House of Usher

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Roger Corman directs. Floyd Crosby behind the camera. Les Baxter scores. Anthony Carras cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 1Tight 79-minute runtime — shorter than most television pilots.
• 2Shot for just $0.3M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
• 3Made its money back 5.4× over at the box office.
• 466 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
• 5Directed by Roger Corman, shot by Floyd Crosby. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
• 6Original score by Les Baxter. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
• 7Editor Anthony Carras shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
• 8Vincent Price and Mark Damon and Myrna Fahey carry the top of the cast.
• 9Marketing tagline: "Edgar Allan Poe's demonic tale of The Ungodly... The Evil House of Usher".
• 10IMDB entry: tt0053925 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
• 11Released under 12 different titles around the world.

The technical file

Cinematography

Floyd Crosby

Original score

Les Baxter

Editing

Anthony Carras

Production design

Daniel Haller

Makeup / hair

Fred B. Phillips

Runtime

79 min · 1h 19m

Status

Released

Budget

$270,000

Box office

$1,450,000

Return

537% of budget

Original language

EN

Certification (US)

NR

IMDB

House of Usher (1960) ↗

Also by

Roger Corman

• 
  The Intruder

  1962 · ★ 7.2
• 
  The Pit and the Pendulum

  1961 · ★ 6.8
• 
  The Haunted Palace

  1963 · ★ 6.7
• 
  Tales of Terror

  1962 · ★ 6.7
• 
  A Bucket of Blood

  1959 · ★ 6.6
• 
  X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

  1963 · ★ 6.6

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

• 

  ▶
  The History Of The Usher Family

  Clip · Official
• 

  ▶
  Family Coffins

  Clip · Official
• 

  ▶
  Strange Noises In The House

  Clip · Official
• 

  ▶
  Philip Comes To Visit

  Clip · Official
• 

  ▶
  House of Usher (Trailer 1960)

  Trailer
• 

  ▶
  Mary Lambert on HOUSE OF USHER

  Featurette

Community reviews

What people are saying

• John Chard2019-04-24
  ★ 8/10

  Fissures of concrete and of the mind... Phillip Winthrop has been searching for his missing fiancée, Madeline Usher. Tracking her down to the Usher family castle, he finds that Madeline is held strangely under the spell of her brother Roderick. The house itself also seems to be laden heavy with a mystical sense of dread and impending death. Can Phillip persuade Madeline to leave this crumbling abode? will he himself be at the mercy of Roderick and the Usher curse? Filmed in glorious CinemaScope with vivid colour photography from Floyd Crosby, based on a story from dark master writer Edgar Allen Poe, boasting Vincent Price in the lead role, and directed by Roger Corman with a budget worthy of his vision, House Of Usher (The Fall Of) is a highly eerie Gothic piece of work. Delightfully weird, the film covers a myriad of things to unease the watching public, curses, incest, burial alive, paranoia and sadistic intentions all sit together with Corman and Richard Matheson's Gothic leanings. In fact a huge amount of credit for the pic's subsequent success at the box office must go to Matheson, who took Poe's skeleton story and cloaked it with the previous mentioned strands to fully flesh out the piece. On the surface the picture probably shouldn't have worked, basically it's just four characters moping around talking grimly and waiting for the inevitable, but it's the house itself that is the story's major player. Corman utilising his widescreen trait to make the house disjointed and creepy in every frame, with the use of sounds also helping to keep the pervading sense of doom a very real threat - the house does in fact become the monster of the piece. All is not well in the House Of Usher, I hope you feel it as well. Amen. 8/10

  Read full review ↓
• Wuchak2022-03-22
  ★ 5/10

  “It’s a mad house, a mad house!” In the late 1830s, a man from Boston (Mark Damon) visits the ancestral manor of his fiancé out in the country (Myrna Fahey), but he finds her curiously ill and her older brother nigh insane (Vincent Price). What’s going on? "House of Usher" (1960) was the first of AIP’s gothic horror flicks of the 60s inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, eight of which were done by Roger Corman, but others were filmed by different directors, like “The Conqueror Worm” (1968), aka “Witchfinder General,” and “The Oblong Box” (1969). Others were Poe-ish in ambiance, yet had nothing to do with the works of Poe, like Corman & Coppola’s “The Terror” (1963). Speaking of which, most of these flicks didn’t follow Poe’s stories/poems very closely despite his name being linked to them. “The Oblong Box,” for instance, features a totally different story. Meanwhile the title of “The Conqueror Worm” was tacked on to “Witchfinder General” in America, along with a quote from Poe’s poem, merely to sell tickets. This one is closer to Poe’s actual story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” although scriptwriter Richard Matheson wisely throws in some romance involving the protagonist and Roderick’s sister. While it was successful at the box office and kicked off the series, I found it (melo)dramatically tedious and one-dimensional despite the colorful gothic atmosphere. I suggest seeing “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1961), “The Terror,” “The Conqueror Worm,” “The Masque of the Red Death” (1964), “The Raven” (1963) and “Tomb of Ligeia” (1964) first. If you want more, check this one out too. AIP was basically the American version of Hammer in England, so devotees of Hammer horror should appreciate it. The movie runs 1 hour, 19 minutes, and was shot at Raleigh Studios, Hollywood, with the fire-charred land done in Hollywood Hills. GRADE: C+

  Read full review ↓

Production companies

Who made it

• AL

  Alta Vista Productions

• 

  American International Pictures

  US

Key crew

• Executive ProducerJames H. Nicholson
• EditorAnthony Carras
• Production DesignDaniel Haller
• Special EffectsPat Dinga
• ProducerRoger Corman
• Set DecorationHarry Reif
• Assistant DirectorJack Bohrer
• SoundPhilip Mitchell
• Short StoryEdgar Allan Poe
• Makeup ArtistFred B. Phillips
• Still PhotographerFrank Tanner
• Sound EditorAlfred R. Bird
• Music EditorEve Newman

Themes & keywords

What it's about, really

• curse
• mansion
• new england
• old house
• based on short story
• 19th century

Release history · US

When it landed

• Premiere1960-06-18· Palm Springs, California, premiere
• Theatrical (limited)1960-07-20NR· Los Angeles, California
• Theatrical (limited)1960-09-14· New York City, New York
• Physical1993-01-01NR· "The Fall of the House of Usher" GoodTimes Home Video #05-04042 [VHS] 85 minutes

Also known as

International titles

• The Fall of the House of UsherUS
• The Mysterious House of UsherUS
• La caída de la casa UsherES
• La Chute de la maison UsherFR
• Дом АшеровRU
• Падението на дома АшърBG
• 어셔가KR
• Die Verfluchten - Der Untergang des Hauses UsherDE
• El hundimiento de la casa UsherES
• The Fall of the House of UsherGB
• アッシャー家の崩壊JP
• Haunted House of UsherUS