A city gentleman (Mark Damon) travels to the country home of his betrothed (Myrna Fahey) and encounters her ghoulish, suspicious, and standoffish older brother (Vincent Price) who denies him visitation due to her sickly heath and a family penchant towards madness. House of Usher was the first of Roger Corman's heralded Edgar Allan Poe films of the early 1960s (it's the second I've seen after The Pit and the Pendulum, also excellent) and was written by the great, recently deceased sci-fi writer Richard Matheson, creator of so many great TV episodes and films, who here does a fine job in generally capturing Poe's short story in a succinct movie. House of Usher features great lighting, photography, an extraordinary climax and of course an expectedly great performance from Vincent Price.
