Double Takes: ‘The House of Usher’ (1989) ★★ / (2006) ★

OK, I was wrong.

A couple years ago, when I reviewed a selection of David DeCoteau movies, I advised readers to skip DeCoteau’s very gay and very bad Edgar Allen Poe’s The House of Usher and try their luck with two other schlocky versions, one from 1989, the other from 2006, speculating that both movies look “like they deliver the fun kind of bad DeCoteau didn’t.”

They do not, though director Alan Birkinshaw’s The House of Usher (1989), comes close. In this one, Molly (Romy Walthall, billed as Romy Windsor) and her fiancée Ryan (Rufus Swart) are vacationing in London when they get an invitation to visit Ryan’s heretofore unknown uncle, Roderick Usher. But on the way to visit Uncle Rod, Ryan swerves into a tree to avoid two children in the middle of the road (why, yes, they are ghosts; how did you ever guess?) Ryan’s injured, so Molly goes to get help, by chance stumbling up to the Usher mansion, where Clive the asshole butler (Norman Coombes) assures her that he’ll make sure Ryan gets the medical assistance he needs. Meanwhile, why doesn’t she have a cup of tea and a lie down upstairs before dinner with the master of the house?

When Molly finally meets Roderick (Oliver Reed), she’s assured that Ryan is in the hospital but unable to receive visitors just yet. Though Molly has her doubts, she agrees to stay put. However, it seems no amount of drugged tea—served regularly by Clive’s miserable wife (Anne Stradi)—will keep Molly in her room. As she explores the titular House of Usher, discovering, among other things, another member of the Usher clan (Donald Pleasence) kept locked away in the attic, Molly begins to suspect Uncle Rod might have sinister intentions.

This version of Usher has some things going for it. There are a few—very few—noteworthy set pieces, including a hand forced into a meat grinder fake-out and a character getting his dick gnawed-off by a rat; plus, Reed and, especially, Pleasence raise the bar considerably. Unfortunately, we spend most of our time with Walthall, whose performance seems better suited for a movie entitled Sorority Beach Party than a Gothic horror. In fact, the movie’s whole tone is off, like Birkinshaw and screenwriter Michael J. Murray had initially conceived this adaption of Poe’s story as a horror comedy but couldn’t think up any jokes—good or bad—before filming began. Yet, the movie is still filmed like a comedy, as brightly lit as a Disney Channel sit-com and with tacky sets that look as if they were hastily painted for a haunted house attraction at a high school Halloween fair. And the less said about the ending, which is as infuriating as it is nonsensical, the better.

But at least 1989’s Usher has some entertainment value. Not so director Hayley Cloake’s 2006 adaptation, which clocks in at a mere 81 minutes yet feels twice as long. This time out, our doomed heroine is Roderick Usher’s ex-girlfriend from college, Jill (pouty blonde Izabella Miko), who travels to the Usher estate upon learning of the death of Roderick’s sister—and Jill’s best friend—Madeline. Though the stern, Mrs. Danvers-esque housekeeper Mrs. Thatcher (Beth Grant) is less than welcoming, Jill sticks around after Maddy’s funeral, rekindling her romance with the charmless Roderick (a monotone Austin Nichols). Jill puts up with Mrs. Thatcher’s cock-blocking and her beau’s nightly sessions in a sensory deprivation tank to treat his neurasthenia, but it’s only upon discovering that the Usher family tree is a straight line that she begins to reconsider her relationship to the brooding Roderick.

Cloake’s movie may be a bit more competently made than DeCoteau’s Usher, but it isn’t any better; it’s just straighter. The movie’s most inspired elements—mixing in bits of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca into the story; the incest twist—are wasted, as are most of the actors. Miko makes the best impression, though I’m not sure if that’s testament to her acting skill so much as she’s just given more of a character to play than her co-stars. An actor who should have stolen this movie was Grant, a prolific character actor who usually makes a big impression in small roles. Grant frequently appears in comedies, so I was looking forward to seeing what she did with a more serious role. Not much, it turns out. It’s not her fault, though; it’s screenwriter Collin Chang’s. And if you’re thinking of checking this one out to ogle Miko or Nichols, don’t bother. Though rated R, this Usher only offers a few shots of Miko in panties and skimpy top and a near-subliminal shot of Nichols’ pubes. At least DeCoteau had the courtesy to appeal his audience’s prurient interests, albeit clumsily. Despite the curb appeal of her movie’s cast, Cloake’s The House of Usher is strictly a teardown property.

Double Takes: 'Madame Claude' (1977) ★★ 1/2 / (2021) ★★★

Before the Mayflower Madam, and well before the Hollywood Madam, there was Madame Claude, who in her 1960s and ’70s heyday reportedly supplied women for John F. Kennedy and the Shah of Iran. All three women got their stories told in made-for-TV movies, but only Madame Claude (real name Fernande Grudet) merited a feature.

Unfortunately for Grudet, that theatrical film, 1977’s Madame Claude, was directed by Just Jaeckin, the same man who gave the world Emmanuelle. While Jaeckin does provide some biographical details about the Parisienne madam (excellently portrayed by Françoise Fabian), such as her acting as a police informant in exchange for police protection, he primarily uses her as a framing device for setting up a series of softcore sex scenes. The movie seems more focused on the character David Evans (Murray Head, post-Sunday Bloody Sunday and pre-“One Night in Bangkok”), a sleazy photographer being used by police to get incriminating snapshots of Mme. Claude’s girls with their clients. Another story thread focuses on Elizabeth (a better-than-usual Dayle Haddon), the madam’s newest recruit who is alternately too headstrong to tolerate the controlling madam’s bullshit, yet too naïve to realize she’ll never be more than a whore to her clients. The movie also features Robert Webber as a JFK stand-in and Klaus Kinski as a hedonistic business tycoon (don’t worry, neither of them get naked).

As one might expect from fashion photographer-turned-erotic filmmaker Jaeckin, Madame Claude looks great and it has a few spirited sex scenes, but the movie’s tone is all over the place, bouncing from frothy sex romp to sexy drama to political thriller. The movie is further hampered by its disjointed narrative, which is often hard to follow. Only Fabian’s performance as the steely Claude gives the movie any real dramatic weight. Jaeckin may have been going for something a little more substantial than his previous softcore outings, but ultimately the movie is less Klute with a French accent and more akin to The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington remade as a French drama.

Madame Claude did spawn a 1981sequel, Madame Claude 2, directed by François Mimet, though its a.k.a., Intimate Moments, is more fitting as it has even less to do with the infamous madam than the first movie. It’s pure Skinemax trash. No, Mme. Grudet didn’t get a proper biopic until Sylvie Verheyde’s Madame Claude landed on Netflix last year.

Verheyde’s film is more serious—way more—than exploitative, and its story is structured more like a traditional biopic, making it easier to follow than Jaeckin’s film, though viewers still need to be fast on their feet to keep up with some of the political machinations. The titular madame is played by Karole Rocher, and while her acting is fine, I thought her portrayal reduced Mme. Claude to little more than a neurotic bitch—you know, the kind you see in almost every other French melodrama. (I don’t know if this portrayal is more accurate, but it's certainly less interesting.) Fabian’s performance showed a woman who was always in control, while Rocher’s madam is frequently throwing tantrums and breaking shit like she’s on The Real Housewives of Marais. She’s also colder than any street pimp. After one of her girls returns from a date all bruised and bloody, the madam blithely tells her, “It’s nothing. A nice shower, a good night’s sleep, and that’s the end of it.”

Unlike Jaeckin’s film, which never looks like it’s taking place in a time other than the mid-’70s, Verheyde’s Madame Claude pays more attention to period detail. Still, there are anachronisms, primarily with the character Sidonie (Garrance Marillier), who is sort of this movie’s Elizabeth, if Elizabeth was a wealthy girl with daddy issues. Sidonie is always smoking 120s, even in the scenes set in the late 1960s, when that length of cigarette wasn’t introduced until the early ’70s. Worse, Sidonie’s look never, ever changes. Whether it’s the 1960s or 1990s, Sidonie always looks like a 20-something woman with the exact same hairstyle. This oversight is pretty fucking glaring considering that the movie takes great pains to make sure 1990s-era Mme. Claude looks like she’s in her 70s. The movie also can’t escape its cheapness, with much of it being shot on cramped sets, giving it an overall claustrophobic feel. Madame Claude 2021 may be leagues above Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss, but it’s still a made-for-TV movie.

For all its flaws, I think Verheyde’s movie is the better biopic, which is why I’m giving it a half-star more. However, I think Jaeckin’s brand of highbrow Eurotrash is the more interesting watch.