31 Days of Horror: The Fall of the House of Usher

Roger Corman is the master of the low budget quickie. Over the years he has as a producer produced some of the cheapest pieces of crap to grace the screen. But he also helped start the careers of several of biggest names in Hollywood (Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson). And as a director he has made some very entertaining films. When Corman teamed up with novelist Richard Matheson (I am Legend) and actor Vincent Price in the 1960's to adapt some Edgar Allen Poe's stories- it created some of the best Poe adaptations to hit the big screen.

The first collaboration resulted in this film The Fall of the House of Usher (or just House of Usher) which is easily the best of the eight films that Corman made (or seven if you consider The Haunted Palace to be a name only connection to Poe - the story was from H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.) Corman and Matheson would only collaborate on four of these films.

There has been at least thirteen adaptations of The Fall of the House of Usher. Most of them are terrible - but Corman and Price have managed to create a stylish and creepy film.

Price's Usher is a demented shell of a man who is obsessed with his sister(Myrna Fahey). And when Mark Damon shows up at the House of Usher to marry Fahey - Price doesn't takes the news to well. Price informs him that the line of Usher is cursed - that they all go mad eventually. Damon doesn't believe him. And then the fun really begins.

Pick of the Day: Young Galaxy w/ Bend Sinister

I kind of lucked out with this post. Typically, you'd think a Monday night in mid-October in Regina would be pretty slow, and I'd be reduced to picking something lame like oh ... I don't know, polkaing-out to the Western Senators at Casino Regina's month-long Octoberfest celebration. Instead, it turns out that Montreal indie popsters Young Galaxy are in town tonight for a gig at the Exchange.

Originally a duo when formed by Stephen Ramsay and Catherine McCandless in Vancouver in 2005, the band released a self-titled CD on Arts & Crafts in 2007. Since then, they've added three members to flesh out their sound, and in August of this year independently released their sophomore album Invisible Republic. If you're a beer drinker, you might recognize their song "Come and See" which was featured in an Alexander Keith's commercial this summer.

Regardless, here's the video for their 2007 song "Outside the City" (YouTube)

Backing them up is the Vancouver band Bend Sinister. They've played O'Hanlon's before and, if I'm not mistaken, take their name from the title of a 1947 dystopian novel by Vladimir Nabokov. Here's video of their song "The Same Things" off their 2009 album Stories of Brothers, Tales of Lovers. (YouTube)