"Actor: Harry Ellerbe"

• The Fall Of The House Of Usher | DVD | (20/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Vincent Price brings a theatrical flourish to his role in The Fall of the House of Usher. He plays Roderick Usher, a brooding nobleman haunted by the dry rot of madness in his family tree. This being an Edgar Allen Poe story, there's a history of family madness and melancholia, a premature burial and a sense of doom hanging over the gloomy, crumbling mansion. Roger Corman sold stingy AIP pictures on the concept by claiming "The house is the monster"--or so goes the oft-told story. True or not, Corman (with the help of his brilliant art director Daniel Haller and legendary cinematographer Floyd Crosby) creates an exaggerated sense of isolation and claustrophobia with the sunless forest and funereal fog that holds the house and its inhabitants prisoner in a land of the dead. It doesn't quite look real (some of the effects are downright phoney, notably the apocalyptic climax), and none of the costars can hold a candle to Price's elegant, haunted performance (often speaking in no more than a stage whisper), but it's a triumph of expressionism on a budget. Shot in rich, vivid colour and CinemaScope, from a literate script by genre master Richard Matheson, this is stylish Gothic horror in a melancholy key. It was such a success that Corman reunited his core group of collaborators for the follow-up The Pit and the Pendulum the very next year. Thus Corman's "Poe Cycle" was born. --Sean Axmaker

• The Cars That Ate Paris/The Legend Of Hell House/The Fall Of The House Of Usher | DVD | (28/05/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Cars That Ate Paris (Dir. Peter Weir 1974): Peter Weir's first film is a surreal and fantastic horror. An outstanding hit at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival and a landmark in Australian film-making it remains a cult classic. On the outskirts of the small town of Paris cars crash with alarming regularity. Arthur (Terry Camilleri) survives one such accident and becomes a prisoner of Paris although he's unaware of his predicament as the town has provided him with something he's never had - a family. But these crashes are far from accidents. The townspeople have been laying traps for passing traffic - the dead are disposed of and the injured are stored for medical experimentation. Paris lives off cars - spare parts are their currency - however the source of their livelihood soon turns against them and the cars have their revenge. The town's youth launch a terrifying attack using their bizarre customised souped-up hot-rods as deadly weapons. The town that lives by the car shall die by the car! Legend Of Hell House (Dir. John Hough 1973): A team consisting of a physicist his wife a young female psychic and the only survivor of the previous visit are sent to the notorious Hell House to prove or disprove survival after death. Previous visitors have either been killed or gone mad and it is up to the team to survive a full week in isolation and solve the mystery of Hell House... Fall Of House Of Usher (Dir. Roger Corman 1960): 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 have been afflicted with a mysterious malady...