The Fall of the House of Usher

‘House of Usher’ is an early Roger Corman classic, richly photographed by Floyd Crosby and featuring one of Vincent Price's finest performances. Benefiting from a well-crafted screenplay by Richard Matheson, Edgar Allan Poe's source-story is transformed into a visual masterpiece of dread and doom. Price's Roderick Usher is both sympathetic and unsavory: he's not so much a monster as someone who has been overwhelmed by his own sense of impending disaster. The film represented a substantial leap for Corman in production values, demonstrating that he could handle more complex films than the throwaway quickies which had dominated his career. (Richard Gilliam)