An Edgar Allan Poe smorgasboard

My mother loved to tell horror stories and her favorites were those by Edgar Allan Poe’s. So, alongside the usual Cinderella and Peter Pan, my story time included The Gold Bug, Murders in the Rue Morgue and the like.

Poe was an American poet and writer who lived during the 1800s. He was one of the first to write short stories and is credited with having created the genres of detective and science fiction.  His was not a happy life. He was orphaned at an early age and in adulthood lost his wife to tuberculosis.

To this day, the cause of Poe’s death at the age of 40 remains a mystery. Was it due to alcoholism, drugs, liver disease or suicide? Nobody knows. But he wrote a lot and his novellas, stories and poems are considered landmarks in American literature.

As a kid, I did not understand what Poe’s stories were about. My mother would just say, “Nakakatakot yan” and I would get into “No Mommy” screams when laughing she starts “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…”

I also enjoyed Poe while in school. I had an English teacher who read his poems beautifully. I remember how her voice would take on the sound of the different bells, tinkling with a crystalline delight as sleigh bells or moaning and groaning like bells tolling for the dead.

Needless to say, I became familiar with words like Amontillado and pendulum at a young age and I grew up fascinated with the works of Poe, who I later found out, did have a flair for conjuring up tales that are uniquely macabre.

One of Poe’s best is The Fall of the House of Usher. This is about a man, Roderick Usher who believes that his life is intertwined with a crumbling house that is alive and menacing. Nearing his death, Usher asks his friend to visit. It is to this guest that he relates his story and in the end, he did die along with the house.

Now, the Usher tale is what the spooky duo of Mike Flanagan and Michael Fumognari have recently taken on. This Mike and Michael pairing has recently achieved success with films like Oculus, The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass. These established their reputation for well-made horror films with those nerve-racking jump-starts. You know, the kind wherein, you must not blink or you will be off your seat like a rocket.

Given this, it was inevitable that Mike and Michael would soon gravitate towards the Poe stories and oh, did they take on the best, The Fall of the House of Usher, which is now running on Netflix. Watch and you will find out that this is not only about a modern-day Usher and his family told Succession-style but a veritable feast of everything Edgar Allan Poe.

A raven ties the episodes together but in between Mike and Michael have spun a tale that includes a mysterious brick wall, premature burial, a plague on lust and greed, a killer chimp, a black cat who drives a man mad, a gold bug that brings ill fortune, a heart that beats beyond death and a mysterious woman who brings on Usher’s downfall.

It felt like solving a most interesting puzzle finding out where the scary plotlines came from Poe’s list of works. Not only that, the names of the main characters were supplied by Poe.  Brother and sister Roderick and Madeline Usher come as is. But there is also a Prospero, a Lenore, a Tamerlane, even an Annabel Lee.You know, “It was many and many a year ago, in this kingdom by the sea, there lived a maiden who you may know by the name of Annabel Lee…”

Business tycoon Usher is ill, haunted by his past and in need of a successor. His six children grew up spoiled, mad with greed and willing to risk anything to succeed and please Daddy.  Then they started to die one by one all in Edgar Allan Poe style. Aunt Madeline, just as guilty of everything tries to hold things together. But as Poe wrote so long ago, Usher must fall until like the raven said, they are all “nevermore.”

With a master like Poe to inspire them and a competent cast who are the spookiest ever seen, I think the Mike and Michael duo came off with their best work in Usher. The only regret is that I think they used up all of Poe in this series and we will never get to find what they could have done with the other stories.

Sorry, for the digression from my usual sounds but it is Halloween time and I so enjoyed The Fall of the House of Usher.