IHR induction #37: "House of Usher" (1960, Roger Corman)

Many casual film fans know the name Roger Corman, but not many fully apreciate all the things that the man was able to accomplish. On budgets that won't buy most directors a single day's worth of shooting time, Corman has crafted a body of work over the years that, while the movies themselves would never be confused with Oscar winners, boast more than a few truly memorable cheesefests and the occasional truly good film. This one included.

At the time "House of Usher" was released, Corman had already been an extremely prolific film-maker for many years, releasing as many as seven films per year. Unbelievably, a director whose filmography includes titles such as "Attack of the Crab Monsters," "The Undead" (which was featured on "Mystery Science Theater 3000") and "The Wasp Woman" had failed to achieve much notoriety as a skilled auteur. Then came "House of Usher." In the early portion of the 1960s, the guy who once said that he could make a movie about the Roman empire with a few loincloths and a sagebrush began a long series of can't-miss prospects. Namely, Edgar Allan Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price, one of the most memorable and talented actors in all of cinema. The formula was both successful and good - all in all, eight Corman-Poe movies would be released, but none would approach the greatness of a slightly off-kilter, slightly manic retelling of the Master of the Macabre's greatest short story.

From the onset of the movie, it is very obvious that this isn't an ordinary, somber Poe adaptation. Atmospheric fog and green hues envelop the screen as Philip Winthrop (played with plenty of babyface gusto by Mark Damon) approaches the House of Usher. Any beginning scholar of American literature knows the story - visitor becomes the interloper in the lives of the cursed Usher family, witnesses several strange happenings and a family death, and ultimately a horrific "resurrection" that strangely spells the end of all the creepy debauchery.

Corman's "House of Usher," with a screenplay by Richard Matheson (who would later go on to create the television series "Kolchak: The Night Stalker"), has several aces in its deck. Blessed with a slightly-above-average-by-Corman-standards budget, the director does an amazing job filling up the dreary sets with plenty of genuine creep factor, granting the House that the entire film takes place in with an extremely personable atmosphere. You know what? Scratch all that. This movie has Vincent Price in his prime. Pretty much any movie with the Price Man is worth viewing on that merit alone, and "House of Usher" is no exception.

In the original short story "Fall of the House of Usher," the character of Roderick is this hypochondriac, borderline paranoid schizophrenic character who enacts the horrific climactic event as a result of some sort of bizarre predestination belief. The Richard Matheson script calls for a much more emotional approach; Winthrop has come to the house in order to take Roderick's sister Madeline (Myrna Fahey) away, which does not go over too well with her overprotective brother. Roderick disapproves of the relationship, which started prior to the events of the film and quickly escalated to the lust and engagement phases.

Of course, as the movie unspools, the story enters more traditional Poe territory, as Roderick is obsessed with the notion that his family is cursed, and cannot believe that his sibling has broken the vow they took to let the family bloodline die with them. Suddenly and abruptly (redundancy alert), Madeline is dead, leaveing Philip heartbroken and Roderick wanting only to bury away the past, considering himself halfway to his goal of ridding the world of the Usher name. Also considering that the film goes into the long history of the Usher family - how countless ancestors have become mad, insane aristocratic criminals - the viewer is left to wonder whether or not the tragic death of Madeline is a bad thing.

Then the film's third act begins. During the course of the nonstop barrage of English classes that make up Academia, the finale of "Fall of the House of Usher" is something that sticks with everyone who reads it. Almost 200 years after its initial writing, Poe's shocking final twist is powerful, horrifying, and even revolting when one considers everything that one of the particular characters has gone through. In a micro-budgeted feature film, the ending isn't QUITE as effective, but still resonates as extremely powerful stuff, especially considering the more emotional approach that the film takes.

Longtime readers of this Horror Nerd know that I'm ordinarily not a stickler for what I oh-so-ignorantly define as "older" horror movies; "House of Usher" is a big exception, a movie that I saw some long ago Sunday night when tornado-y weather was dotting the Minnesota landscape (bad prose alert much?). Combined with the external elements, the internal elements of this film - Corman's direction, the atmosphere, and most wonderful of all, Vincent Price and his crazy, over-the-top, infinitely memorable mannerisms - converged to create one of the best classical horror films I've seen. And for all the doubters, this flick is in that oh-so-uppity (and officially accredited) United States National Film Registry, so suck on it.

IHR induction #36: "Saw" (2004, James Wan)

Want to hear something that just might weird you out? The original "Saw" - the movie that begat a seven-film franchise and seemingly never-ending series of plot twists, jerkoff characters who partially deserve their extraordinarily cruel fates, and cryptic messages from a soothingly-voiced character actor named Tobin Bell - is only six years old. The release of "Saw" is something that seems like it happened a long, long time ago (but not in a Galaxy far, far away...bad joke, sorry). Alas, it didn't. Yikes.

I still remember the advance buzz surrounding "Saw." Several scenes from the movie were served up as extras on the DVD of the 2004 "Punisher" movie, and everything that was present there looked extremely cool. Apparently, the studio bigwig in charge of the film's release thought so, as well, since this micro-budgeted horror film with no recognizable stars other than Danny Glover - admittedly several years removed from his own A-list run - the primo Halloween 2004 release. Yours truly was in his third year of college at the time, and first year living away from home, and thought it mighty funny to hear several people around campus saying the sentence "Let's go see 'Saw.'" Hey, it was highly amusing at the time.

Unless you've been living under a rock for much of the last decade, you know how the story turned out. Many people came and saw, uh, "Saw," were highly entertained and bedazzled by the movie's inventive premise and surprising plot twists, and made the flick an infinitely profitable piece of modern horror cinema. This being a low-budget movie that made boatloads of cash, however, "Saw" became the "Friday the 13th" of the 21st century. To their credit, Twisted Pictures did their absolute damndest to make each successive sequel necessary, spinning off in direction after direction, delving into various victim characters, and creating ever-more ingenious traps and contraptions for the doomed souls unfortunate enough to catch Jigsaw's wrath to attempt to escape from. Unfortunately, "Saw" also became the most convoluted horror series of all time. What starts off as a series that feels like a naturally satisfying trilogy quickly becomes a muddled mess of a franchise. They become less and less about Jigsaw's original intent and instead become geek shows that critics of '80s slasher films equated all horror movies to be, increasingly ABOUT the goddamn traps and torture devices in much the same fashion that "Family Guy" became a show less about people and more about pop culture references. But I digress.

Today, we look back at the original "Saw" - a very popular, very effective, and very influential (for better or worse) horror movie with several outstanding performances and some very entertaining writing and acting.

THE MOVIE!!

The opening moments of the film introduce us to two characters trapped in a very unkempt, dirty bathroom - photographer Adam Stanheight (Leigh Whannell) and Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes, who remains one of my favorite character actors). The premise of every "Saw" film revolves around a "central" conflict that a character (or characters) must overcome, and if you're a complete virgin to the series, it goes like this: the Jigsaw killer is a serial murderer who never directly murders anyone, instead focusing his efforts on making people appreciate life. His "victims" are all, in some way, ungrateful for life, and the killer - a terminal cancer patient named John Kramer, played to the hilt by Tobin Bell in a performance that deserves its icon status - creates traps, or "games," to test the characters.

Much of the action in this film revolves around Adam and Lawrence alone in the room. Tape recorders tell them various hints that serve them in their quest for salvation. Hacksaws in the room can be used for the purpose of (a) murder, or (b) escape, and for a while, the test seems to be whether or not the two characters are good people. There is also a significant "beat the clock" element to this original movie, as Lawrence has been given a strange deadline - kill Adam by six o'clock, or his family dies. As a tension exercise, "Saw" is very good stuff. High stakes, good acting by the two leads, and the ever-present Billy the puppet - a mocking, creepy little doll that would eventually become an icon onto itself, the low voice of Tobin Bell lending its awesome malice - mocking the characters with its series of challenges.

Spinning off from this main plot cog are several extraneous scenes that introduce the AFOREMENTIONED premise of the "Saw" movies to us. Several previous victims of the Jigsaw killer are shown, but the most fascinating one is easily Amanda Young. Shawnee Smith, a veteran of both TV and horror films, does a fantastic job playing Amanda, a former drug addict and the only survivor of a Jigsaw game. She is still an immense fan favorite with the series' aficianadoes, and for good reason - her character arc in this original movie, a lowly doper who actually finds salvation as a result of her incarceration, gave the flick a powerful emotional kick and was a welcome breath of fresh air in the endless sea of gory/surreal games being played out before the audience members.

As "Saw" reaches its conclusion, a series of twists occur, giving us the identity of the killer, the fate of both principal victim characters, and a truly startling final scene that really took this reporter for a loop upon first viewing. While some people say that they saw the twist coming a mile away, I'll toss my name into the uncool hat and admit that of all the horror movies I had seen up to that point, only "Sleepaway Camp" had caught me as completely off guard as the ending of "Saw." Very satisfying stuff, and most assuredly an appropriate way to end a film which is about the meaning of life and death at its root.

This has been the case with a few of my previous reviews, but I realize that this particular manifesto has been a little scatterbrained. Perhaps it is only appropriate for a film where enjoyment is primarily derived from surprise twists, and attempting not to spoil them for audiences who haven't seen the movie and also knowing that we now have a long series of subsequent films that expand on the whacked-out philosophies and gory surrealism of the original. There's really nothing more to say other than my belief that the original "Saw" is, by far, the best movie in the series - but as one friend on a message board once said, if you had told me then that this movie would spawn SIX (so far, as I refuse to believe that the recently-released "Saw 3D" is the final movie until another October passes without Tobin Bell's gleaming mug on a movie poster) subsequent films, I would have called you crazy. But life is funny like that sometimes. For some great acting, labyrinthine storytelling and more than a few headtrip moments, 2004 O.G. "Saw" is a flick worth checking out.