31 Days of Horror: Days 16 and 17 – Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

I skipped last night to watch the presidential debate, and thankfully, it wasn’t a horror show like the first one.  Tonight’s feature was a French silent film adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.” I had seen the Usher film starring Vincent Price and thought it was terrible (I can’t remember while), but I had read good things about this one, so I was excited to see it. Unfortunately, it’s a snoozer.

As its title suggests, the Poe story is about the last living members of the Usher family, Roderick and his sister Madeleine, who have isolated themselves inside their crumbling family manor, which is clearly a symbol of the Usher family.  During his visit to the house, one of Roderick’s old friends observes as Madeleine finally succumbs to what seems to be chronic fatigue syndrome, and he and Roderick end up burying her alive.

The 1928 film follows the story’s basic plot but makes Madeleine Roderick’s wife, which is a logical change with the story’s suggestions of incest hinting that Roderick and his sister had been living as if they were husband and wife.  Roderick sits around the house all day painting his wife, and although she appears vigorous in the paintings, she is actually wasting away.  Roderick clearly cares more about the paintings than about his wife, and by painting her he is actually stealing her life force and transferring it to her painted image.  Madeleine, of course, dies, is buried alive, returns, and then the house falls down with the last remaining Ushers inside.

In some ways, horror is perfectly suited for silent film because it places so much emphasis on the visuals.  There’s no place for bad dialogue and convoluted and unnecessary explanations for the horror when all you have to work with are haunting visuals and a few intertitles.  The 1928 “Usher” tries, but for me at least, there’s nothing really horrifying about an emo, goth pussy sitting around his house all day painting his chronically fatigued wife, no matter how ghostly the wife looks or how many close-ups I see of Roderick’s crazed eyes.  I would have been better off with another Hellraiser sequel.