7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
After a long journey, Philip arrives at the Usher mansion seeking his loved one, Madeline. Upon arriving, however, he discovers that Madeline and her brother Roderick Usher (Vincent Price) have been afflicted with a mysterious malady: Roderick's senses have become painfully acute, while Madeline has become catatonic. That evening, Roderick tells his guest of an old Usher family curse: any time there has been more than one Usher child, all of the siblings have gone insane and died horrible deaths. As the days wear on, the effects of the curse reach their terrifying climax...
Starring: Vincent Price, Mark Damon, Myrna Fahey, Harry EllerbeHorror | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Note: This film is currently available as part of The Vincent Price Collection.
Shout! Factory’s Scream Factory imprint is giving horror fans a little early Halloween present this year, bringing six classic
Vincent Price – American International films to high definition for the first time. Though horror tends to be a genre that,
to
paraphrase one Rodney Dangerfield, “gets no respect”, and indeed probably all of these films were thought of as B-
movie
drive in fodder back in the day, most if not all of them hold up surprisingly well today, with several of them offering a
quasi-
hallucinatory quality which Roger Corman, the supposedly low rent auteur who is responsible for the majority of
the
offerings in this set, states was a deliberate choice (not one necessitated by relatively paltry budgets) in an attempt to
viscerally recreate the inner life of the (perhaps troubled) mind. Though Price had made at least a couple of forays into
horror in the fifties with such fare as
House of Wax 3D and The Fly
,
it was really the American International pictures that established Price’s “second act” in the film business, offering
him
more or less steady employment when many of his contemporaries had either resigned themselves to the ostensibly
less
glamorous world of television or who had outright retired from show business.
The Fall of the House of Usher is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. While I'm not certain if this was sourced from the same master that was used for the recent British Blu-ray reviewed by my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov, a cursory comparison of the screenshots suggests (to my eyes, anyway) that the color on this release is slightly darker and marginally warmer appearing (look, for example, at the red candles in the screenshots of Price and Damon at the dining table). One way or the other, this is a great looking high definition presentation, with good depth and clarity. There are some very minor density issues which slightly affect the palette here and there, but they're transitory and rather inconsequential. Damage is also very minor, limited mostly to a few flecks that crop up occasionally. Finally, no over aggressive DNR or digital sharpening appears to have been applied to this release.
The Fall of the House of Usher features a nice sounding lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track delivered via DTS- HD Master Audio 2.0. Dialogue and the film's nicely evocative sound effects are presented cleanly and with no damage. Also very impressive is the wonderful Les Baxter's moody score. Baxter never really got his due as a film composer and is in fact probably more remembered nowadays for his trend setting "Exotica" recordings (which I highly recommend), but The Fall of the House of Usher proves what an elegantly effective composer for films he really was. Baxter's original Overture for the film is included on this release.
As is discussed both in the insert booklet essay and on some of the supplements included on this Blu-ray, American- International took a huge leap of faith with The Fall of the House of Usher, spending what for it was a rather large amount of money (even if by traditional Hollywood standards, it was still a pittance) and (sorry) ushering in a fantastic era of Poe adaptations, many starring Vincent Price. The film holds up surprisingly well, casting an almost hallucinogenically dreamlike spell. Both video and audio are excellent, and the supplementary features are also outstanding. Highly recommended.
(Still not reliable for this title)
1963
1961
Remastered | Extended Cut
1964
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1963
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