The Fall of the Usher’s House could be subtitled “A Tactile Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe”. It was chosen partly because it was on a list of “approved” source texts, but mostly because of the original text’s exceptional sensitivity towards conveying sensory impressions.
The film is clearly set in the distant past; however, the Czech authorities assumed that it was intended as a direct attack on their regime, an impression further reinforced by the opening quotation from Poe’s original story. The film was banned for many years.