease of the soul. And you know, virtually
no eyes, just dark pits as well, so less innocence
with this particular character.

Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
Yeah. And then we also see probably the most infernal
looking boat Captain picture I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
Oh yes, oh my goodness, the boat Captain was like
just the burning ember eyes. Yeah, like he this is
the guy who volunteers to bring Dragula to England. Like
this is He's like, yeah, bloawed him up.

Speaker 3 (01:18:33):
But so the point is that going back through time
before Roderick and Madeleine, everyone in the Usher line seems
to have been, in one way or another, the worst
kind of person imaginable, someone who becomes rich by destroying
the lives of others and then, at least in terms
of the external world, gets away with it. But do

(01:18:54):
they really get away with it because a lot of
these people were told end ups. It's something bad does
happen to them. But it's not like they face justice
from outside. It's like they go mad or they're taken
ill or something.

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
Yeah. Yeah, like they don't. They don't get their come
uppance in a real firm manner like they in the
sense that they they stay rich, they stay highly successful
in their own deplorable fields, and then the rest of
our world, the world just kind of looks on is like, well, yeah,
of course the Ushers got away with it. Again, that's
what they do. And here we are.

Speaker 3 (01:19:29):
So Philip protests. He is like, but sir, you cannot
believe that the sins of the father should be visited
upon the children. And Roderick says you do not, sir.
Then the House of Usher seems to you normal. And
then Philip says it is neither normal nor abnormal. It
is only a house. And I think this plays on

(01:19:49):
another interesting theme in the movie, that the duality the
different meanings of the word house in English. So it
is the house of Usher that we're told is evil
and cur and house can mean the literal building, an
ancestral family dwelling which seems infused with wickedness and crumbles
kind of pointedly with the intent to cause harm. But

(01:20:11):
also the word house is used to refer to a
lineage a family, usually an aristocratic or royal one, as
in the House of Windsor. It's kind of interesting that
you only use the word house to refer to a
family if it's like a prominent, rich family. And adding
to that, there's this kind of overlap with the idea
of the curse here in the two meanings of house,

(01:20:31):
because if the idea is that the ancestors of the
Usher line became rich by way of their sins. It
is their wickedness that generated the money to buy the
land and build the physical house, which are the physical
things that are now cursed. So the reason they have
a mansion and a vast estate is because of the

(01:20:53):
evil crimes of the past.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
Yeah, all of these things that were purchased and acquired
via that wealth is tainted by the acts that generated it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:04):
So Roderick explains his theory that evil is not just
a word, it is a substance, a living reality, and
like any living thing, it can be created and was
created by his ancestors. And now the evil they created
lives on within the house. Again, the ambiguity, he says
house so is that the building or the living descendants

(01:21:25):
or both, and it will live on as long as
the house still exists, which is why Roderick insists that
neither he nor Madeleine should ever have children. It would
be to allow the evil to live on for another generation.
So Roderick says explicitly that all of the near fatal
accidents that have occurred since Philip arrived were not accidents.

(01:21:47):
It is the evil of the house lashing out trying
to kill Philip and Philip violently rejects this. He says, no, Roderick,
the evil in this house is you. I will not
let your sick can fantasies destroy Madeleine's life. She leaves
with me today. And when he yells price again, he
shows the fragility. He clutches his ears and he shrinks

(01:22:08):
in pain.

Speaker 2 (01:22:10):
You know, this is a common response in films when
there's a new theory regarding the nature of evil. It
reminds me a little bit of the nineteen seventy three
British horror film The Creeping Flesh, which is not one
of my favorites. It's a little I don't know. I
don't like the mouth feel of this particular one, but
it has Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in it, and

(01:22:31):
one of the characters. At one point it's like I
have made a breakthrough in the nature of evil. Evil
is real and we can put it under a microscope
and study it. Look look at the evil, and you
know it's always a controversial hypothesis.

Speaker 3 (01:22:51):
Now regarding the evil is you interpretation of the story
referring to Roderick here, one thing I think worth mentioning
is that it is never are made explicit in the movie,
but there is sort of an unspoken theme that a
lot of viewers have picked up on in like film
critics literary critics talking about the story over the years.
It could be implied that Roderick is acting in a

(01:23:15):
way out of jealousy, that in fact, he has desire
for his own sister and he wants to control her
and keep her at the house because he can't stand
the thought of her going away and marrying Philip. I
think that's a plausible reading of the evil as you
interpretation of the story, though the evil is you could
also be true about Roderick and simply be that he's

(01:23:37):
so wrapped up in his delusions about the physical manifestation
of evil caused by the horrible ancestors that he unknowingly
projects this delusion onto Madeline and unnecessarily warps her mind
and ruins her life as well. But then another interpretation
is that the external evil is real and Roderick is correct.
And I think the interesting thing is that it's possible

(01:24:00):
to take the movie on any of these interpretations.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):
Yeah, though I think the middle is the more. It's
the one I lean more towards. I think it's the
more interesting of the concepts, you know, because if it's
just him, you know, creeping on her and having designs
for her, I don't know that's you know, that's gross
and all, but it's not matter. It only gets me
so far. And then like the actual physical reality of

(01:24:26):
evil too. I mean that, you know, definitely gets into
a nice supernatural zone. But it's that that middle area,
that idea that it's just like sheer projection of paranoia
and and and shame and uh and so forth from Roderic,
Like just this is the sheer power of his dark thoughts,

(01:24:47):
you know, uh, in a non supernatural way. Like I
feel like that's very compelling.

Speaker 3 (01:24:51):
I agree, that is also my preferred interpretation. But I
thought it was worth mentioning the three different ways because
I've seen sort of u people writing about this movie
that take it all three.

Speaker 2 (01:25:02):
Yeah, And I do like that ambiguity in a film,
you know, where you're open to your own interpretation.

Speaker 3 (01:25:08):
Anyway, After this confrontation between Philip and Roderick, Philip goes
to Madeleine's room and makes one last bid to convince
her remember she's been vacillating. She'll say like, yeah, okay,
let's go and then like, no, no, I'm cursed. I
have to stay. So he's like, you've got to leave
with me. There is nothing wrong with you that leaving
this house won't cure. And Hope kind of gathers in
her mind again and she says, yes, I will go,

(01:25:30):
and they kiss. She seems afraid but also excited. So
they got to pack their things and get ready to go.
But while they are packing their things and they're in
their separate rooms, Roderick goes into Madeleine's room and begins
to argue with her, reminding her of all the evils
and calamities that he says will occur if she leaves
the house. And tensions rise, and you can hear Philip

(01:25:52):
hears through the wall that they begin to yell, which is,
you know, that's not normal normally everybody keeps the Library
voice in this house. And phil Pilip finally hears Madeleine's
scream and when he comes into the room, Roderick is
standing at the window and Madeleine is lying on her sheets,
apparently dead. Now Philip yells at Roderick, you killed her,
but Roderick says, no, there is no mark on her.

(01:26:15):
You are the one who killed her. He's like, I
warned you, and I warned you. Her heart could not
withstand the strain of leaving, the strain you put upon her.
At least she's now been spared the agony of trying
to escape. One candle left to burn. Now before the darkness.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
Comes way to go, Philip, you killed her.

Speaker 3 (01:26:34):
And the interesting thing is that Philip and Roderick have
been at opposite ends of this, and Madeleine's been in
the middle. Roderick's like, there's a curse. Madeleine is sick.
Philip is like, there's not a curse. She's not sick,
she's fine, And they're both sort of trying to convince Madeline.
But now that Madeleine is apparently dead, you start to
see Philip succumbing to Roderick's interpretation. So they're like in

(01:26:57):
the family chapel praying over Madeleine's body, and you can
see Philip is is filled with guilt, and he even
asks in a subsequent scene he's he's talking to Bristol
later and he's like, could it be that I that
I did this, that I, you know, excited her her
illness and I killed her? Like he is starting to
buy into the curse theory.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
Now he's been there too long. He's becoming a part
of the House of Usher.

Speaker 3 (01:27:20):
Yeah. Oh, and then there's a part that did make
me laugh out loud. When they're there. The two of
them are in the chapel praying over Madeleine's dead body
with the open casket, and Roderick is like, oh, by
the way, she's not at peace, now she's in hell.
All ushers go to hell.

Speaker 2 (01:27:37):
That is deliciously awful, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):
Yeah, And Philip's just like shut up. But so they
start this vigorous bickering. But one thing we the audience see,
and Roderick sees, but Philip does not see, is that
Madeline's fingers begin to flex and stretch. Uh oh. So
Roderick catches a glimpse of the and he quickly snaps

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

(01:28:23):
So now everything is building up to the climax. The
next morning, Philip is getting ready to leave. He again
is buying into the Roderick theory. He's distraught the ideas
have gotten to him, and he's worried that he really
did kill Madeline by putting these ideas in her head
about leaving the house. But Bristol, the butler, is trying
to console Philip, and he lets slip that, you know, Madeleine,

(01:28:44):
she suffered from many health conditions, and there were many
health conditions that run in the family. He starts to
list them, you know, nervous conditions, something you know, a
failure of the heart, and then he starts to say,
but catches himself catalepsy, which is a condition where people
fall into a kind of unconscious trance or spontaneous coma

(01:29:05):
where they are immobile and can appear to be dead,
but they're not. Philip hears this and he realizes what
it means. What if Madeleine was still alive and only
appeared to have died. What if she has been buried
alive in the crypt so Philip. He freaks out. He
runs down under the house into the chamber. He finds
Madeleine's coffin strangely wrapped shut with a padlocked chain, and

(01:29:29):
then he goes and finds an axe, breaks the chain open,
only to discover that the coffin is empty. That's not good,
So Philip goes and confronts Roderick, wanting to know where
Madeleine is, and Roderick, he doesn't try to deny it.
He says she's in a secret place and he won't tell.
And Philip threatens Roderick with the axe, but Roderick is

(01:29:50):
not moved. He does not back down. He says, go on,
you would be doing me a great favor. And so
again it's interesting here, how so physically unthreatening Roderick is
in this scene. He has all the power, but he's
so physically weak, so fragile. He cringes and cowers in
pain when Philip yells at him, and when Philip threatens

(01:30:12):
him with an axe with violence, he's just like, go
ahead and do it. So it's a very unusual and
fascinating power dynamic in the drama.

Speaker 2 (01:30:20):
Yeah, it's like you can kill me, and you know,
and I'll go to Hell where I belong, but just
don't raise your voice or touch my garments. And because
it just can't take that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:30):
Right, So Philip is he's searching all over the house
looking for Madeline. He eventually he just becomes totally exhausted
and passes out. And here we get a great dream
sequence where Philip wanders through an altered version of the
House of Usher, filled with blue fog, and eventually makes
his way into the chapel, which has all of the
horrible Usher ancestors moaning at him and reaching out to

(01:30:52):
grab his flesh. And when Philip goes to the head
of the chapel, he finds Madeline's coffin, occupied only by
a skeleton. And then he searches further and further deeper
into the dream, and somewhere in the dream he can't
find her, but he imagines Madeline alive, still covered in flesh,
trapped in her coffin and screaming wide eyed in terror.

(01:31:13):
I love the dream.

Speaker 2 (01:31:14):
Sequence, absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 4 (01:31:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:16):
Yeah, So anyway, when Philip wakes up, he goes to
Roderick's room, where Roderick is just sitting there plucking his
lute and Phillip's like, you murdered your sister, mister usher,
and I intend to see that you hang for it,
and Roderick says, arrange it quickly. Then the old house
crumbles the time window is closing, but Roderick goes on.

(01:31:37):
He starts another monologue where he's like, if you only
knew the agonies I have spared you in this world
that I have endured on your behalf. Did you know
I could hear the scratching of her fingernails on the
casket lid? Did you know I could hear her screaming
my name for help? And then Roderick seems he suddenly
like it's like something seizes him and he calls out,

(01:31:59):
be done, be done. And Philip realizes what this means.
Madeleine is still alive and Roderick can hear her screaming
for help now, so Roderick rants and raves in agony.
He can hear her scratching and all that, but Philip
doesn't know where to find her, and we cut away.
We see a chained coffin, a different chained coffin with

(01:32:20):
Madeline's bloody fingers reaching out through the crack. Ooh, it's
a chilling image and then finally Philip, Roderick and Bristol.
They run around. Philip is trying to find her. He
makes his way into another part of the crypt where
the coffins of the Ushers have all been pulled out
of their places, and the skeletons the bones are scattered
across the floor, and they find Madeleine's secret coffin thrown open.

(01:32:44):
The chain's broken. So here's the payoff of the monologue
we got in Act one where Roderick says, oh, she
has the madness. Remember the madness he mentioned earlier where
his relatives all go mad and gain the strength of
many men. So Philip at this point is running through
the house, finding and unlocking secret passageways to locate Madeleine.
Roderick arms himself with a pistol, but is that going

(01:33:07):
to do any good? Could you possibly imagine it? Would?
We finally get the ultimate climax of the film, where
I don't want to spoil too much, but for a
movie that is mostly kind of visually subdued apart from
like the paintings and the dream sequence, when we finally
see Madeleine in her madness, in her glorious madness, with

(01:33:28):
her hands covered in rivulets of blood from where she
has scratched her fingernails away on the inside of the coffin.
Her eyes are just wide with absolute terror and insanity.
Her hair is thrown back. They cast these like these
amazing blue lights over her face. She is awesome to behold.

Speaker 2 (01:33:47):
Yeah, She's like a bansheet or a wraith, you know.
She has that kind of energy to her avengeful spirit.

Speaker 3 (01:33:53):
And of course we get avengeful final confrontation, whereas the
house is fully crumbling. Everything's on fire now, the House
of Usher is meeting its ultimate physical demise. Also Madeleine
confronts her brother and she takes him by the neck
and strangles Roderic amidst all the fire and the smoke
and the falling rubble, and it's a tremendous and terrifying climax.

Speaker 2 (01:34:18):
Absolutely yeah, Oh my goodness. Like the mansion looked amazing
earlier in the picture, and as a fiery husk consumed
in this cataclysm, it also looks amazing. The curse comes
to full fruition here, just absolutely apocalyptic.

Speaker 3 (01:34:36):
Yeah, And so Philip is the only one who survives.
The house burns and collapses, and then as he walks away,
comes out of the gate, wanders into the swamp, with
everything he loved destroyed. We see the final quote from
the original post story. The words appear on the screen,
and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed,

(01:34:56):
sullenly and silently over the fragments of the house busher.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):
Fabulous, fabulous, And of course the moral of the story
is never meet your significant other's family. Just don't do it.

Speaker 3 (01:35:09):
So again, a different, different kind of film, a different
kind of proposition than Mask of the Red Death, which
is wilder and more visually extravagant, and you know, has
more kind of variety in it and all that. But
I think for what it is as a tighter, cozier
tale of the macabre, House of Usher is really strong.

Speaker 2 (01:35:30):
Yeah, this is a film that vibes hard. Again, It's
maybe not the ideal viewing experience for you if you
want something a little more action based or something that's
going to hit you a lot of jump scares. But
in terms of like just pure gothic horror po vibes,
it's hard to beat House of Usher.

Speaker 3 (01:35:50):
So happy Halloween, everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:35:52):
Yeah, yeah, this is a fun one. I enjoyed watching that.
I'd never seen it before, and I originally enjoyed the experience.
It's a good film to really focus on, but I mean,
you could have it on in the background and it
would still be very visually pleasing, but it's also a
good one to really dive into. All Right, well, we're
going to go ahead and close it out here, but

(01:36:13):
just a reminder that while Stuffed About Your Mind is
primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and
Thursday science and culture podcast on Fridays. You know, we
have to we have to release a little steam. We've
we've got to dive into some weird films and talk
about those. So hey, you know, you get stressful weeks ahead,
don't worry. Weird House Cinema will be here for you.

(01:36:33):
In fact, next week's is going to be a nice
Halloween selection as well. I can't promise anything, but I'm
hoping we can maybe even get it out like just
a little after midnight on Halloween Eve, you know, so
it's technically on Friday, but it's but it's actually Thursday,
you know, that sort of thing. We'll see what we
can do.

Speaker 3 (01:36:52):
We'll do our best.

Speaker 2 (01:36:53):
Yeah, and If you want a full list of all
the movies we've covered on Weird House over the years,
you can go to letterbox dot com. That's L E
T T E R B O x D dot com.
Our username is weird House. We have a nice list there.
You can explore that. If you're on Instagram, st b
ym podcast and that's where we also update you on
what's happening on Weird House. And if you go to

(01:37:15):
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com or the link
tree on Instagram, you can eventually get to our tea
public store. We have some new Halloween designs in there
that we've been asked to promote, and I think they're
pretty cool. If you need a shirt, you need a sticker,
it's fun. It's there for fun. We don't need you
to buy a shirt or a sticker, but if you
would like to, it's there for you.

Speaker 3 (01:37:34):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:37:55):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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