"Central Film Distribution presents" "THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER" "His heart is a suspended lute;" "as soon as it is touched, it resounds." "Narrator" "Music" "Animator" "Editor" "Production Assistants" "Producer" "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 evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher." "There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime." "What was it..." "I paused to think." "What was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?" "Yet in this mansión of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks." "Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood but many years had elapsed since our last meeting." "A letter from him had lately reached me in a distant part of the country - a letter which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply." "The handwriting gave evidence of nervous agitation." "The writer spoke of acute bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him and of an earnest desire to see me as his best, and indeed his only, personal friend." "Surely man had never before so terribly altered in so brief a period as had Roderick Usher." "It was with difficulty that I could admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood." "Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable." "A cadaverousness of complexion, an eye large and luminous, a nose of a delicate Hebrew model but with unusual breadth of nostril, lips somewhat thin and very pallid but of a beautiful curve, a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy," "hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity." "These features made up a countenance not easily to be forgotten." "He entered, at some length, into the nature of his malady." "It was, he said, a family evil for which he despaired to find a remedy." "He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions which, in the form of his family mansión, by dint of long sufferance, had obtained over his spirit an effect which the physique of the grey walls and the dim tarn into which they looked down" "brought about upon the morale of his existence." "He admitted, although with hesitation, that the peculiar gloom which afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin to the severe and long-continued illness, to the evidently approaching dissolution of a tenderly beloved sister." "While he spoke, the lady Madeline, for so was she called, passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment and disappeared without having noticed my presence." "For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself and during this period I endeavoured to alleviate the melancholy of my friend." "We painted and read together or I listened to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar." "In the greenest of our valleys" "By good angels tenanted" "Once a fair and stately palace Radiant palace reared its head" "In the monarch Thought s dominion It stood there!" "Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair" "Banners yellow glorious golden on its roof did float and flow" "This all this was in the olden Time long ago" "And every gentle air that dallied in that sweet day" "Along the ramparts plumed and pallid a winged odour went away" "Wanderers in that happy valley through two luminous windows saw" "Spirits moving musically to a lute s well-tuned law" "Round about a throne where sitting Porphyrogene!" "In state his glory well befitting The ruler of the realm was seen" "But evil things in robes of sorrow Assailed the monarch s high estate" "Ah let us mourn for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!" "And round about his home the glory that blushed and bloomed" "Is but a dim -remembered story of the old time entombed" "Travellers now within that valley Through the red-litten windows see" "Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody" "While like a rapid ghastly river Through the pale door" "A hideous throng rush out forever And laugh but smile no more" "I remember that this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein Usher defended his opinion about the sentience of all vegetable things." "But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganisation." "The belief was connected with the grey stones of the home of his forefathers." "He imagined the conditions of the sentience had been fulfilled in the collocation of stones in the order of their arrangement as well as that of the many fungi which overspread them and of the decayed trees which stood around in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement" "and its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn." "Its evidence, the evidence of the sentience, was to be seen, and I here started as he spoke, in the condensation of their atmosphere about the waters and the walls." "The result was discoverable in that silent yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family." "One evening he informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more." "Some days of bitter grief elapsed and an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend." "His ordinary manner had vanished." "His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten." "He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step." "The pallor of his countenance had assumed a more ghastly hue but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out." "I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage." "I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours as if listening to some imaginary sound." "I felt creeping upon me by slow yet certain degrees the influence of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions." "I experienced the full power of such feelings in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon." "Sleep came not near my couch while the hours waned and waned away." "A light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention." "I presently recognised it as that of Usher." "'And you have not seen it?" "' 'You have not then seen it?" "'" "He carefully shaded his lamp, hurried to one of the casements and threw it freely open to the storm." "'You must not, you shall not behold this!" "' Said I shudderingly to Usher as I led him with a gentle violence from the window to a seat." "'Here is one of your favourite romances.'" "'I will read and you shall listen and we will pass this terrible night together.'" "The antique volume which I had taken up was The Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning." "I had arrived at that portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the book, having sought in vain for peaceable admissión into the dwelling of the hermit, broceeds to ma ke good a ment ra nce by force" "'And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, now having drunk strong wine, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who was of an obstinate and maliceful turn." "He uplifted his mace outright and, with blows, made room in the door for his gauntleted hand and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked and ripped and tore all asunder that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood reverberated throughout the forest.'" "At the termination of this sentence I started and for a moment paused because it appeared to me that from some remote portion of the mansión there came indistinctly to my ears what might have been the echo of the very cracking and ripping sound" "Sir Launcelot had so particularly described." "It was beyond doubt the coincidence alone for, amid the rattling of the window frames and the noises of the increasing storm, the sound had nothing which should have interested or disturbed me." "I continued the story." "'As the good champion Ethelred entered the door, he was enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit." "In the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten!" ""Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath been." "Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win."" "And Ethelred uplifted his mace and struck upon the head of the dragon which fell and gave up his pesty breath with a shriek so horrid and harsh," "Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise, the like whereof was never before heard.'" "Here again I paused abruptly, now with a feeling of wild amazement, for there could be no doubt that I did actually hear a low and apparently distant but harsh, protracted, most unusual screaming or grating sound," "the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek." "Oppressed, upon this coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant," "I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting the sensitive nervousness of my companion." "I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds, although a strange alteration had now taken place in his demeanour." "From a position fronting my own, he had brought round his chair so as to face the door of the chamber and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly." "His head had dropped upon his breast, yet I knew that he was not asleep from the wide and rigid opening of the eye." "The motion of his body was at variance with this idea for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway." "Having rapidly taken notice of all this," "I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded!" "'And now the champion, having escaped from the dragon's fury, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of its enchantment, removed the carcass from out of the way and approached over the silver pavement" "to where the shield was upon the wall, which in sooth tarried not for his full coming but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor with a mighty, great and terrible ringing sound.'" "No sooner had these syllables passed my lips than I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangourous, yet apparently muffled reverberation, as if a shield of brass had indeed fallen heavily upon a floor of silver." "Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed." "His eyes were bent fixedly before him, throughout his body reigned stony rigidity." "As I placed my hand upon his shoulder, his whole person shuddered, a sickly smile quivered about his lips, and he spoke in a low, gibbering murmur as if unconscious of my presence." "Bending closely over him," "I at length drank in the hideous import of his words." "'We have put her living in the tomb!" "I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin." "I heard them, many, many days ago yet I dared not..." "I dared not speak!" "And now... tonight..." "Ethelred." "Ha, ha!" "Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste?" "Madman!" "I tell you that she now stands without the door!" "'" "Lady Madeline remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then with a low, moaning cry fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother and in her violent final death agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse" "and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated." "There was a long, tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher."