Alan Harker (Antonio Mayans)n is summoned to the remote castle of his former instructor, Dr. Eric Usher (Howard Vernon). Aware of his rapidly diminishing mental and physical state, Usher has called for Harker to help him with his experiments to revive the corpse of his deceased wife. Years ago, his experiments–which required the blood of fresh bodies–resulted in him being banished from the medical university. Usher’s physician, Dr. Seward (Daniel White), believes that Usher’s confessions of medical murder are hallucinations. In his wanderings, Harker discovers a dungeon full of captive women. But in the morning, the castle’s housekeeper (Lina Romay) assures him it was only a dream. Is Harker, too, falling prey to madness?
Also known under the title Revenge in the House of Usher, Neurosis is far from a literal adaptation of Poe. Instead, Franco reimagines the classic tale with greater sympathy placed on the Usher character. Within the context of Franco’s body of work, Usher seems like a resurrection of the titular Diabolical Dr. Z (1966), whose experiments to keep his daughter alive also required human subjects, and which resulted in his expulsion from the medical community and, ultimately, his own death.
I sense a great affinity between Usher and the film’s director, and the two share a number of similarities. Both, in their own way, were shunned professionally and practiced on the margins under great hardship and without large, institutional support. Both, too, have a history of violence: “I admit it. I’m a sadist,” says Usher. “The moans and screams of those desperate girls brightened my dull existence.” Franco reinforces the connection with his main character by using footage from his earlier movie, The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962), to illustrate Usher’s flashback to his youth, when he first began experimenting with human subjects. “To tell the truth, back then I didn’t are about the academy. What did they matter? I was totally absorbed by my work.”
By the time Neurosis was made, Franco had been in the film industry for over three decades, and this was his 125th film as director (according to IMDB). There’s a retrospective sense to Neurosis, an aspect of looking back on one’s life and work, pondering one’s mortality, and wondering what lay ahead. “You probably wonder if I’m insane. You’re right,” admits Usher. “A long struggle between sin and virtue has destroyed my brain. It’s perfectly clear that one can’t defy death without being punished. I sacrificed my sanity like I sacrificed those young women that I loved and hated.” There’s also a sense of questioning how long can one continue. When Usher remarks, “Look at them now, hand with which I could dissect a living cell. Now they tremble. They’re useless,” I can’t help but wonder how many times Franco asked himself that question.
Neurosis also touches on one of Franco’s recurring motifs: the crossover of reality and fantasy. Unsure whether Usher’s dungeon was real or imagined, Harker admits, “It was so realistic. It still seems real.” Like the protagonists in Nightmares Come at Night (1970), or A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973), Harker cannot distinguish between states of consciousness. His final words, which close the movie, capture the hallucinatory haze which settles over many of Franco’s films: “I’ve never been able to separate reality from hallucination in what I experienced at that castle. The truth collapsed with him and will remain buried in these ruins. Maybe it’s for the best. Perhaps certain things should remain a mystery.” In Franco’s films, literal truth never as important as symbolic impression.
From an aesthetic perspective, Neurosis captures some of Franco’s strongest artistic traits. His choice of locations are incredible–the castle, the corridors, the dungeon, the coastline–and Franco has painterly eye for capturing them in all their evocative grandeur. The magnificence of the settings belies what must be great budgetary constraints. One aspect of his direction that impresses me in multiple films is how his visceral sense of visual realism is in stark contrast to the fantastic elements of the story. Everything looks authentic, which gives greater credence to the wild dramas on which they unfold.
Another aspect of Franco’s aesthetic that fascinates me in how crucial voice over is to his methodology. More than a budgetary trick (no need for on-set sound, also allows for easier dubbing), it frees the image from its mimetic bounds to the moving lips; at once soliloquy and confession, poetic and cathartic. The characters speak not only to their listener, but also to themselves. The voice-over is an act of understanding, of finding meaning.
As per usual with Kino’s Redemption line of Franco offerings, the print of Neurosis has lovely celluloid qualities. This print is quite clean and doesn’t show the damage of Nightmares Come at Night. The copy streaming on Kino Cult looked superb to me, and if you get the Blu-ray it comes with audio commentary by Franco expert Tim Lucas.
Streaming on Kino Cult, or available on DVD/Blu-ray.
–Cullen Gallagher
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