Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

MARIO GAUCI An abstract claymation version of Edgar Allan Poe's famous horror tale. The lack of a proper narrative here ultimately makes one appreciate the original intent more readily than admire – or enjoy – the obvious effort involved. Admittedly, my low estimation of this short film has much to do with the fact that the verbose Czech narration was not supplied in an English-friendly form (being solely accompanied by Spanish subtitles). The original source material is among the tormented American author's most famous works which, consequently, has had innumerable adaptations for both the big and small screens; I have three of the latter planned for future viewing during this ongoing Halloween marathon. Again, the seminal Corman/Poe film version from 1960 is the most popular but one should not forget that the narrative can lend itself equally to Art – Jean Epstein's 1928 avant-garde classic – and Trash – Jesus Franco's REVENGE IN THE HOUSE OF USHER (1982)!

MartinHafer This version of "The Fall of the House of Usher" is amazingly strange--which shouldn't be much of a surprise since it's by the surrealist stop-motion filmmaker, Jan Svankmajer. Only he would make such an odd film. Think about it--the Poe story with absolutely no actors in it whatsoever! Instead, there is a narrator while all kids of weird things occur in a very old home which looks abandoned. You'll see closeups of walls, lumps of clay that mold themselves and a coffin that drags itself to an interment. None of it makes any sense--though that is exactly the point in a surrealist film. But, because it is so strange and difficult to approach, I can't see this art film appealing to most--just lovers of Svankmajer's work and people who like artsy-fartsy stuff. As for me, I can respect what he did, but I certainly didn't enjoy it very much.

MisterWhiplash For sixteen minutes Czech animator and filmmaker Jan Svankmajer does his job well with getting a real terror and doom and gloom and deconstruction of the house of Usher, one of those quintessential spots of horror of Poe. In just watching the images go by and the stop-motion utilized in creative and unexpected ways involving the house and walls and pools of water and mud, it's amazing work. But the problem for me was in the actual translation of the story itself. Perhaps it's being only most familiar with English, so with the DVD subtitles going by at a quick clip that it's hard to keep up with keeping an eye on all of these dark visions put on the screen. That there's also a complete lack of any actors (unless one counts a sole raven among the cast) is also a deterrent since the story features all of these characters decomposing along with the damned house itself. It's an expressionist experiment, somewhat reminiscent of parts of Last Year at Marienbad, but it's only successful in part because of the director's dedication to the imagery. It's great pictures put to a so-so execution of "story" if there is much of one at all; maybe I'll learn Czech one say and it'll appear better.

Timothy Damon Beginning and ending with the shot of a large raven, Jan Svankmajer's rendition of Poe's tale of The Fall of the House of Usher uses various stop-motion animation techniques to tell a riveting version with mold growing, chairs moving about, and the name of Roderick's sister appearing magicly in clay. All sorts of furniture rapidly departing (without the help of human hands) the house as it disintegrates adds a somewhat light touch to the story.