In his 40 short and troubled years, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) changed the face of horror and mystery in his landmark short stories and poems. His 1849 classic “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is the model of the detective story and his 1845 “The Raven” is one of the greatest and most quoted poems. Britannica states that “Poe’s work owes much to the concern of Romanticism with the occult and the satanic. With an air objectivity and spontaneity, his productions are closely dependent on an elaborate technique. The outstanding fact in Poe’s character is a strange duality. The wide divergence of contemporary judgments on the same seems almost to point to the coexistence of two persons in him.”
Filmmakers have returned again and again to the rich and terrifying Poe well of stories. The latest is Mike Flanagan (“Midnight Mass”), whose limited Netflix series “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a loose adaptation of the 1839 short story. The eight-part series revolves around the Usher family, who have made a fortune with their pharmaceutical company. Over a two-week period, Roderick Usher, the CEO of the company, has seen his six children die within a period of two weeks. Are the deaths tied to the mysterious Vera (Carla Gugino)? Episodes are named after Poe short stories as well as “The Raven.” And characters also share name with Poe characters including Lenore, Annabel Lee and Arthur Pym.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” has been adapted numerous times both for film and television. In fact, two were produced in 1928. The best known of these is the French horror classic “La chute de la maison Usher” directed by Jean Epstein. Luis Bunuel was one of the screenwriters, but he left the production due to disagreements with Epstein. Roderick and Madeline are brother and sister in the Poe story, but in this version, they are husband and wife. Famed film director Abel Gance (“Napoleon”) appears in the movie as does his wife Marguerite who portrays the ill-fated Madeline. The film made Roger Ebert’s list of Great Movies while Akira Kurosawa, no less, stated it was one of his top 100 personal favorites.
James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber directed an experimental 13-minute silent films also released in 1928. In 2000, the United States Library of Congress deemed it a “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant film” and was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.
After finding success at AIP with his low-budget drive-in fare such as 1957’s “Not of This Earth,” 1958’s “Teenage Caveman” and “She Gods of Shark Reef,” Roger Corman turned to far more sophisticated, literary fare directing eight adaptations of Poe’s work between 1960-64. Shot in a florid-style color, these films were stylish and fun featuring such veterans as Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Ray Milland and Basil Rathbone.
Corman kicked off his Poe cycle with 1960’s “House of Usher,” starring a pitch perfect Price, sporting a blond Guy Fieri hairstyle, as the doomed Roderick; Myrna Fahey as the ill-fated Madeline and Mark Damon as her fiancée who arrives at the house who seems to be crumbling by the hour. The New York Times just didn’t get the film stating “The ‘fall’ has been omitted from the film version of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ but not the pitfalls…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 this stiffly costumed impersonation of the mystified interloper.” Times have changed. In 2005, “House of Usher” was added to the National Film Registry.
There have been many adaptations of other Poe works. In 1914, director D.W. Griffith of “Birth of Nation” infamy released the horror film, “The Avenging Conscience: or “Thou Shall Not Kill,” based on 1843’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and the 1849 poem “Annabel Lee.”
During the 1930s, Universal made several classic horror films most notably 1931’s “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” and 1935’s “Bride of Frankenstein.” The studio also produced horror flicks more inspired than based on Poe’s work. Bela Lugosi stars in 1932’s “Murder in the Rue Morgue”; Lugosi and Boris Karloff, in their first pairing, star in Edgar G. Ulmer’s deliciously twisted 1934 art deco delight “The Black Cat”; and Karloff and Lugosi teamed up the following year for “The Raven.” In 1949, Lugosi returned to the Poe family in “A Cask of Amontillado,” which aired on CBS’ “Suspense” on Oct. 11 that year. The episode was telecast live; the kinescope can be found on YouTube.
Erich von Stroheim and Dwight Frye headline the 1935 low-budget horror film, “The Crime of Dr. Crespi” based on Poe’s 1844 story ‘The Premature Burial.” However, reviews weren’t good: the New York Times wrote the film was “an almost humorously overstrained attempt at grimness.”
Jules Dassin (“The Naked City,” “Rififi” “Never on Sunday”) made his directorial debut with the 1941 short “The Tell-Tale Heart,” which starred Joseph Schildkraut. Time film critic Richard Corliss wrote upon the death of Dassin in 2008 that the short was “possibly the very first movie to be influenced by ‘Citizen Kane.’”
