The Fall of the House of Usher, Graphic Novel

GKIDS's animated anthology Extraordinary Tales has an incredible claim to fame. It must be the only film that features the voices of Sir Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, and Roger Corman. Hearing Lee during “The Fall of the House of Usher” was probably what a lot of horror fans were most excited about, but the visuals were still spooky enough to hold up on their own. Raul Garcia had worked for about a decade on a series of Poe shorts, before incorporating them into Tales and providing the interstitial transitions. Now, he has adapted one of his constituent films into a stand-alone graphic novel, The Fall of the House of Usher, which is now on-sale.

Garcia was and now is probably more faithful to Poe’s short story than any other adaptation. He certainly stick’s closer Poe’s text than Roger Corman and Richard Matheson did with House of Usher, the first and arguably the most faithful of their Poe films, which we all love, because of Vincent Price (and Corman and Matheson). Yet, Garcia developed his own twist, making the narrator somewhat nebbish looking, rather than a handsome love interest for Madeline Usher. Of course, she still dies—and it gets way worse after that.

Her brother Roderick remains as weird and tormented as ever. The visual contrast between him and the narrator helps give Garcia’s interpretation its own distinctive character. Most importantly, he created (and successfully transferred) a wonderfully macabre and decaying vision of the House of Usher. Even without Lee’s voice (which was a huge asset), Garcia’s Usher still delivers all the old dark house vibes that give fans warm fuzzies (and cold chills).

The Pale Blue Eye, on Netflix

Despite his frail, dissolute image, Edgar Allan Poe fared rather well as an Army enlisted man, rising to the rank of Sergeant Major. Rather unconventionally, his success as a soldier convinced his patron to secure Poe an appointment to West Point, where he effectively started over, as the Academy’s oldest cadet. He is now probably the most celebrated cadet to be court martialed and expelled. As this films starts, Poe has not yet completely sabotaged his officer prospects, but he is happy to assist Det. Augustus Landor’s investigation, at the expense of his studies in Scott Cooper’s The Pale Blue Eye, which premieres Friday on Netflix.

Remember, Poe’s reputation as a drunken basket case is largely the result of a slanderous biography, written by his greatest literary rival, Rufus Wilmot. However, all objective sources agree Poe did not thrive under the Academy’s discipline. The cadet found strung-up in a noose presumably had it worse. It certainly looks suspicious, especially when the body is subsequently mutilated in a ritualistic manner, so the Superintendent (a position that would be held by Robert E. Lee and William Westmoreland) recruits retired New York City Det. Landor to investigate death, which becomes the first of several violent crimes.

Despite Poe’s poetic soliloquys, Landor recognizes the cadet’s intelligence, so he recruits him to be his eyes and ears. Eager to help cast an unflattering light on the military academy, Poe immediately accepts. However, as Poe ingratiates himself with the dead cadet’s social circle, largely through heavy drinking, he falls for Lea Marquis, the sister of the Academy’s alpha cadet and the daughter of West Point’s physician, the questionably competent Dr. Daniel Marquis.

Essentially, Pale Blue Eye is a mystery, but Cooper’s adaptation of Louis Bayard’s source novel cleverly incorporates elements of gothic horror and the occult. Yet, the final revelation sequence rivals the conclusions of some of the best Agatha Christie films.

Compared to William Mosley in Raven’s Hollow and John Cusack in The Raven, Harry Melling might be the most Poe-looking movie Poe yet. Melling still portrays Poe as a bit of mess, but a romantic, romanticizing mess, rather than non-functional Wilmot-suggested mess. However, Christian Bale is even more compelling as the grizzled and tormented Landor.  He slow burns like nobody’s business. Plus, Toby Jones is appropriately squirrelly and off-puttingly nebbish as Dr. Marquis and Timothy Spall is suitably gruff as Superintendent Player.

The Raven: Poe’s Final Days

Unlike Universal's 1935 film and Roger Corman’s 1963 film, this Raven does not pretend to be an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s work. It is not as much fun either, but how can you beat Lugosi, Karloff, Price, Lorre, Corman, or Hazel Court? You sure can’t do it with John Cusack. Still, if you crank down your expectations, the atmosphere is reasonably entertaining in John McTeigue’s The Raven, which airs on ThisTV.

These will be the last days of Poe’s life and true to form, they start with bar brawl. He hopes to marry his well-heeled secret lover, Emily Hamilton, but her father, Captain Charles isn’t having any of that. The serial killer terrorizing Baltimore will be a more serious obstacle when he kidnaps her.

As Baltimore Police Detective Fields sleuths out, each of his killings were inspired by Poe’s stories. In an early act of “toxic fandom,” the mystery man demands Poe write new stories inspired by his crime scenes, or else Hamilton dies.

The idea of Poe as a detective holds plenty of promise (it was gripping as heck in Marc Olden’s supernatural novel, Poe Must Die). The problem is many of the killer’s Poe homages are awkwardly forced. In one case, Poe even says so himself. The locked-room crime scene makes sense as a “Rue Morgue” reference—so much so that Fields recognizes it as such—and the pendulum murder of Poe’s real-life nemesis Rufus Wilmot Griswold is possibly the film’s high point for Poe fans, but from there, screenwriters Hannah Shakespeare and Ben Livingston really start grasping at straws.

Weirdly, John Cusack turns out to be a decent fit for Poe, thanks to his whiny, snarky nebbishness. Viewing The Raven in retrospect, we can also draw parallels between the disgraced and dissolute Poe and Cusack’s own career, which subsequently took a nose-dive into VOD purgatory. Regardless, Cusack plays up Poe’s jerkishness without alienating the audience.

Raven’s Hollow, on Shudder

The truth is Edgar Allan Poe was not the hopelessly dissolute basket case he is so often cracked-up to have been. Unfortunately, the first biography of Poe was written by his bitterest literary rival, but it set the tone for most that followed. Seriously people, start checking your sources. During the early days of his enrollment at West Point, Poe was naturally seen as a leader, despite his awkwardness. However, his training will not prepare him for the supernatural evil he and his men encounter during a training excursion in Christopher Hatton’s Raven’s Hollow, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

As part of a survival-foraging exercise, Poe and four fellow cadets are roaming around upstate New York to prove that they can, until they find a man brutally strung-up in an apparent ritual sacrifice. He only speaks one word before dying: “Raven.” Rather logically, they infer he meant Raven’s Hallow when they chance across the nearby town. However, the townspeople are so inhospitable and so unconvincing protesting their ignorance, they arouse the suspicion of the cadets, even including the ones that do not want to get involved.

Therefore, Poe decides they should stay the night to investigate, even though the innkeeper Elizabet Ingram is ironically the least welcoming of the lot. On the other hand, she has a much friendlier daughter, whom Poe wouldn’t mind questioning at length. To make matters weirder, Usher, the inn’s stableman, warns them to leave while they still can.

You heard that name correct. There is also a Lenore, but Poe is told she was lost long before they arrived. Supposedly, she was taken by the Pagan demonic monster that terrorizes the town, which they call the “Raven.”

Hatton and screenwriter Chuck Reeves do a nice job of dropping meaningful Poe references without it turning into a distracting compulsion. There is also a third act explanation for his drug addiction that actually makes a lot of sense within the context of the film. The film looks appealingly Gothic, very much akin to the look of many prior Sleepy Hollow adaptations, which makes it a dramatic departure from Hatton’s previous films, such as Battle of the Damned.

Fellini’s Toby Dammit

There is a long and fruitful tradition of not particularly faithful Poe adaptations. Best exemplified by Roger Croman and classic Karloff & Lugosi vehicles at Universal, scores of filmmakers took just enough from Poe to create something interesting. In 1969, some of the top auteurs in Europe got in on the fun, contributing to the Poe anthology film, Spirits of the Dead. In honor of his centennial, Federico Fellini’s 43-minute segment, Toby Dammit releases virtually this Friday, “at” Film Forum.

Ostensibly, Fellini adapted the story “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” but don’t get hung up on the details. The titular Toby Dammit is still a h-e-double hockey-sticks-raiser, but this time around, he happens to be an angry-not-so-youngish, classically-trained British actor, badly in need of rehab (ever so appropriately played by Terence Stamp).

Dammit has come to Italy to star in an allegorical spaghetti western funded by a Catholic arts agency, solely because he was promised a snazzy red Ferrari. Dammit is already in bad shape when he arrives and the boozy reception only makes him worse. Clearly, Dammit has not handled fame well, but he is also trying to self-medicate away hallucinatory visions of the devil chasing him in the guise of a little girl.

Toby Dammit might be a relatively short genre film, but it is vintage Fellini all the way. Right from the start, he capitalizes on the postmodern dystopian vibe of the airport’s 1960’s space-age-chic décor to create a disorienting vibe. Arguably, this film could easily serve as a color addendum to 8½, because it presents the trappings of fame in similarly caustic and chaotic ways. If anything, Dammit is a more intense viewing experience, in accordance with Poe’s maxims.

Ray Bradbury Theater: Usher II

How much time do we have left to read Edgar Allan Poe before the Cancel Culture comes to censor him? Don’t think it couldn’t happen, because they’ve already declared H.P. Lovecraft off-limits. As a dissolute self-styled Southern gentleman, who lived and died in Maryland before the Civil War, it is only a matter of time before they target Poe too. Can you imagine how impoverished American literature would be without Poe? William Stendahl doesn’t need to. The futuristic reader of supernatural literature lived to see Poe forbidden by law, in Ray Bradbury’s classic short story, but he intends to give the censors a taste of Poe’s medicine in “Usher II,” a macabrely heart-warming episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater, which airs on Comet TV this Sunday.

Twenty years ago, Stendahl watched helplessly as agents of the Department of Moral Climates burned his beloved library, very much in the style of Fahrenheit 451. Since then, the wealthy bookworm contented himself with a crazy boondoggle: rebuilding the spooky old House of Usher. Of course, Investigators of Moral Climates do not take kindly to eccentricity, so as soon as he has taken possession, Mr. Garrett comes calling, with the intention of declaring Usher II morally unacceptable.

However, this time Stendahl is ready for him. He and his loyal assistant, Pikes, a former Lon Chaney-like actor, murder Garrett and replace him with an android. The phony book-burner subsequently reports to his Moral Climates associates, Stendahl has finally seen the error of his ways and invites the committee to a party to mark the end of Usher II. Of course, the festivities are inspired by the great Poe stories that none of the censors will be familiar with.

While Bradbury’s story was technically set on Mars (and included in the Martian Chronicles), the RB Theater version, directed by Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors & The Devil’s Double) and adapted by the man himself, seems to imply an earthly setting. In all other respects, it is quite faithful to the story.

Simian Verite: Murders in the Rue Morgue

It basically started the time-honored tradition of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that bear at best a minimal resemblance to the stories whose titles they have appropriated (Roger Corman was slavishly faithful, by comparison). C. Auguste Dupin is considered the original template of the mercurial, ambiguously anti-social deductive genius that later spawned classic sleuths like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Nero Wolfe. However, Universal turned him into a love-struck medical student. Clearly, the studio had little understanding of the story’s evergreen appeal, beyond the murderous orangutan. Yet that would be enough to assure classic status for Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (trailer here), which screens during Anthology Film Archive’s recently launched Simian Vérité film series.

The carnival has come to 1840s Paris, amid the turbulent era of the “July Monarchy,” but you wouldn’t know it from carefree Pierre Dupin, his sweetheart, Camille L’Espanaye, and their shallow friends. Dr. Mirakle causes a sensation with his trained gorilla Erik and his scandalous lectures in support of Darwinism. L’Espanaye also makes a strong impression on Mirakle, and an even more so with Erik. Dupin can tell there is something off about Mirakle, but he is distracted by the mysteriously murdered women, whose corpses start turning up in the morgue (his favorite late night hang) shortly after the arrival of the carny.

Typically, the lily-white romantic interests are the weakest link in vintage Universal monster movies, but Leon Ames (then billed as Leon Waycoff) and Sidney Fox are especially awkward as Dupin and L’Espanaye. Not for one second do we believe his foppish act and her childish state of arrested development could ever be remotely compatible.

On the other hand, Bela Lugosi and the killer monkey go together like love & marriage and a horse & carriage. King Bela was at the peak of his popularity at this point—and he gives fans the arched eye-brows and diabolical line-deliveries they craved. Yet, he also seems genuinely hurt inside when L’Espanaye stands him up.

Almost as important as Lugosi was the presence of cinematographer Karl Freund, who shot The Golem and Metropolis in Germany and would soon helm the original classic Mummy. He helps Florey decant some of the old German Expressionist magic. The Parisian rooftop scenes remain particularly evocative, in a dark fable-ish kind of way.

It is always a nostalgic joy to watch Lugosi at the peak of his scenery chewing powers. Despite the drippiness of its romantic leads, it remains a fascinating example of the homicidal ape sub-genre. Arguably, it has yet to receive proper due for its lasting influence. Frankly, we can see echoes of Erik dragging the swooned L’Espanaye as he scales walls and leaps from building to building in the mack daddy of all killer ape movies, King Kong, which released the following year—not to mention the iconic Robot Monster.

Nonetheless, as Poe non-adaptations go, the cult classic The Black Cat, also starring Lugosi, is far superior. Still, it is good clean fun watching the great Hungarian actor and a dude in a gorilla suit terrorize Paris. Recommended for old school Universal fans, the one-hour Murders in the Rue Morgue screens with the amusing but fannish short doc, I Created Lancelot Link, featuring a reunion of the chimp show’s creators this Monday (6/19) and the following Monday (6/26), as part of Simian Vérité at Anthology Film Archives.

Extraordinary Tales: GKIDS does Poe

Finally, the two greatest Draculas are together in one film. It is a posthumous collaboration between Bela Lugosi and Sir Christopher Lee, but that is all the more fitting. Many of the greatest voices in horror cinema bring to life five classic Edgar Allan Poe stories in Raúl García’s Extraordinary Tales (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Between 2004 and 2014, former Disney animator García unleashed his inner fanboy producing a series of Poe short films that paid tribute to the dark bard of Baltimore, as well as other icons of classic horror cinema and graphic art. They are now finally collected and connected by a framing device naturally set in a gothic cemetery. Poe’s spirit now resides in a raven, but an anthropomorphized Lady of Death tries to convince the writer to accept his final resting, by using his own stories as grim object lessons.

The figures of García’s interstitials and the first tale, The Fall of the House of Usher, are a bit blocky, but the backgrounds are wonderfully atmospheric. Usher is also stratospherically elevated by the late, great Sir Christopher’s drippingly macabre narration. He sounds as sonorously sinister as ever, which make Usher a delight.

However, for classic monster fans, nothing can top García’s The Tell Tale Heart, which was Oscar short-listed as an animated short in 2005. Using a non-professional proof-of-concept recording taped by Lugosi’s agent in the late 1940s when he was trying to package a Poe-themed stage show, García truly taps into the psychologically perverse essence of the story. Rather than phoning it in, Lugosi fully draws out all the twisted drama. With all its hisses and pops, it rather appropriately sounds like some sort of ghostly spirit broadcast. Visually, García’s stark black & white animation, conceived as an homage to Argentine comic artist Alberto Breccia, is also absolutely arresting.

Julian Sands does not exactly have the same stature, but the Warlock and Arachnophobia actor is certainly no stranger to a horror movie set. His narration for The Fact in the Case of M. Valdemar is right on the money, yet he is completely up-staged by García’s visuals. In this case, he renders the story in a style that evokes the pulpy look of EC Comics. It is definitely cool looking, but the master touch is the mesmerist narrator, who bears a surely not coincidental resemblance to Vincent Price.

Frankly, Guillermo del Toro is not a natural born voice-over artist, but the Mexican auteur sounds duly authentic narrating arguably the most faithful English language adaptation of Spanish Inquisition-set The Pit and the Pendulum to date. In fact, the entire film remains remarkably true to Poe’s source material. The expressionism of Pit also makes it one of García’s most sophisticated looking and psychologically engaging tales.

With The Masque of Red Death, Extraordinary ends on a mostly wordless high point. Roger Corman himself, the self-made mogul who helmed all the great Poe adaptations starring Price, has only one line of dialogue as Prince Prospero, but it is worth the wait. Instead of chatter, García builds tension and foreboding by showing the silent figure of death glide through the Prince’s hedonistic bacchanal.

García has truly assembled a horror connoisseur’s dream team by incorporating the work of Poe, Lugosi, Lee, Corman, del Toro, and sort of Price and Breccia into one enormously satisfying film. Even though it is distributed by GKIDS, Extraordinary Tales might be too intense for youngsters, but kids old enough to stay up for Corman classics on the weekends should enjoy its spookiness. García maintains an impressively eerie mood, but older fans might just get caught up in nostalgia for our old midnight movie idols. Either way, it is thoroughly entertaining film. Highly recommended for horror and animation fans, Extraordinary Tales opens this Friday (10/23) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Stonehearst Asylum: the Poe Treatment

Dr. Silas Lamb certainly understands the pluses and minuses of corporal punishment and anesthetizing drugs as treatment for lunacy. He is after all based on the superintendent of Poe’s short story “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether.” He will indeed reveal a revolutionary and irreversible new treatment to his naïve young colleague. Yes, there has been the proverbial reversal of positions in the remote mental hospital, but the standard of care has arguably increased in Brad Anderson’s Stonehearst Asylum (trailer here), which releases on DVD and BluRay today, from Millennium Entertainment.

Idealistic Dr. Edward Newgate has arrived at Stonehearst determined to talk his way into a job. He has a passion for psychiatric medicine that duly impresses Dr. Lamb, even though he was not expecting a prospective assistant. Although he talks a progressive game, Newgate is rather shocked by Lamb’s indulgent methods. Several of the patients even perform nursing duties and dine with the staff at night. However, he is even more preoccupied with Eliza Graves, the abused wife of a rich and powerful society scion. For her own protection, Lamb promises to keep her safely committed. Of course, Newgate has his own ideas regarding Ms. Graves that become ever more confused when he discovers the real staff chained up in the dungeon.

It goes without saying, but Stonehearst would have been so much more awesome if it had been made by Roger Corman. Anderson and the design team get the trappings right, but they never properly convey an atmosphere of gothic dread nor a flair for cheeky camp. It is sort of like a middling BBC historical drama set in a nut house.

Still, Sir Ben Kingsley gets a spirit of things rather admirably. He certainly is not bashful when it comes to chewing on scenery and freaks out quite convincingly when he has to. Unfortunately, Jim Sturgess and Kate Beckinsale make pretty vanilla Victorians as Newgate and Graves, respectively. Michael Caine and Brendan Gleeson have their moments as more conventionally problematic alienists, but there is only so much they can do. Even David Thewliss seems to be forcing matters as the malevolent groundskeeper known as “Mickey Finn.”

Screenwriter Ben Gangemi is about as faithful to Poe as the classic Corman adaptations, adding a further ironic twist that works well in context. Nevertheless, a costume genre film really ought to be more fun. Instead, Stonehearst is strangely determined to make a serious statement about the shortcomings of the Victorian mental health system, which seems beyond unnecessary at this point. Kingsley is a gamer, but only Poe completists should feel the need to catch up with Stonehearst Asylum, now available on DVD from Millennium Entertainment.

Fringe ’09: Fall of the House of Usher

Madness, consumption, and premature burial are familiar topics to Poe scholars, but not typical musical theater motifs. However, FringeNYC is now officially underway, offering patrons an opportunity to see a plethora of fresh new shows, including Brent Cirves’s musical adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher.

In addition to the ill-fated Roderick and Madeline Usher, Annabel Lee, the beautiful subject of Poe’s final poem who indeed died tragically young, also plays an important role in Cirves’s book. She is now part of the reclusive Usher household—Roderick’s common law wife to be exact. Though she charms their visitor, one William Reed, a wayfaring musician Roderick befriended, her constitution is alarmingly weak.

Still, in a clear departure from the source story, the House of Usher initially appears to be a reasonably healthy environment, as recalled in flashbacks by Reed on the anniversary of those fateful events. Annabel Lee and the Usher siblings all seem like friendly, musically talented young people. Yet when the poetically foretold tragedies start to strike, the Usher family’s deep psychological pathologies begin to manifest themselves.

Despite taking liberties with the Usher text, Cirves’s clever book should intrigue Poe fans, compellingly integrating Annabel Lee, both as a character and setting elements of the classic poem to music. Indeed, the frequently recurring “Annabel Lee” motif is quite haunting, in a bittersweet way. Cirves’s original lyrics are also quite memorable, evoking the fleetingness of love and beauty which preoccupied Poe’s verse. They are effectively complimented by Mike Johnson’s music, suggesting the sort of love ballads and folk shanties that would be the stock-in-trade of an itinerant 1830’s minstrel, like Reed. He also contributes some unsettling avant-gardish classical pieces to suggest the hubris and madness of Roderick Usher.

All four cast principles have pleasing voices which sound well suited to the Poe-inspired lyrics. Carolyn and Mary Myers give particularly impressive vocal turns as Annabel Lee and Madeline Usher, respectively. As Reed, Mark Rascati smoothly handles the expository duties and also displays a nice touch on the acoustic guitar. They are accompanied by a sympathetic pit band, including pianist Simon Sun and flutist Rachelle Hunt, who capably synch the mimed on-stage performances.

Usher is a smartly conceived mélange of the Poe canon that is surprisingly engaging on an emotional level. Though the gothic spirit of the story remains, becoming especially pronounced in the second act, it is the elegiac tone of Poe’s poem that truly predominates in this staging. It is one of the more satisfying adaptations of classic genre fiction to be produced on the New York stage in recent months. Now open, it runs at the Connelly Theater through August 19th as part of Fringe Fest.

(Photo: Michael Johnson)

Tribeca ’09: Tell Tale

As the director of Alien and the author of “The Tell Tale Heart,” Ridley Scott and Edgar Allan Poe have scared a whole lot of people over the years. Now their talents finally come together, sort of. Produced by Ridley Scott and Tony Scott, indie director Michael Cuesta’s thriller Tell Tale, which premiered Friday night at the Tribeca Film Festival, takes its inspiration from the classic Poe short story, giving it a modern medical twist.

In the original Poe, the sound of a murdered man’s beating heart drives his killer mad with guilt. Now Cuesta updates and tweaks the story, adding elements of Michael Apted’s Blink and Oliver Stone’s The Hand. The murdered man’s heart still beats wildly when in the vicinity of his murderers, but it has been successfully transplanted into a worthy recipient.

Terry Bernard spends a lot of time at the hospital. He recently had heart-transplant surgery and his little girl suffers from a rare degenerative genetic disorder. Fortunately, she has a caring doctor, who also happens to be quite attractive and interested in Dad. The only downside is the criminal ring which killed Bernard’s donor and his wife, seems to be operating out of the same hospital, so whenever he visits, Bernard finds himself compelled to take bloody revenge against yet another killer.

Cuesta and cinematographer Terry Stacey film Bernard’s revenge scenes in an intense, visually disorienting style. In terms of look and mood, Tell is high class genre filmmaking. However, the script is fairly standard thriller fare, with distracting logical contradictions which stretch the suspension of disbelief beyond the initial premise.

Refreshingly, Tell is distinguished by what might sneeringly be called the film’s “family values.” Bernard is not a single father by choice, yet he chooses to uphold his parental obligations as well as those of the mother who abandoned the ailing father and daughter. It is also his commitment that attracts the lovely doctor. Josh Lucas is exudes a nice everyman likability as Bernard, the well meaning Dr. Jekyll, wrestling with his physical and mental well-being. Lena Headey also elevates the throwaway role of the noble Dr. Elizabeth Clemson, exuding genuine warmth and an earthy beauty.

With a talented cast and an entertaining premise, Tell has a lot of commercial potential. Unfortunately, the Friday night screening was interrupted by a sick audience member needing assistance. However, William Castle, the king of horror movie showmanship, was surely smiling down from Heaven. “Heart-Stopping” he would probably proclaim. Its next and hopefully less eventful screening will be on May 1st.