{"id":5044,"date":"2010-10-11T00:28:10","date_gmt":"2010-10-11T04:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=5044"},"modified":"2015-10-20T08:20:13","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T13:20:13","slug":"the-fall-of-the-louse-of-usher-2002-ken-russell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/5044","title":{"rendered":"The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002, Ken Russell)"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Help me someone! There’s a crazy woman in here trying to castrate me!”<\/p>\n

The Poe-injected story goes that rock star Roddy Usher killed his wife in a fit of madness so now he’s in hospital under the care of Dr. Calahari. But “story” is just an excuse for Ken. He got himself a DV camera (with built-in microphone), grabbed every silly prop and goofy actor he could find, and set to work making a camp comic “horror” flick. The credits say “Designed, Photographed, Edited, Produced & Directed by KEN RUSSELL (who also did the Cooking),” so this was a backyard hobby project. That page doesn’t even mention writing (he shares credit with Poe) or acting.<\/p>\n

Starring: Ken Russell<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

And have I mentioned it’s a musical? Full of puns and hammy awfulness and prank props and silly-ass music. Sounds nightmarishly awful, and I’m not some super-freakish Ken Russell fan who would forgive him a terrible movie. But, surprise! Shock! It’s not a terrible movie! At least I didn’t think so, as I quickly went from groaning at the self-conscious awfulness to laughing along. Mad Ken must be on the same camp-wavelength as me, which I should have guessed after seeing his Trapped Ashes<\/a><\/em> episode.<\/p>\n

Usher:
\n<\/p>\n

Of course it helps that I liked the music, composed by Usher himself James Johnston (who also played a rock star in Clean<\/a><\/em> – Maggie Cheung’s dead husband). Upsettingly, Nurse ABC Schmidt (Marie Findley) hasn’t appeared in other films. Sweet Annabelle Lee (Emma Millions) played “Tart” in Ken’s short Lion’s Mouth<\/em> – bad move not including that on the Usher<\/em> DVD. Russell’s wife played Usher’s sister (also a mummy in the second half) and the guy who played Igor (he stayed behind a mask) has been in Russell movies as far back as the 60’s.<\/p>\n

This guy, an experimental patient whose life Ken has been prolonging through chemicals or electricity or something, portrayed “Death” in a recent Woody Allen film.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Oops…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’d be afraid to watch this again. It doesn’t seem in retrospect like anything I would’ve enjoyed, so it might’ve just caught me in a perfectly receptive mood. As of this viewing, my only complaint is that there weren’t enough musical numbers in the second half.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, this nearly decade-old movie is Ken’s most recent full-length, coming a few years after his string of not-at-all-acclaimed TV movies.<\/p>\n

Ken looks dismayed at his lack of DVD sales:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Help me someone! There’s a crazy woman in here trying to castrate me!” The Poe-injected story goes that rock star Roddy Usher killed his wife in a fit of madness so now he’s in hospital under the care of Dr. Calahari. But “story” is just an excuse for Ken. He got himself a DV camera […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[369,233,316,603],"class_list":["post-5044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2000s","tag-digital-video","tag-edgar-allen-poe","tag-ken-russell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5044"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10520,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5044\/revisions\/10520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}