translation

 

Mike Flanagan’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’

adapted from collider.com

 

 

Unsurprisingly, Poe's works have been adapted for the screen over 200 times; the visual potentials of Poe's obsession with Old-World evil and the romantic, decadent decay have always tempted filmmakers. The Fall of the House of Usher has been adapted into feature-length movies (two silent films, a relatively faithful Roger Corman 1960 version, and a modern 2006 update) and numerous plays, operas, shorts, and series episodes. However, filmmakers often struggled to expand the sources, usually short stories, into feature-length films, and the results often deviated in everything except the atmosphere. The best-known of these–eight low-budget Roger Corman movies made between 1960-1964 and usually starring the debonair, diabolical Vincent Price–are entertaining but can't recreate Poe's macabre, paranoid, and generally unwholesome sensibility. And even today, capturing the intensity and mystery that consumed Poe, for whom the corridors of a gothic castle always led to the unspeakable depths of the human mind, remains a challenge.