House of Usher

House of Usher (1960) is Roger Corman's gothic horror adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe, available to watch online on iFILM. Shot for American International Pictures in just twenty-five days, it launched Corman's celebrated Poe cycle and gave Vincent Price one of his defining roles as the last male Usher.

Philip Winthrop arrives at the desolate estate to collect his fiancée Madeline. Her brother Roderick receives him with courtesy and absolute refusal: the Usher bloodline is tainted, he insists — not metaphorically but in the blood itself — and it must end here. The house seems to agree. No sunlight reaches it. Every sound is an agony for Roderick. The grounds around it are lifeless. Winthrop is rational, in love, and completely wrong to stay.

Price plays Roderick not as a villain but as a true believer — a man who is certain he is protecting everyone, right up until the walls come down. That conviction is what makes the film hold up across six decades. Stream House of Usher (1960) online on iFILM.