In film and television
La Chute de la maison Usher is a 1928 silent French horror film directed by Jean Epstein starring Marguerite Gance, Jean Debucourt, and Charles Lamy.
A second silent film version, also released in 1928, was directed by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber.
A devout fan of the works of Poe, American director Curtis Harrington tackled the story in his first and last films. Casting himself in dual roles as Roderick and Madeline Usher in both versions, Harrington shot his original 10-minute silent short on 8mm in 1942,[31] and he shot a new 36 minute version simply titled Usher on 35mm[31] in 2000 which he intended to utilize in a longer Poe anthology film that never came to fruition.[32] Both versions were included on the 2013 DVD/Blu-ray release Curtis Harrington: The Short Film Collection.
In 1950, a British film version of The Fall of the House of Usher was produced starring Gwen Watford, Kay Tendeter and Irving Steen.
In 1956, NBC Matinee Theater on US television broadcast The Fall of the House of Usher starring Marshall Thompson and Tom Tryon for episode 197.
In the Roger Corman film from 1960, released in the United States as House of Usher, Vincent Price starred as Roderick Usher, Myrna Fahey as Madeline and Mark Damon as Philip Winthrop, Madeline's fiancé. The film was Corman's first in a series of eight films inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
A television adaptation was produced by ATV for the ITV network in 1966 for the horror anthology series Mystery and Imagination. Episode 3 in 1966 was The Fall of the House of Usher.
In 1976, a 30 minutes version of The Fall of the House of Usher was made for Short Story Showcase for American TV.
In 1979, Italian state channel RAI loosely adapted the short story, together with other Poe's works, in the series I racconti fantastici di Edgar Allan Poe.[33] It was directed by Daniele D'Anza, with Roderick Usher played by Philippe Leroy; music was composed by pop band Pooh.
Filmed in 1979 but not released until 1982,[34] American television network NBC broadcast the story, directed by James L. Conway and starring Martin Landau, Robert Hays, Ray Walston and Charlene Tilton.[35]
In 1989, The House of Usher was a film produced by American, British, and Canadian companies starring Oliver Reed.
In 2002, Ken Russell produced a horror comedy version titles The Fall of the Louse of Usher.
The 2006 film The House of Usher from Australian director Hayley Cloake, starring Austin Nichols as Roderick Usher, was an update of the tale set in the modern era with a love interest for Roderick in the form of the best friend of his deceased sister.[36]
The Fall of the House of Usher (2015), narrated by Christopher Lee, is an animated short film which is part of Extraordinary Tales.[37][38]
Intrepid Pictures created an eight-episode limited series titled The Fall of the House of Usher for Netflix that is based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Mike Flanagan and Michael Fimognari each directed four episodes and executive produced the series, which premiered in 2023.[39]
In theater and music
From 1908 to 1917, French composer Claude Debussy worked on an opera titled La chute de la maison Usher.
The lyrics of Alan Hull's song "Lady Eleanor", a 1971 hit single for British folk rock band Lindisfarne, were inspired by "The Fall of the House of Usher" and other Poe works.[40]
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a five-part instrumental suite on the 1976 album Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project.
The Fall of the House of Usher is another operatic version, composed by Philip Glass in 1987 with a libretto by Arthur Yorinks, premiered at the American Repertory Theatre and the Kentucky Opera in 1988 and was revived at the Nashville Opera in 2009.[41] The Long Beach Opera mounted a version of this work in February 2013 at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, Los Angeles.[42]
The Fall of the House of Usher is an opera composed by Peter Hammill with a libretto by Chris Judge Smith released in 1991 on Some Bizzare Records; in 1999, Hammill revised his work and released it as The Fall of the House of Usher (Deconstructed & Rebuilt). This opera has never been performed live.
In 2002 Lance Tait wrote a one-act play, The Fall of the House of Usher, based on Poe's tale. Laura Grace Pattillo wrote in The Edgar Allan Poe Review (2006), "[Tait's] play follows Poe's original story quite closely, using a female Chorus figure to help further the tale as the 'Friend' (as Tait names the narrator) alternates between monologue and conversation with Usher."[43]
In 2008, a musical adaptation ("Usher") won the Best Musical award at the New York International Fringe Festival.[44][45][46]
In literature
The Martian Chronicles, a 1950 collection of stories by Ray Bradbury, contains a novella called "Usher II," a homage to Poe. Its main character, William Stendahl, builds a house based on the specifications from Poe's story to murder his enemies.
Usher's Passing, a 1984 novel by Robert R. McCammon, is a gothic fiction novel based on the "true" story of the Usher family. Poe makes an appearance in the flashback that starts the novel.[47]
The 2022 novel What Moves the Dead by American writer T. Kingfisher is a retelling of "The Fall of the House of Usher".
