Myrna Fahey as Madeline Usher Harry Ellerbe as Bristol Production The film was important in the history of American International Pictures which up until then had specialized in making low budget black and white films to go out on double bills. The market for this kind of movie was in decline so AIP decided to gamble on making a larger budgeted film in color. The film was announced in February 1959 and was dubbed the company's "most ambitious film to date". A number of other companies announced Poe projects around this time: Alex Gordon had a version of Masque of the Red Death, Fox had Murders in the Rue Morgue, Ben Bogeus The Gold Bug, and Universal The Raven. It was shot in 15 days. The budget was $300,000, $100,000 of which went to star Vincent Price. Production designer Daniel Haller purchased sets and props from Universal Studios for $2,500 and redressed them to create the Usher mansion. The misshapen trees seen on the Usher estate were actual trees which had burned in a fire in the Hollywood Hills. To depict the burning manse, Corman had two cameramen film the burning of a barn in Orange County. House of Usher made $1 million in the summer of 1960. Score In February 2011 Intrada made the world premiere release of the Les Baxter score from music-only elements in mono. Reception Eugene Archer, in the September 15, 1960 edition of The New York Times wrote, "American-International, with good intentions of presenting a faithful adaption of Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale of the macabre...blithely ignored the author's style. Poe's prose style, as notable for ellipsis as imagery, compressed or eliminated the expository passages habitual to nineteenth-century fiction and invited the readers' imaginations to participate." He further opined, "Under the low-budget circumstances, Vincent Price and Myrna Fahey should not be blamed for portraying the decadent Ushers with arch affectation, nor Mark Damon held to account for the traces of Brooklynese that creep into his stiffly costumed impersonation of the mystified interloper." Other reviewers have been kinder, however; a positive assessment in Variety declared, "It's not precisely the Edgar Allan Poe short story known to high school English that emerges in House of Usher, but it's a reasonably diverting and handsomely mounted variation ... The film has been mounted with care, skill and flair by producer-director Roger Corman and his staff." Harrison's Reports called it