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When Corman read about a severe forest fire in the Los Angeles Times, he gathered his crew to shoot the opening scene of Philip Winthrop’s arrival on horseback in the Hollywood Hills, at the burnt out area of Griffith Park. Later, several shots of the burning rafters of the Usher house, in the film’s fiery climax, were filmed courtesy of an old barn he was able to secure and burn down in Orange County. Those burning rafters would be recycled through a number of the Corman-Poe films.
Assistant Director
The narrator finally gets a name Philip Winthrop – although he is not Roderick’s childhood friend but Madeleine’s fiancee. One of the problems with any version of The Fall of the House of Usher is that it is lacking in internal drama. Thus Richard Matheson needs to invent conflict – the narrator is now obsessed with taking Madeleine away from the house (Mark Damon gives a particularly cross and annoyed performance in the part), while Roderick is equally determined that she cannot leave and is doomed. This is also the first of the film adaptations to invent a backstory for the Usher line (something retained by most subsequent film adaptations).
Letterboxd — Your life in film
As the house begins to disintegrate, Bristol drags Philip from the room, but is killed by a falling beam when he returns for Madeline, who is choking her brother. The house is now engulfed in flames and falls in on Roderick and Madeline as Philip runs out and watches the house sink into an abyss. Producer Samuel Z. Arkoff, who died September 16 at the age of 83, made a dent in film history by co-founding and running the legendary American International Pictures (AIP), a key player in the drive-in and exploitation markets during the 50s, 60s and 70s. Arkoff was born in Iowa on June 12, 1918, served as a military crypographer during World War Two and ended up as an entertainment lawyer.
Storyline
The movie begins with Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon) arriving at the ominous and fog-shrouded House of Usher on horseback. Philip has made the journey to the estate to take his fiancee, Madeline Usher, back to their home in Boston. Philip insists on speaking to Roderick Usher, the eldest living relative of the Ushers and Madeline’s brother. After being asked to remove his shoes before proceeding, Philip follows the caretaker’s lead. Convinced that his family’s blood is tainted by generations of evil, Roderick Usher is hell-bent on destroying his sister Madeline’s wedding to prevent the cursed Usher bloodline from extending any further.
A stunning moment is her appearance before she strangles Roderick, extinguishing her father, brother and lover in one fell swoop, where she is briefly seen holding her bloodied hands in front of her face, eyes lit with insanity. No matter how hard Roderick and Winthrop have tried to control Madeline, her female monstrosity will rise to threaten and destroy the symbolic masculine order, an acting out of female revenge for the long line of Usher patriarchal failure. There’s a great shot of Myrna Fahey walking directly into camera, going completely out of focus as she approaches the lens, before she polishes off Vincent Price and the entire house goes spectacularly up in flames and its remains sink into the poisoned tarn. When manservant Bristol inadvertently gives the game away by mentioning Madeline’s proclivity to cataleptic trances, Winthrop batters his way into an empty coffin. During his confrontation with Roderick, Corman again drops in visual allusions to Roderick’s state of mind with brief shots of the lute lying suggestively across the bed and Winthrop’s sudden encounter with one of Shonberg’s psychedelic turmoils rendered on canvas. After a frustrating search for the ‘dead’ Madeline, Winthrop falls, out of sheer exhaustion, into a prolonged and surreal dream.
Neutra ran his architectural from the original house from 1932 until a fire destroyed most of the main building in 1963. The Research House was rebuilt with the most modern materials and design adaptations by Neutra and his son Dion in 1966. There is also a Garden House on the property that was occupied by Dion Neutra and his family.
The Doctors House Museum in Glendale
Philip witnesses a multitude of strange occurrences during his stay, including narrowly escaping a falling chandelier. Tragedy strikes soon after a heated argument between Madeline and Roderick. Following a small funeral with the house’s inhabitants, Madeline is taken to the Usher family tomb. As Philip grieves and prepares for his solitary journey home, he soon discovers that things are not as they seem.
Will Rogers' Home in Will Rogers State Historic Park
Later, after hearing more creaking and clanking sounds, Philip checks Madeline's room and, finding it empty, goes downstairs where he discovers her, lying in a trance-like state. In the morning, Bristol agrees to let Philip take Madeline her breakfast, giving him the opportunity again to implore her to leave. Madeline refuses to go with Philip, however, and tells him that she will soon be dead.
TCM International Sites
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opens on Museum Row in the Miracle Mile. The museum houses more than 13 million objects in a 300,000 square-foot campus designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Renzo Piano. Colonel J. Griffith donates nearly five square miles of land near his ranch to the people of Los Angeles. Today, Griffith Park spans 4,210 acres of natural chapparal-covered terrain and landscaped parkland between Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. It's one of the largest municipal parks with urban wilderness areas in the United States. Los Angeles gold-mining millionaire Lewis L. Bradbury commissions a five-story office building in Downtown LA.
He tracks her through the house, to the circle of paintings and to a brilliantly executed encounter as her bloodied hand claws around the door he is opening and, like a defiled bride, she lunges at him. Corman intercuts her piercing eyes with those of the Usher portraits, acknowledging that an untimely burial by her perverse brother has sent her as completely mad as her relatives. Madeline’s introduction to her deceased relatives is mirrored later with Roderick’s own tour of the strange paintings that decorate the hallway and their depiction, the “savage degradations”, of the family as harlots, thieves, drug addicts, murderers and assassins. Certainly, Winthrop spends an inordinate amount of time moving deeper and deeper into the house, where the bubbling pot of gruel acts as a symbolic bridge to his morning encounter with Madeline. Here again, Winthrop rationalises the Usher curse and attempts to literally throw light onto the subject by opening the curtains in her bedroom.
The Best Version of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Isn’t on Netflix - imdb
The Best Version of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Isn’t on Netflix.
Posted: Sun, 22 Oct 2023 20:27:12 GMT [source]
Roger Corman is quite rightly regarded as a trailblazing legend in independent cinema. Corman’s nous for low-budget film making developed in the 1950s after he took a left-turn on a career-path in industrial engineering. Electrical Motors in Los Angeles but then realised he’d “made a terrible mistake” and, having started the job on a Monday, quit four days later. The source of this revelation was his growing enthusiasm for theatre as he studied thermodynamics and electronics at Stanford and a yearning to work in the film industry.
The Griffith Observatory reopens after extensive renovations, including the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater, named for the actor who played Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek series. A section of East Hollywood is designated as America’s first and only Thai Town. So many ethnic Thais live in Los Angeles (roughly 80,000), that the city is sometimes referred to as Thailand’s 77th province. "Go for Broke" was the motto of the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the most decorated unit in the history of American warfare. Members of the 442nd received over 18,000 awards in less than two years, including 21 Medals of Honor.
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