The Fall of the House of Usher is Mike Flanagan’s latest miniseries and his last project with Netflix. Taking the works from the father of horror, Edgar Allan Poe, Flanagan creates an intriguing show filled with scares and gore, but also deep social criticism.
Flanagan has done multiple adaptations over the years, especially when it comes to horror classics. In The Fall of the House of Usher, he takes various short stories from Poe and incorporates some quotes into dialogue, such as from the short stories “Eleonora” and “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”. He also used various references to some of Poe’s most beloved poems, such as “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee”. Here are all the short story references Flanagan used in The Fall of the House of Usher.
Spoilers Ahead for The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher
The most obvious short story used is the one that named the miniseries, “The Fall of the House of Usher”. The story is about a man, the narrator, who is a lifelong friend of Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) and is called to go to Roderick’s house. Flanagan took various elements of this story and incorporated in the show. In the series, the two characters are actually Roderick and US Attorney Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), who were friends before Roderick betrayed the Dupin (originally a detective in many of Poe’s stories).
Roderick is the only living member of the Usher family left, as in the short story, and Flanagan used a great device from the story: the people Roderick talks about walk in and leave the frame – which triggers deep emotions.Auguste runs away, and the house collapses on the characters, as Madeline (Mary McDonnell), who Roderick tried to kill, attacks her brother, just like in the original story.
The Masque of the Red Death
“The Masque of the Red Death” was the second episode’s name and has everything to do with Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota), which is also the name of the lead character in the story. In the original, the Red Death is a plague which has infected a small town. Prince Prospero invites his closest friends into his castle, all from high societal ranks, and closes the doors to the rest of the town. The prince organizes a masquerade and is very careful about who attends his party — they can’t be sick.
The masquerade takes place, and someone he doesn’t know enters. It is then revealed that this person has the disease, and they contaminate everyone in the party. The miniseries plays with all the central elements, Prospero organizing an orgy for only the important and famous, and all of them dying trapped inside the party.
Murders in the Rue Morgue
“Murders in the Rue Morgue” is the name of the third episode and is another famous short story by Poe. Camille L’Espanaye (Kate Siegel) was a character taken from the original story who is found murdered. In the show it happened in the RUE (Roderick Usher Experiments) lab. C. Auguste Dupin was the detective in this short story and appears as the US Attorney in the show. Camille and her mother were murdered in their apartment, and no one knows how it happened. After investigating, Dupin noticed that it actually had been done by an Ourang-Outang (orangutan) — just like in the show.
The Black Cat
Probably one of Poe’s most famous short stories, “The Black Cat”, was used almost beat for beat in the fourth episode of the miniseries, which is also named after the story. “The Black Cat” is about a man who used to love animals but, because of excessive drinking, turns into a cruel person and ends up killing his favorite cat Pluto (same name in the show). He doesn’t remember he has done it, just like Napoleon (Rahul Kohli) in the miniseries.
The man gets a new cat, but that doesn’t solve his problem, and he begins to be violent with the new cat, too. The main difference is that in the short story, the man ends up also killing his wife, but Napoleon doesn’t kill his boyfriend. Verna (Carla Gugino) does appear to him inside his wall, with the cat on her shoulder like in the story.
The Tell-Tale Heart
“The Tell-Tale Heart” is perhaps Poe’s most famous short story and, like most of Poe’s horror tales, is about guilt. The narrator begins to work in an older man’s house as a caretaker. Compelled by some madness or unnamed desire, the narrator decides to kill him and then hides the body under the floorboard. But he begins to hear the old man’s heartbeat in his head and, when the police arrive and begin questioning him, he ends up confessing what he has done.
In the episode named after the story, Victorine (T’Nia Miller) doesn’t confess to the police, but she does open her girlfriend’s chest, whom she killed in a fit of rage, and places a medical device in her heart to help it keep beating. Victorine starts to hear the device working even when she is outside the house.
The Premature Burial
“The Premature Burial” is the short story Victorine’s name comes from, as well as her story arc. In both the show and story, Victorine LaFourcade gets married with ulterior motives in mind. In the miseries, she is with her girlfriend because she is hoping to continue testing an experimental heart device. In the original story, it is because of money. This story also talks about a disease that makes the body appear to be dead when it is still alive – which is exactly what happened to Roderick and Madeline’s mother, Eliza (Annabeth Gish), leading them to bury her alive.
William Wilson
The fear of the double has been documented for centuries. “William Wilson” tells the story of an unnamed narrator who believes he had met his double, whom he calls William Wilson. This idea is explored in the show in Tamerlane’s (Samantha Sloyan) story. She uses sex workers as an image of herself and ultimately kills herself by shattering a mirror, and her image, above her. In the story, the narrator thinks he is stabbing his opponent and double, when in reality he is looking in a mirror, watching as he stabs himself. Tamerlane’s husband’s name is William “Bill-T” Wilson (Matt Biedel).
The Gold-Bug
“The Gold-Bug” is about William Legrand, a character whom the narrator thinks is mad because he is obsessed with finding gold. The usage of imagery of the gold bug is on Tamerlane’s business company logo is seen on the episode named after the short story. That’s not all; Tamerlane starts to go insane and completely loses it as she is launching her company, which also correlates to the lead character in the story. And the overall theme of the entire show is about desiring wealth so much that it turns the person insane.
The Cask of Amontillado
“The Cask of Amontillado” plays into a definitive moment in the show: when Madeline and Roderick decide to kill Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco). In the short story, the narrator Montresor hates a man named Fortunato, just like the name of the company in the miniseries. He then compels him into descending into a wine cellar to drink a bottle of Amontillado.
By the time Fortunato realizes his mistake, he is drunk and it’s too late, as Montresor chains him to the wall. He then builds a brick wall around Fortunato, just like in the series. Madeline and Roderick poison Rufus with a glass of Amontillado, then take him downstairs and trap him inside a wall on the basement.
The Spectacles
“The Spectacles” is a short story that shares a character name with the miniseries: Napoleon. The story theme is about seeing things clearly, as well as the faulty idea of love at first sight, as the main character sees a beautiful woman at an opera and falls in love, only for him to put on his spectacles and find her appearance repugnant. Considering that Napoleon in the show dies seeing something only he can, the black cat, it makes sense why his name was taken from this short story.
The Pit and the Pendulum
“The Pit and the Pendulum” is about death and the anxiety of waiting for it to arrive. The unnamed narrator is sentenced to death, and he is locked somewhere he doesn’t know: a dark room. He discovers a pit in the floor and, after losing consciousness at one point, he wakes up strapped to a table with a bladed pendulum slowly descending towards him. This is the name of the penultimate episode, when Frederick (Henry Thomas), the last remaining child of Roderick, is killed. He is also killed by a pendulum made of a structure part of the warehouse that is being destroyed, while Verna explains why he deserves to have such a brutal death.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
“The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” tells the story of young Arthur, who has a series of adventures when he boards the ship Grampus, which turns into misfortune. In the story, his experiences include shipwreck and cannibalism.
In the series, the Usher’s mysterious lawyer Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill) shares a name and a story with the original character: he went on a famous expedition around the world. Roderick even says at one point that no one knows what happened to him on board that expedition and that he liked to think he ate human flesh. The character Lenore (Kyliegh Curran) builds a ship inside a bottle with her dad and calls it Grampus.
Morella
“Morella” tells the heartbreaking story of a husband who realizes his wife is physically deteriorating as she becomes ill, and he begins to wish for her death. Morella dies, and the narrator then begins to turn his ill feelings towards their daughter, who looks like her mother and also dies. In the series, Frederick’s wife is called Morella (Crystal Balint), and he tortures her, almost killing her. He doesn’t get to resent his daughter because he dies first, but Lenore also has the same faith as Morella’s daughter in the short story. Frederick pulling out Morella’s teeth comes from another short story called “Berenice”.
Some Words with a Mummy
Roderick, and especially Madeline, have an obsession with the idea of immortality and living forever. She has a large collection of Egyptian artifacts, and most of them have to do with the ritual of embalming the mummies. The story this is taken from is “Some Words with a Mummy,” where the narrator, alongside a doctor, uses electricity on a mummy and it brings the man back to life. The narrator decides to be embalmed – similar to what happens to Madeline.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
