This movie introduces itself as “Edgar Allan Poe’s The House of Usher.” That’s not just for the benefit of viewers unacquainted with EAP’s oeuvre; without the clarification, even those of us familiar with the source material wouldn’t know what the hell we’re supposed to be watching — not least because you can’t attribute to Poe something he never wrote; that is to say, you can call the film ‘The House of Usher’ or you can call it ‘Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, but there’s no middle ground.’ Then again it makes no difference because other than a live burial, movie and short story have next to nothing in common.
The filmmakers didn’t read the tale and thought it would make a good film (if they read it at all). Hell, obviously they didn’t even think that it would make a good title. Granted, recreating the titular fall might have exerted an undue strain on their presumably tight budget (even if they probably got Oliver Reed and Donald Pleasence at bargain prices); on the other hand, ommiting the story’s climax is like doing the “The Pit and the Pendulum” without a pit or a pendulum — why even bother?
A faithful adaptation, mind you, would neverthless struggle (even a loose adaptation, for that matter; see The Bloodhound). Poe’s prose relies heavily on mood rather than action, and its essence is lost in the translation from paper to screen. Not that a script that introduces Roderick Usher’s (Reed) heretofore unheard-of brother Walter (Pleasence) can be said to ooze with fidelity (even today movies keep pulling stupid fucking shit like that; Enola Holmes, anybody?).
There are only three characters (four, if you count the house) in the short story, one of whom, whether alive or dead, spends most of the tale locked in the family vault. This film, conversely, has seven main characters, the majority of whom are the filmmakers’ creation, not Poe’s.
There’s the aforementioned Walter, Clive (Norman Coombes), Clive’s wife (Anne Stradi), and their daughter Gwen (Carole Farquhar), all of them in the employment of Roderick — thus belying the original character’s extreme solitude, which just happens to be one of his dominant traits.
Moreover, the unnamed narrator (an old friend of Usher paying him a visit) is replaced with Molly McNulty (Romy Walthall), fiancée of Ryan Usher (Rufus Swart), Roderick’s nephew. There are also a couple of “ghostly children” (as Wikipedia calls them) whose role is to be a walking contrivance.
While driving to his uncle’s state with Molly, Ryan swerves to avoid running the ghostly children over, instead hitting a tree. Ryan is rendered unconscious, so Molly leaves the car and goes looking for help, finding the palatial house of Usher (the exterior of which is played by the magnificent Knebworth House) and its deranged inhabitants.
Roderick entombs Ryan and holds Molly captive, intent on impregnating her with an heir to the Usher name — or at least that’s what he claims; if he simply wished to extend the bloodline, why not just let Ryan and Molly get married and have kids?
Methinks old Roderick wants to get his rocks off and nothing else, although why he would settle on the somewhat skanky-looking Molly, I haven’t the foggiest. In any case, Poe would doubtless deem this seedy premise distasteful, and he actually married his 13-year-old cousin (by way of contrast, “The House of Usher” only allegedly implies incest, and even that’s a matter of interpretation).
After much stalling, Clive drugs Molly, which in turn leads to a Right Through His Pants/Shower of Love scene between a somehow un-tombed Ryan and Molly while Roderick first watches and then joins in (with Ryan having magically vanished). Does this really happen, or is it some sort of drug-induced dream?
And the answer is, the filmmakers don’t give a fuck either way, so why should we? The bulk of the plot is dismissed as All Just a Dream, except that writer Michael J. Murray and director Alan Birkinshaw didn’t even have enough sense to show Molly waking up from the dream.
We just go back to Ryan and Molly in the car; unable to find Roderick’s place on the map, they shrug it off and decide to turn back. Pan to a shot of the ghostly children looking not ghostly at all. The End. Seriously. Too bad EAP can’t do an Alan Smithee and get his name removed from this retarded fucking movie.
90% of Everything is Crap 