[BONUS] The Fall of the House of Usher

Transcript

Speaker: Welcome to a Clued In bonus episode. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke. And we both love mystery. Hi, Brooke.

Speaker: Hi, Sarah, this is so much fun to be doing another bonus episode. I know. So if you're a regular listener, you know that Brooke is a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe. He was one of the first author profiles that we recorded, and we talked about his role in shaping the detective fiction genre of mystery, with his stories featuring C. Auguste Dupin.

Speaker: So when Netflix released a limited series based on Poe's work called The Fall of the House of Usher, we had to watch. And today we will share our thoughts in a bonus episode. This is another example of content that members of the Clued in Cartel will receive. They'll also be invited to quarterly live sessions with us, receive early access to and provide input on chapters of a book that we're planning to co -write as we write it, and more.

Speaker: The Cludin Cartel will be available in early 2024, and you can join the waitlist on our website at cludinmystery .com slash Cludin Cartel.

Speaker: Before we start, just a quick warning that we are going to discuss the episodes in some detail and there may be some spoilers. And the series is pretty graphic, so it's not for the squeamish. It's definitely more horror than mystery. And Brooke, maybe we should start there. Do you think that this is a horror with elements of mystery or a mystery with elements of horror?

Speaker: I definitely feel like horror with elements of mystery. And if we look at the post stories that this is based on, it's gothic horror. So I think we definitely have to categorize it this way. And then in another layer to it, it's Mike Flanagan who, if people are familiar with his other Netflix shows, also fall in the category of horror.

Speaker: And so just on that, I think this is the, I don't know, is it the second or the third maybe that Mike Flanagan has done that's on Netflix? And I didn't see the other ones, but my understanding is that it was treated in a similar way where he took the original source material and developed a show that was inspired by rather than based on that source material.

Speaker: Yeah, so the first one of these that I watched, and I think we've talked about this before, Sarah, that I tend to watch more horror end of things than you. So it should come as no surprise that I've seen the other ones, The Haunting of Hill House. So this is a Shirley Jackson story. And I was disappointed because another thing that I've

Speaker: mentioned before is that I'm such a purist, right? I want a story to, I just want a screen version of the story or the book. Um, and it's just a personality thing with me. So when I first watched The Haunting of Hill House, I was disappointed because it is exactly what you say. Very based on, you've got names of characters that are in that story, but the storyline is, um, is different and, uh,

Speaker: extrapolated, I guess. But that's clearly what he's then done here with The Fall of the House of Usher. So were you surprised, Sarah? So you hear Fall of the House of Usher, you know the story, you've read the story. And then episode one, it's like, wait, this is like not The Fall of the House of Usher. This is Edgar Allen Poe universe.

Speaker: Yeah, that's a really good way of describing it because it's set in present day, right, rather than in the 1830s when Poe wrote the original. Yeah, it very much felt like a Poe universe rather than a retelling of that story. And I think I'm a much more casual Poe fan than you are.

Speaker: But I still appreciated the Easter eggs and the references to Poe's work. You know, the name of the lawyer is Dupin, that Roderick Usher is telling this story to. And so he's not, well, I guess he does a little bit of investigating in some parts, you know, when they're showing flashbacks to when they first met. But yeah, it is definitely, it's a universe rather than

Speaker: are retailing.

Speaker: Yeah. And the big bad, the big bad guy is Rufus Griswold, which in some of our other Poe episodes we've discussed is Edgar Allan Poe's rival, um, real life rival who wrote the obituary for him that pretty much casts Edgar Allan Poe in this alcoholic melancholy bad light that may or may not be entirely true. But then he becomes the big bad in this series. So.

Speaker: I had to tip my hat because I feel like I'm an Edgar Allan Poe fan, but my goodness, Mike Flanagan and his team are experts because they were just able to pack, as you say, little Easter eggs

Speaker: all over the place. And a name, you'd hear a name and I'd think, oh my gosh, so I'd have to look back through things. But like, okay, now which poem or which story is that from? And like, oh, genius, the way that they worked it into the story. And then what that person name represents in the story, I thought it was just

Speaker: Really well done. Really, really clever. Like the name of the, I was going to call it the science factory, but the facility, the medical facility is Rue, right? And reference to Murder at the Rue Morgue, which is one of the Dupin stories.

Speaker: Yeah, it's just so great. And each episode of this, is it eight, I believe, to tell the entire story are all either Poe stories. Most of them are Poe stories, I believe. First episode is a midnight dreary. Yeah, as their titles. Excuse me, yes, as the titles of each episode. And then I think that each episode

Speaker: in a sense, tells that short story or that poems, you know, story arc. It's a, again, an adaptation and extrapolation of it, but it, yeah, it tells that story. So, very cool. Yeah, I mean, you can see the connection, right, between whatever the episode title is and what happens in that episode. And you can see where that inspiration came from.

Speaker: And I did think it was really cleverly done. It was a little more gruesome than I typically watch. And so there was a lot of me like, well, I'm just going to listen to this scene. I'm not going to watch it. I would say that that is something that I didn't like about

Speaker: this way of interpreting Poe because yes, he wrote gothic horror, but most of the creepiness is sort of off page or imaginary. You don't see blood and guts necessarily. You have the threat of it, but that is more scary actually than actually seeing like the blood covered man. So in my opinion,

Speaker: they leaned a little bit too much into, you know, gory and maybe raunchy than they needed to. But I also have to remember that this is 2023 Netflix. So there is some expectation of that as well. So mm hmm.

Speaker: Yeah, I liked that, um, that it was filmed here in Vancouver. Uh, I, you know, so, and I realized that in the first episode, one of the opening scenes when Roger Crusher is, um, outside the church after the last kind of round of funerals.

Speaker: Um, and he collapses and I was like, Oh, I know that place. Um, and you know, so the church that they used is, is one that's a downtown Vancouver. And then I think in another episode, um, I recognized some of the exterior shots as, um, places that, that I've seen. And I sent you some street art that I said, Oh, this was in the show. I was so excited.

Speaker: When you said that to me, I was completely fangirling like, are you kidding me? That's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought I, you know, if I, if I was a bigger fan, I probably would, you know, I could recreate the scene with Roger Crusher on the ground in front of the church. I don't know if I could run my husband into taking a picture of me.

Speaker: I'm not quite there yet, so I don't think I'll do that. Okay, that's fair, that's fair. One storytelling device that I think they did really well that Poe would really appreciate is that throughout this story we find out that Roderick Usher is, he's dying, he's sick.

Speaker: So his grip on reality is fading. And we don't know what is real and what are his hallucinations. And I really think that that's a staple of post stories. Whereas the reader were wondering if is this narrator losing it? I think about in Black Cat or Telltale Heart, the story hinges on

Speaker: I guess really an unreliable narrator in the fact that you don't know what is real and what is in their mind. And we get that in this Netflix adaptation where Roderick Usher is having moments of clarity and then moments of hallucinations. And so I thought that was really a nice tie -in for the Poe stories. I agree. I think that's done really well in these

Speaker: I read a review because in this version, the Usher family are pharmaceutical manufacturers and cranking out this very addictive painkiller basically. That's kind of their dark, dark thing of the family.

Speaker: in the actual story by Poe, the dark part of the family is incest. And so I read a review where this person was being very harsh about bringing in such a capitalistic kind of contemporary problem that it just didn't ring true, that it didn't feel like it was a big enough issue. And I really disagree because I think that Flanagan did a great job of keeping

Speaker: incest as a part of the story. We watch Roderick be the most faithful to Madeleine out of anyone in the story. And so I think it's more metaphorical, but I do think that there's some hints of literal as well, because as teenagers, they're very close. Madeleine is very jealous of Roderick's wife in the story, but

Speaker: Most importantly, it's this misplaced devotion or he's married to the company. And it's that devotion that brings the whole thing down because that is what causes then the later deaths of his kids, which, you know. She really uses that devotion to get him to continue to go along with her.

Speaker: Absolutely. I really like the scene where Pym, who's kind of Roderick's right -hand man, shows Roderick and I think Madeleine's in the scene as well, pictures of this

Speaker: woman, Verna, with all of these very high profile, very powerful, very wealthy and influential people that are people that we are familiar with in in real life and kind of this suggestion that all of them may have had some kind of interaction with her

Speaker: to achieve that success. And, you know, that kind of had me thinking about like, you know, that deal with the devil that that people may be making. And that I thought that was really good. I know. I thought that was so good, too. And it's that it's that component that we like in a story where if you can bring it into the real world, then it makes this fictional world seem, you know, richer and perhaps more real.

Speaker: And it was the deal with the devil. That's the crux of the fall of the House of Usher. And it's great that he made it a beautiful woman. Because again, I think that's a very Poe -esque thing to have the melancholy, the dread, the downfall be a man's love for a woman. Very Poe.

Speaker: We talked about how this adaptation wasn't necessarily a faithful adaptation, but this creation of this world drawing on elements from the original material. Is there anyone else's work, Brooke, that you would want to see kind of treated in this way?

Speaker: That's such an interesting question because I think I would have said that I don't want to see Poe's work this way. Because like I said, I'm a purist. I don't want to see Shirley Jackson's work that way. So I have an instant resistance to the idea, but then I really did enjoy it. And I think the thing that I came back to, and we've talked about this, we talked about this with Theresa Peschel when we did Agatha Christie adaptations.

Speaker: We talked about it, I believe, with Chronicles of Crime, that the value is that it brings new people to the work. And I 100 % think that that will happen with this Netflix production because we have, this was very great too. We've got the titles of the episodes, as I said, as the short stories. So that's going to, I mean, you know, algorithm, you're going to be able to find these things and perhaps read source material.

Speaker: So I guess I have to relinquish my hold a little bit. So I don't think I can choose someone else right now, but I'm going to start being more open to these kinds of adaptations and hopefully bring new readers to some of the older source materials.

Speaker: Well, I will say that I think Maurice LeBlanc's work, his stories about Arsene Lupin, the gentleman burglar, those have already inspired the series Lupin that is also on Netflix.

Speaker: Also set in present day and the main character like Arsene Lupin is a gentleman thief, kind of has this code of ethics that he operates by but uses a lot of the same kinds of devices.

Speaker: that the originals did. And I think the same thing. This probably brings new readers to the source material. And so, yeah, it makes it more accessible, I think, as well for people. So I don't mind this kind of thing. And I have to say that

Speaker: If I imagine what Edgar Allan Poe or Shirley Jackson or any of these other authors who've had their work Agatha Christie, I can't imagine that they wouldn't be thrilled to know that people are still enjoying their stories decades and decades later. Well, and centuries later for Poe, right? It's almost 200 years. It's almost 200 years. So cool.

Speaker: Well, thanks, Brooke. I think this was a great conversation. It was so fun. And as Sarah mentioned, this is just another example of the kind of things that we would love to pop in and provide as bonus episodes for our Clued In Cartel coming up in 2024. And thank you for listening today to Clued In Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah. And we both love mystery.

Speaker: Clued In Mystery is written and produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers. If you liked what you heard, please consider telling a friend, leaving a review, or subscribing with your favorite podcast listening app. Visit our website at cluedinmystery .com to sign up for our newsletter, The Clued In Chronicle, or to join our paid membership, The Clued In Cartel. We're on social media at Clued In Mystery.