The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) is a short silent American horror film adaptation of the short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. It tells the story of a brother and sister who live under a family curse. The actors are Herbert Stern, Hildegarde Watson, and Melville Webber. An avant-garde experimental film, the visual element predominates, including shots through prisms to create optical distortion. A French version, directed by Jean Epstein, appeared the same year.
The movie was directed by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber. A music score was written in 1959 for the film by Watson and Webber’s friend, composer Alec Wilder. A version with an industrial soundtrack – below – has also been scored by British musician C.Z Robertson (also known as Hands of Ruin). In 2000, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant film” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Download version with the Alec Wilder score from Internet Archive
Posted by Adrian J Smith
