75
Metascore
8 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAustin ChronicleMarc SavlovCorman's legendary parsimony has rarely been so inobvious; House of Usher has the look and feel of a film made for far more than its tiny $200K budget (and on a tight, 15-day shooting schedule). Its authentically creepy dream-sequence – all grasping hands and hazy blue-gelled fog swirls – is a minor surrealist masterpiece by its own right.
- 80The DissolveKeith PhippsThe DissolveKeith PhippsWorking from a script by Richard Matheson that spins Poe’s story to feature length, Corman, cinematographer Floyd Crosby (father of David), and composer and exotica icon Les Baxter create a hallucinatory swirl of a movie that has the feel of an especially sharp nightmare.
- 80Time OutTime OutThe first of Corman's eight-film Poe cycle, and one of his most faithful adaptations. Price is his usual impressive self as the almost certainly incestuously inclined Roderick Usher who, having buried his sister alive when she falls into a cataleptic trance, becomes the victim of her ghostly revenge; but it is Corman's overall direction that lends the film its intelligence and power.
- The movie, shot in CinemaScope and colour, is punctuated by shocking moments, but is more notable for its claustrophobic, doom-laden, necrophilic atmosphere and elegant camerawork than the kind of fashionable, in-your-face horror that was launched in the same year by Psycho.
- 75Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrCorman's filmmaking runs on unchanneled energy and apocalyptic emotions; his is an art without craft.
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazinePrice is wonderful as the spooky owner, but the other three players are merely adequate. But still a superlative Corman/AIP effort and a great beginning to a varying but always interesting series of horror films.
- Under the low-budget circumstances, Vincent Price and Myrna Fahey should not be blamed for portraying the decadent Ushers with arch affectation, nor Mark Damon held to account for the traces of Brooklynese that creep into his stiffly costumed impersonation of the mystified interloper.