The Fall of the House of Usher (1949)

Man travels to comfort his troubled friend. There we learn that his family is cursed because dad apparently killed a dude for boning his wife. Wife is now an old hag who stays in the temple where dead dude's head is stored. They try to burn the head, but that doesn't go well. The stone house burns to the ground. Everyone dies, almost.

I skipped a lot of the story, but there's not much to see here. Stilted acting and heavy handed direction, overbearing score and a very made-for-TV feel. The sets were nice but not terribly well photographed. Adapting a Victorian short story to film for a post war audience presents many challenges, and those challenges remained unmet. Sequences that were intended to be dramatic or frightening ended up looking silly. Real MST3K stuff. Short and kinda likable, but clumsy and very skippable. AMRU 2.5.