Oliver Reed, Donald Pleasence. Two of my all time favourite actors. Edgar Allan Poe. What could go wrong? Sadly quite a lot. These two great actors play brothers, living in the same house but have not seen each other for 15 years, apparently. Bit hard to digest that. Ollie plays sleazy Uncle Roderick, thankfully he does have plenty of on screen time. Pleasence however is not seen until an hour in. And not one of his finest roles. Usher is set in a fabulous Gothic mansion, good exterior shots. The interior has a rich colour palate, reminded me somewhat of Dario Argento's classics from the 1970's. However there is a cheapness in the look of these sets, especially when the obviously fake masonry starts to crumble. This film took a while to get going in terms of horror. It is a poor adaptation of the Poe tale and was ultimately watchable but somewhat disappointing. So now to my dilemma - I recently bought a nice, clean copy of this on VHS. The box with its artwork looks good but in all honesty I'll probably never watch it again. As a collector I don't like to lose tapes but I'm torn as to whether there is much point in hanging on to this one.

Okay, so that's not the line, but it might as well be in this revisal of the Edgar Allan Poe story made as a quota quickie in England in 1950 and later by American International starring Vincent Price. This seems to be set in modern times then moves into an apparent time tunnel where the action seems to be in a weird gothic mansion from one of Ken Russell's dreams that he decided not to use in a film. Donald Pleasence goes up against Oliver Reed as rivals for the Usher family curse, and we're supposed to believe that the young people that came from America and encountered two children on the road, ending up in a car accident, are somehow supposed to be there.

The less said about the acting of the ensemble outside of Pleasence and Reed the better. One of the grossest moments turns out to be false when a butler, angry with the housemaid, shoves her hand into a meat grinder and we're supposed to believe that as she screams, it's her flesh coming out. That's early in the film and when you think of the gothic thrillers of the past, that's not what you think about possibly happening. Those films work because the gore was suggested, not shown, and when it was suggested, you knew that the gore that you didn't see would be really graphic if it actually happened. Then there was a ravenous rat unleashed on the unsuspecting hero, and that was where I said that I've had enough. While the basic plot of them wanting a female relative to keep the tradition of relative marrying relative does seems like something out of Poe, it is just creepy here.

With really slow pacing and uninteresting characters outside of the two veteran leading men, this is a complete disappointment, and even the art direction of the old Gothic mansion is bad. It looks as if someone just took some sheets and threw them over some old furniture to add to the atmosphere, and the mixture of modern characterizations with obvious early 20th Century characterizations is just plain weird. This is one film I'm glad I did not go to the theater to see because otherwise I would have ushered myself out.

Soon-to-be-wed American couple Ryan (Rufus Swart) and Molly (Romy Windsor) travel to England to meet Ryan's uncle Roderick (Oliver Reed) at the family mansion, which is slowly sinking into a swamp. Whilst driving to the estate, the couple are shocked to see two ghostly kids standing in the middle of the road, and crash their car into a tree. Ryan is knocked unconscious, so Molly runs to the Usher home for help; convinced that an ambulance has been called for her injured fiancé, Molly rests, but ultimately finds herself a prisoner of Roderick, who wants the girl for himself, to carry his seed and continue his lineage.

Fancying himself as a bit of a Roger Corman, director Alan Birkinshaw tackled two Edgar Allen Poe adaptations in 1989, The Masque of the Red Death (which I have yet to see, but has a lousy rating),and what has to be the worst film ever to be inspired by The Fall of the House of Usher. Not only does the plot bear little resemblance to Poe's original story, but Birkinshaw's handling of the film is lousy, the director commanding hilariously bad performances from Oliver Reed and Donald Pleasence (both slumming it at this point in their careers),and staging the whole mess in some of the cruddiest movie sets imaginable: not just hideous to look at (garish paintwork, amateurish murals, ugly statues) but quite obviously fake, with flimsy plywood and polystyrene constructions masquerading as stonework and marble.

The movie makes no sense whatsoever, so much so that Birkinshaw wraps up matters with one of those cyclical, 'it was all a dream' endings that excuses the script's many flaws by closing the story as it began: with the soon-to-be-wed Ryan and Molly driving to the home of Roderick Usher. The fact that none of what we have seen has really happened means that no explanation is necessary for the two ghostly children that periodically appear, or for the extreme loyalty of the Usher's staff and family doctor, or for why Roderick's supposedly wheelchair-bound lunatic brother Walter (Pleasence) remains a prisoner when he can actually walk and there are numerous passages and secret doors by which he could leave.

Of course, films this bad can also prove to be quite entertaining, and the last twenty minutes are a riot: Pleasence goes kill crazy, hacking off the head of housekeeper Mrs. Derrick (Anne Stradi) and mutilating mute maid Gwen (Carole Farquhar) with his wrist mounted drill, and Reed drops all pretence of being a serious actor and gives one of the craziest performances of his career, which is saying something. The finale sees Reed and Pleasence having a scrap (which is worth the price of admission alone),during which a fire starts, all that plywood and polystyrene going up a treat.

4/10 - It's an interior decorator's nightmare, a film to set Poe spinning in his grave, and an insult to the viewer's intelligence, but I couldn't help but like it just a bit.