Directed by: James Sibley Watson Jr. and Melville Webber

Starring: Herbert Stern, Hildegarde Watson, Melville Webber

Adapted from: Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Fall of the House of Usher, first published in 1839.

STORY

A lone traveler enters the strange and decaying world of Roderick Usher, a man seemingly consumed by the darkness surrounding his ancestral home. Roderick lives inside the mysterious mansion with his sister Madeline, whose presence seems inseparable from the doom hanging over the Usher family.

But this is no ordinary haunted-house story.

Directors James Sibley Watson Jr. and Melville Webber transform Edgar Allan Poe’s famous tale into a surreal nightmare of distorted architecture, shadows, strange angles and unsettling images. Rather than attempting to reproduce every detail of Poe’s story, the filmmakers concentrate on its atmosphere — madness, fear, death and the sensation that both the Usher family and the house itself are collapsing from within.

As Madeline’s fate becomes increasingly horrifying, the distinction between reality and nightmare begins to disappear. The house is no longer merely where the story takes place. It becomes part of the terror.

At only about thirteen minutes, The Fall of the House of Usher demonstrates just how much horror can be created without elaborate effects, graphic violence or even spoken dialogue. Nearly a century later, its eerie imagery remains wonderfully unsettling.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
TWO USHERS — IN THE SAME YEAR

Be careful when searching for this movie because there are two different 1928 films based on Poe’s story. This AIN presentation is the American experimental short directed by James Sibley Watson Jr. and Melville Webber. French filmmaker Jean Epstein also made his own The Fall of the House of Usher in 1928.

POE BECOMES AVANT-GARDE CINEMA

Watson and Webber weren't interested in making a conventional literal adaptation. They used Poe’s story as the foundation for an experimental film built around mood, psychology and visual distortion. The Library of Congress describes the film as strikingly stylized in its composition, costumes and set design and notes its innovative editing, lighting and camerawork.

MADE FAR FROM HOLLYWOOD

This little horror landmark wasn't made on a Hollywood studio lot.

Production began in Rochester, New York, with filming taking place in a converted carriage house behind James Sibley Watson Jr.’s home. The filmmakers were working with limited space, limited lighting power and extremely modest resources.

It is an extraordinary early example of independent filmmakers turning their limitations into part of their artistic style.

THE CAST WAS CLOSE TO HOME

Herbert Stern played Roderick Usher. Hildegarde Watson — James Sibley Watson Jr.’s wife — played Madeline Usher. Co-director Melville Webber appeared as the traveler.

The National Film Preservation Foundation identifies these three as the principal cast.

E.E. CUMMINGS WAS INVOLVED

Here is a terrific piece of film history: poet e.e. cummings wrote an early scenario for the film.

Watson was deeply connected to the literary world through The Dial, the influential literary magazine he published during the 1920s, and cummings was among its contributors.

WEBBER BUILT THE NIGHTMARE

Melville Webber wasn't simply the film’s co-director and one of its actors. He was also responsible for its striking set design.

Webber was an art historian specializing in medieval frescoes, and he designed and painted the film’s sets. The strange shapes and deliberately artificial environments became essential to the movie’s dreamlike appearance.

A DOCTOR BEHIND THE CAMERA

James Sibley Watson Jr. had an unusual résumé for an experimental horror filmmaker: he earned a medical doctorate in 1923.

Rather than pursuing filmmaking through the traditional Hollywood system, Watson brought together interests in medicine, literature, photography and experimentation — exactly the sort of unconventional background that helped produce a film this unusual.

AINTOID: PRESERVED FOR THE NATION

In 2000, The Fall of the House of Usher was selected for the United States National Film Registry.

That places this tiny independent horror experiment among films recognized by the Library of Congress for their cultural, historical or aesthetic significance.

AINTOID: THE FILM SURVIVES

A preserved 35mm negative survives at the George Eastman Museum. The National Film Preservation Foundation's presentation was transferred from that preserved negative.

For a small experimental production made almost a century ago, its survival is an important piece of American film history.

AINTOID: WATCH THE MUSIC

Because this is a silent film, different surviving presentations may contain music added many years after the movie was created.

That means the underlying 1928 film and a later musical accompaniment should not automatically be treated as the same rights asset. AIN should use only a print whose accompanying soundtrack is also cleared or public domain.

AINTOID: THIRTEEN MINUTES OF HORROR HISTORY

The film runs approximately 13 minutes.

No dialogue. No giant studio. No modern visual effects. Just filmmaking, design, light, shadow and Poe.

Almost one hundred years later, that's still enough to make the House of Usher feel very, very wrong.