Absolutely amazing

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Blistering performances.

I could not find original movie from 1928. anywhere, so I finally decided to switch to next adaptation of House of Usher. Terrible mistake. At the beginning it looks like black and white silent film, but then you realize it is not silent. Body language is completely in silent movie style, there is almost none facial expression and diction in dialogues forced me to give up on this crap after 25 minutes. All speech in this movie sounds like one person, extremely bored with their task, speak all words at slow, monotonous pace with uniform bored voice, without any emotion or connection with words they speak. It's like heavily drugged person is trying to clearly and correctly read text they don't even slightly understand. If it was silent movie from 20's it still wouldn't be good, but it would be acceptable. For sound film from 50's this is unwatchable.1/10

This 1949 British version of Edgar Allan Poe's story isn't as fun as Roger Corman's version starring Vincent Price but it still has its charms. It goes more for cheap shocks than atmosphere. They gave it an interesting angle with the framing device of a gentleman's club, although it's not until towards the end that the movie really gets going. Basically, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is an OK movie to watch around Halloween. I don't know most of the cast, but it turns out that Gwen Watford (Madeline) played Wendy's mother in Richard Attenborough's "Cry Freedom" (about anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko).Corny, but fun.

Decades before independent companies were regularly shooting horror films cheaply on location, the mysterious Ivan Barnett made "The Fall of the House of Usher" in and around a mansion in Hastings, Sussex. There are conflicting stories about its production. It seems to have been shot in 1948. Jonathan Rigby claims it played (with an "H" certificate) "for one week in the Tottenham Court Road" in 1950. This implies the cut version released in 1956 wasn't its premiere. The actor playing Roderick Usher is credited as Kaye (not Kay) Tendeter. Almost certainly he and the rest of the cast were, with the exception of Gwen Watford, local amateurs. Barnett was a talented director and a particularly skillful cameraman. His lighting is highly atmospheric. In theory he could still be alive. But what became of him after the early 1960s? (Update: Subsequently it was revealed that Barnett died 13th September, 2013, i.e. only months before the screening of the film, complete with its "H" certificate, at the BFI Southbank, London, on 22nd December, 2013).

This "nearly lost" film represents an earnest attempt at telling the ghost story, more or less, found in Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination. It has none of the camp and insanity of the Vincent Price version.The print I watched was fairly poor, probably from television somewhere, and likely missing 7 of the original 70 minutes. Some of the scenes are really boring, but I liked the kookiness of it all, the lightning, and the overall atmosphere. I'm not making excuses for the film, as it's old & creaky, but I found it fairly interesting.The plot tracks Poe's story fairly well, however, several aspects have been added. Credited as "The Hag" (and referred to in other reviews here as such), I actually believe the character is referred to early in the film as "Roderick's mother". Regardless, you get the old hag, the head of the headless lover (looking demonic), the scary temple where the lovers met, and some good coffin/crypt scenes involving the sister.Near the end, the old hag watches as Roderick is driven up flights of stairs by his sister's (seemingly?) walking corpse, until he falls or is pushed from the parapet. The "head" then seems to cause the House of Usher to burn, with only the narrator escaping.One scene clearly suggests that the sister is slowly poisoned, with someone giving her glasses of milk. Also, as she is clearly shot by Roderick (twice) as she chases him - to no effect, suggesting she really is dead.The ending is left to the imagination, as it returns to the men's club from the beginning of the film, where the story is being read from Poe's book.