Roger Cormans film of the classic Edgar Allan Poe story ushered in a new era of horror.
I felt audiences would enjoy seeing them on the screen.
He pitched AIP an adaptation of the Poe story and the studio said yes.
The incestuous sexual/horror relationship between them, it was just a fascinating situation.
He was so pale and withdrawn that the sunlight never, ever touched his flesh.
I myself had no plans to make a second picture, Corman said years later onAmerican Masters.
I simply wanted to makeThe Fall of the House of Usher.
Unwittingly or not, Roger Corman started a horror franchise with a minor masterpiece that is still remembered today.
The House of Usher will forever loom, tall and forbidding, over the history of its genre.
