SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

MartinHafer The film may be one you will enjoy, but this really is strongly dependent on the type of person you are. If you CAN allow yourself to see a strange Avant Garde-style film that is reminiscent of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, then you might just enjoy this film. Otherwise, it will probably be a very confusing film that only superficially seems like the Poe story. It's really all a matter of just "turning off your brain" and enjoying the strange imagery and bizarre camera-work. It IS very inventive and almost hypnotic at times and looks like a film I would expect to see being played in a gallery of modern art or in a strange little coffee house where everyone wears berets and listens to free-form jazz.

Andrzej Banas The Fall of the House of Usher has suffered a rather bad fate as a film, due to numerous problems.Not due to the fact that it's a bad film, on the contrary, but due to it's name. In the same year there was also a french full-length with the same name by Jean Epstein. And there are countless other recreations of this of the Fall in the House of Usher story.This film succeeds as a silent short expressed mostly through visuals and mood. It's not so much horror as it as an excuse to show surrealist images of words floating, off camera angles and general dillusion.The only thing that may put people off about this short is that it's clearly more about lush enchanting visuals then it is as a good representation on the Edgar Allan Poe piece.This is a fine silent short, and is highly recommended to fans of early silent expressionist cinema.

Snow Leopard This unusual and memorable movie version of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" has some creative details, and although it is one of the more obscure versions of the story, it offers a distinctive look at a couple of its many interesting aspects. The style is deliberately murky, and it has not so much as an inter-title, so that you do need to know at least the basic plot in order to understand what is happening.The original story is psychologically provocative and often uncomfortable, even by Poe's usual standards, and this adaptation is pretty successful in using symbolism and visual images to bring out various aspects of the mental disorientation and dread that the characters struggle with. You can watch it a couple of times and still notice new details that the film-makers inserted at various points. It focuses particularly on the peculiarly complex relationship between Roderick and Madeline, with the narrator of the original story much less prominent here.Poe's fascinating short story has been the source for many different movie versions, and Jean Epstein made a particularly good one in the same year as this feature. This Watson/Webber version, with its short length and its avant-garde approach, is hard to compare with the full-length versions. For what it tries to do, though, it works pretty well.

udave This low-budget thriller was one of the first independent experimental films made in the USA. Heavily influenced by German Expressionist filmmaking (and in particular "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari") this film makes effective use of odd camera angles and stylized sets, and is still quite interesting to watch today as a sort of Gothic mood piece.