{film} – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 804

Poster for The Phantom of the Opera, 1925. The first Universal horror film, and the best screen adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s novel, was released 100 years ago this month.

• “Evolution seems to have a thing for mind-bending molecules here on planet Earth. Psychedelics are more widespread in nature than you might think. These remarkable compounds, which can profoundly alter consciousness, arose repeatedly across evolutionary time, stretching back at least 65 million years. To date, some 80 species of fungi, at least 20 plants, and a species of toad have been documented to produce psychoactive molecules. And scientists continue to identify new ones.” Kristin French presents a trip around our surprisingly psychedelic planet.

• “There was no condescending sense with Potter —all too present today as then—that the public were idiots who needed to be intellectually housetrained, by their enlightened ‘betters’. […] Television was not treated as a particularly serious medium, something Potter upended not by performing ‘seriousness’ but by bringing out the possibilities few had believed it contained.” Darran Anderson on the television plays of Dennis Potter.

• At Public Domain Review: AD Manns on a possible origin for the occult lore presented in Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia, Or the Gospel of the Witches, a founding text for the witchcraft revival of the 20th century.

• New music: Implosion by The Bug vs Ghost Dubs; Herzog Sessions by Mouse On Mars; VHS Days Vol. 1 by Russian Corvette.

• At the BFI: David West selects 10 great Hong Kong action films of the 1980s.

• Wyrd Britain talks to the great Ian Miller about his long illustration career.

• Mix of the week: DreamScenes – November 2025 at Ambientblog.

• At The Wire: Stream the new album by Ann Kroeber & Alan Splet.

• Seb Rochford’s favourite records.

• RIP Tatsuya Nakadai, actor.

• Phantom Lover (2010) by John Foxx | Phantom Cities (2020) by The Sodality Of Shadows | Phantom Melodies (2018) by Cavern Of Anti-Matter

Weekend links 802

November (1879) by John Atkinson Grimshaw.

• As usual, the first links in November are heavy with the spirit of Halloween. At the BFI: Zombies in the Lake District: how locations from The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue look today; Adam Scovell looks back at one of the more curious zombie films of the 1970s, a Spanish/Italian production directed by Jorge Grau in and around my home city. Also at the BFI: Georgina Guthrie selects 10 great erotic horror films.

• “We must recognise that reality without mystery is impossible.” In a recently digitised film clip, René Magritte is interviewed (in French) by Belgian TV in 1961.

• The Italian edition of The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic is out now from Panini. Thanks to Smoky Man for posting photos!

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Short Fiction by Saki.

• At Smithsonian Mag: Elizabeth Djinis explains how an Italian town came to be known as the “City of Witches”.

• New music: The Whole Woman by Anna von Hausswolff ft. Iggy Pop; Forces, Reactions, Deflections by Scanner.

• RIP Jack DeJohnette, jazz drummer; Prunella Scales, actor; Peter Watkins, film-maker.

• Space Type Generator

• Algiers November 1, 1954 (1965) by Ennio Morricone | November Sequence (2011) by Pye Corner Audio | Richter: November (2019) by Mari Samuelsen

Jean Epstein’s House of Usher

There’s always more Poe. A couple of years ago I wrote about the short American film adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher co-directed by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber. Watson and Webber’s experimental take on Poe was made in 1928, and happens to be one of two films based on the story that were made that year.

This week I watched the longer French adaptation (La Chute de la Maison Usher) directed by Jean Epstein, a very impressive silent film which changes a few details—Roderick and Madeline Usher are now husband and wife rather than brother and sister—but otherwise remains close to Poe’s tale. Epstein’s film is notable for having Luis Buñuel’s name on its screenplay credits but disputes between Buñuel and Epstein means few of Buñuel’s contributions survived. The film is also noted for its dream-like atmosphere, a quality the director favours over storytelling to such a degree that it helps if you’re already familiar with the story.

Epstein’s house of Usher is toy-like castle in exterior shots whose interior reveals cavernous spaces as vast as Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu living room, with billowing curtains that make the place a precursor of the magical castle in Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête. Jean Debucourt is a Roderick Usher who spends his time obsessively painting the doomed Madeline (Marguerite Gance), paying no attention to her increasing fraility. Poe’s visiting guest in this version is an aged man (Charles Lamy) with sight and hearing difficulties which contribute to the general ignorance of Madeline’s plight. In one of the opening scenes, director Abel Gance (the husband of Marguerite) may be seen inside an inn. Gance is best known today for the bravura cinematic invention of his 1927 Napoleon (which I recommend), but Epstein shows himself a match for Gance in the range of effects he brings to the Ushers’ plight: rapid edits, slow motion, double-exposures, low-angle shots, and a remarkable point-of-view sequence where Roderick seems to be floating through the hall. Later in the film the camera drifts along the mansion corridors following wind-blown leaves, a forerunner of all the Steadicam shots of the 1980s.

I was watching this copy of the film, an excellent print (no doubt swiped from disc) with French intertitles. The downloadable files include a subtitle file but with Portuguese subtitles only. English subs may be found here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Robert Lawson’s House of Usher
• The Fall of the House of Usher, 1928
• Burt Shonberg’s Poe paintings

A feast of Poe

King Pest by Alberto Martini.

My thanks to the estimable Mr Shea for bringing to my attention this website devoted to the many illustrated editions of Edgar Allan Poe. Quite a few of the older illustrations have been featured here in the past but most of the later ones are new to me. The site is comprehensive enough to include my own illustrated edition from 2017, a book whose shortcomings I often find myself apologising for. (I was very pressured for time with that commission, and would welcome an opportunity to redo some of the pictures.)

A Descent into the Maelström by Alberto Martini.

I could draw attention to the later editions but I’ll single out the work of Alberto Martini (1876–1954), an Italian artist whose work I find especially attractive for the way it provides a bridge between Decadence and Surrealism. His Poe illustrations appear now and then in books or articles about horror fiction but you seldom see all of them together.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Alberto Martini.

Meanwhile, Ted Parmelee’s short but very effective animated adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart (1953) turned up recently at the Internet Archive in a copy that’s the best I’ve seen to date. Watch it here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Robert Lawson’s House of Usher
• Edmund Dulac’s illustrated Poe
• The Fall of the House of Usher, 1928
• The Purloined Eidolon
• Martin van Maële’s illustrated Poe
• Mask of the Red Death, 1969
• Narraciones extraordinarias by Edgar Allan Poe
• Fritz Eichenberg’s illustrated Poe
• The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope
• Hugo Steiner-Prag’s illustrated Poe
• Burt Shonberg’s Poe paintings
• Illustrating Poe #5: Among the others
• Illustrating Poe #4: Wilfried Sätty
• Illustrating Poe #3: Harry Clarke>
• Illustrating Poe #2: William Heath Robinson
• Illustrating Poe #1: Aubrey Beardsley
• Poe at 200
• The Tell-Tale Heart from UPA
• William Heath Robinson’s illustrated Poe

Weekend links 801

The Magic Circle (1886) by John William Waterhouse.

• The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic has just been published in France by Editions Delcourt. A preview here shows how carefully they’ve managed to translate and reletter my page designs.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Algernon Blackwood’s stories of John Silence, occult detective.

• Relevant to some of my recent reading: The Necronomicon Wars, an examination of the many attempts to give life to HP Lovecraft’s fictional grimoire.

Altered States is tremendously exciting to watch—and not only during its psychedelic interludes when goat Jesus is being crucified and writhing red figures are toppling, Hieronymus Bosch–like, into hell and abstract splotches give the impression of cells endlessly dividing or murky membranes dissolving and beautiful women stare into Magritte skies and waves of lava crash as though the molten core of humanity itself were erupting. Even in its quieter moments, it is a beautiful film, with Hurt’s every appearance shot by cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth to emphasize his character’s alien otherworldliness.

Jessica Kiang explores the creation of Ken Russell’s flawed but fascinating psychedelic feature, Altered States

• A new catalogue of lots at another After Dark: Gay Art and Culture online auction. Homoerotic art, photos, historic porn. etc.

• Tarot decks through the ages: a video showing some of the cards from Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection.

• More psychedelia: Neuroscientist Grigori Guitchounts asks “What is your brain doing on psychedelics?”

• At the Daily Heller: Ryan Hughes has published a weighty collection of his typeface designs.

• Old music: Caged (25th Anniversary Edition) by Ian Boddy & Chris Carter.

• At the BFI: Rory Doherty selects 10 great Technicolor melodramas.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: The Old School Horrors of Terence Fisher.

• Photographs from the 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

• Ambientblog celebrates 20 years of existence.

• RIP Dave Ball.

• Necronomicon (1970) by Les Baxter | Liriïk Necronomicus Kahnt (1975) by Magma | Necronomicon–The Magus (2004) by John Zorn