The Fall of the House of Usher * (1950, Gwen Watford, Kay Tendeter) – Classic Movie Review 12,848

A1894-1895 Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley of the short story The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.

This rarely seen British horror film version of the famous Edgar Allan Poe story The Fall of the House of Usher was shot in and around a mansion in Hastings, Sussex. It was made in 1948 but first shown in the UK in 1950 with a rare H certificate. 

Producer/ cinematographer/ director George Ivan Barnett’s 1950 British black and white horror film The Fall of the House of Usher is based on the famous story by Edgar Allan Poe, and stars Gwen Watford and Kaye Tendeter.

Lord Roderick Usher (Kaye Tendeter) watches as his sister Lady Madeline Usher (Gwen Watford, then billed as Gwendoline Watford) revives after being buried alive, in director George Ivan Barnett’s clumsily made, tepidly scripted, cheap-looking horror film based on ideas from the Edgar Allan Poe short story.

But Lord Usher may be imagining it all…

A framing device is set in a gentlemen’s club where one of the members reads to his friends from a copy of Poe’s book, cue flashback to a century before when a young man visits the mysteriously ill siblings in a bleak-looking mansion in the English countryside. They are afflicted by a terrible family curse.

it is interesting as a minor curio, but, as well as the shaky handling, there is a lack of enough needed eerie atmosphere and there is some awkward acting too.

The film was made in 1948 but it was first shown in the UK in 1950 with a rare H certificate by the BBFC. A print hacked from the original 70 minutes to 39 minutes was released in 1956 with an X certificate. It was reissued again in 1961.

It was made in and around a mansion in the English seaside town Hastings, East Sussex, by a low-budget company GIB Films.

Also in the cast are Irving Steen, Lucy Pavey, Vernon Charles, Gavin Lee, Connie Goodwin, Robert Woollard, Keith Lorraine, and Tony Powell-Bristow.

The screenplay is by Dorothy Catt and Kenneth Thompson.

It ushered in a lot of remakes. It was remade in 1960 by Roger Corman as House of Usher (shown in Britain as The Fall of the House of Usher) and remade again as The Fall of the House of Usher in 1980 and The Fall of the House of Usher in 1983 and The House of Usher in 1988.

Jean Epstein and Luis Buñuel wrote and directed a French silent version in 1928.

The cast are Gwen Watford as Lady Madeline Usher, Kaye Tendeter as Lord Roderick Usher, Irving Steen as Jonathan, Vernon Charles as Dr Cordwall, Connie Goodwin as Louise, Gavin Lee as the butler, Keith Lorraine as George, Lucy Pavey as the hag, Tony Powell-Bristow as Richard, and Robert Woolard as Greville.

It was screened restored with its H certificate, at the BFI Southbank, London, on 22 December, 2013.

It was released on DVD by Renown Pictures, and made its way to Talking Pictures TV.

Gwen Watford (10 September 1927 – 6 February 1994).

The year before her death, aged 66, on 6 February 1994, Watford toured in Alan Bennett’s stage play Talking Heads.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,848

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