Okay, I’m calling it: This show fucks! Somewhat literally! Titled “The Masque of the Red Death” after the Edgar Allan Poe story upon which it’s loosely based (Is that how this is gonna go? It’s a stealth anthology series with an overarching storyline?), this episode of The Fall of the House of Usher is one of the horniest episodes of television I’ve seen in a while. And I covered Season 2 of Foundation! Honestly, it takes me back to the the bone-deep kinkiness of Alice Birch and Rachel Wesiz’s Dead Ringers, a show with which Mike Flanagan’s Usher has some stylistic as well as narrative similarities. Those similarities now also include the desire to rev your engine.

I reviewed the second episode of The Fall of the House of Usher for Decider.

I can think of worse ways to spend a few nighttime hours this month than in the company of these rich assholes as they slowly destroy each other in a creepy mansion, while Mike Flanagan’s script introduces a patent attorney named Ligeia, or reveals that the artificial heart Victorine implanted in that monkey has the brand name Tell-Tale, or turns the monkey into a murderer on the rooftops of Paris, or whatever. At the very least, the element of satire should cancel out his more maudlin tendencies. (“Whatever walked there, walked together,” anyone?) Flanagan feels about as convincingly Poe-ish as B-movie legend Roger Corman did back in the day when he loosely adapted the bard of Baltimore’s work. But if we’re having some spooky fun, so what?

I reviewed the series premiere of Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher for Decider.

Julia Gfrörer is releasing a new t-shirt design every day for the whole month of October. Day 23: Serpent Rampant, inspired by “The Cask of Amontillado” and depicting the union of the snake.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve written about Memory Palaces by Edie Fake, “The Sea-Bell, or Frodo’s Dreme” by J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Ghoul Man” by Jaime Hernandez, and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe for Vorpalizer. Check them out.