Sorry to hear that, Donna. I was recording "Dinotopia" too, but "House of Usher" didn't start until 40 minutes after that in my time zone. I think AMC airs these Poe adaptations at least a couple times every year (I always missed them), though that could change soon as AMC is planning to adopt a more TNT-like format.
I caught most of "Usher," but I had just arrived home and had to do stuff in the kitchen and eat, so I missed parts of it ...
They really jazzed up the original Poe story: for example, the whole love interest and the fire at the end. I thought I was watching "Jane Eyre" at that point. I guess the fire part worked, but it wasn't really necessary. In the story the house just crumbles and collapses.
The house was pretty great with all the ornate furnishings, but I thought it should have been darker and more fraying and shabby rather than "museum perfect."
They also missed an opportunity at the beginning to have a voiceover quoting Poe's wonderfully evocative opening narration which could have been very effective in setting the mood:
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was -- but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. ...
My favorite part was when Vincent Price tells how the house and the entire surrounding countryside became blighted from the many evils practiced by generations of Ushers ... And those portraits were very chilling. I think this explanation added a lot to the story even though it isn't explicit in Poe that I recall.
I was puzzled at first when the visitor (a very wooden Hispanic-looking actor) said he was calling on "Misasha." It sounded like a Russian name until I realized that he was saying "Miss Usher." He was supposed to be from Boston in the movie (instead of being Roderick's childhood friend as in Poe), so maybe that was a Boston accent (I've never been there but I think they drop their final "r's," don't they?
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It's also interesting to note that Charles Dickens may have borrowed from Poe (they admired each other's work) in describing Mrs. Clennam's house and how it has absorbed evil in "Little Dorrit."
