I haven't always been a horror fan. In fact, quite the opposite. It was only very recently that I got over being a scaredy-cat and could actually watch a horror movie without cringing, mostly thanks to a Gothic horror class I took in college. And Joel Schumacher's The Phantom of the Opera (2004).
One of the more fascinating aspects of the class - one of many - was the figure of the Gothic heroine, a woman who seems oppressed by a patriarchal menace, but manages to subvert that overwhelming force with her own ingenuity. At once sexually conservative and socially subversive, she is a particularly tricky and complex character.
Mary Lambert, female horror director extraordinare (Pet Semetary I & II, "Tales from the the Crypt"), discusses Gothic horror, Edgar Allen Poe, and "bodice rippers" (another guilty pleasure of mine, as well as a fixture in the Gothic) in her commentary of Roger Corman's The House of Usher (1960) over at Trailers from Hell. The first in a series of Poe-related films done by Corman for AIP, it was the first of Corman's low-budget gems to be shot in color, as Lambert says.
The House of Usher plays Friday, August 10th at 5:30pm on TCM for those who'd like to watch it's wonderfulness. I'll certainly be watching. Enjoy!
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