The Fall of the House of Usher (1950) User Reviews

Odd But Atmospheric

[robertguttman · 6/10 · 27 October 2015]

The plot of this curious version of the Poe classic differs considerably from the original story, including a number of plot elements and characters that are not in Poe's story at all. Some of the acting seems almost amateurish at times, and the entire production was clearly carried out on a very small budget.

However, where this film excels is in its' sense of creepy atmosphere. Indeed, in that respect it reminded me of Carl Theodore Dryer's 1932 film, "Vampyr". Those who have seen that most peculiar horror film will understand to what I refer. In that film, as well as in this one, style and atmosphere completely dominate character and story to the point where the latter two elements almost cease to matter at all. Both "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Vampyr" are prime examples of how much a creative director can achieve even without benefit of special effects or a large budget.

Extraordinary, rarely-seen Brit version of the Poe tale

[davidvmcgillivray-24-905811 · 5/10 · 22 December 2013]

Decades before independent companies were regularly shooting horror films cheaply on location, the mysterious Ivan Barnett made "The Fall of the House of Usher" in and around a mansion in Hastings, Sussex. There are conflicting stories about its production. It seems to have been shot in 1948. Jonathan Rigby claims it played (with an "H" certificate) "for one week in the Tottenham Court Road" in 1950. This implies the cut version released in 1956 wasn't its premiere. The actor playing Roderick Usher is credited as Kaye (not Kay) Tendeter. Almost certainly he and the rest of the cast were, with the exception of Gwen Watford, local amateurs. Barnett was a talented director and a particularly skillful cameraman. His lighting is highly atmospheric. In theory he could still be alive. But what became of him after the early 1960s? (Update: Subsequently it was revealed that Barnett died 13th September, 2013, i.e. only months before the screening of the film, complete with its "H" certificate, at the BFI Southbank, London, on 22nd December, 2013).

Early British Usher

[email2amh · 4/10 · 16 October 2008]

This "nearly lost" film represents an earnest attempt at telling the ghost story, more or less, found in Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination. It has none of the camp and insanity of the Vincent Price version.

The print I watched was fairly poor, probably from television somewhere, and likely missing 7 of the original 70 minutes. Some of the scenes are really boring, but I liked the kookiness of it all, the lightning, and the overall atmosphere. I'm not making excuses for the film, as it's old & creaky, but I found it fairly interesting.

The plot tracks Poe's story fairly well, however, several aspects have been added. Credited as "The Hag" (and referred to in other reviews here as such), I actually believe the character is referred to early in the film as "Roderick's mother". Regardless, you get the old hag, the head of the headless lover (looking demonic), the scary temple where the lovers met, and some good coffin/crypt scenes involving the sister.

Near the end, the old hag watches as Roderick is driven up flights of stairs by his sister's (seemingly?) walking corpse, until he falls or is pushed from the parapet. The "head" then seems to cause the House of Usher to burn, with only the narrator escaping.

One scene clearly suggests that the sister is slowly poisoned, with someone giving her glasses of milk. Also, as she is clearly shot by Roderick (twice) as she chases him - to no effect, suggesting she really is dead.

The ending is left to the imagination, as it returns to the men's club from the beginning of the film, where the story is being read from Poe's book.

A "Found Object" of Cinema

[c532c · 28 September 2004]

"Found Objects" are those things generally discarded or ignored that somehow possess an intrinsic artistry, and this "Quota Quickie" certainly qualifies. Dashed off in what looks like a couple of weekends on whatever locations were handy, with badly-synchonized sound and wretched acting of pointless dialogue, it nonetheless conveys a genuine creepiness I found oddly haunting. The photography reminds one of the French New Wave, which came along a decade later, with starkly realistic images contrasted with baroque set-ups and disorienting editing. The story -- as much as I could understand -- offers a nightmarish progression through some sort of curse, and a mockingly down-beat ending.

I liked it.

[cliff-p · 5/10 · 20 December 2001]

I bought (for £22) a standard 8 sound copy of this film and showed it at a meeting of Group 9.5. We attempt to show films that are not normally shown on TV, so this was a rare opportunity for the members to see this British version. Graham Murray was at the show and told me why it doesn't appear on TV in the UK. He worked for Granada TV and was on the panel that rejected the film as being too poor to show on TV-but he bravely sat through the show that night. Despite the rather crude technical quality of the film,I liked it.

What a load of rubbish!

[lynchboy2001 · 1/10 · 5 June 2001]

I stayed up the other night until 2am so I could see The Fall of the House of Usher, believing it to be the Vincent Price/Roger Corman classic. When I found out it wasn't I gave this film a try, being an Edgar Allan Poe fan. For my troubles I got this tripe, a boring film with a skewered storyline, cardboard acting (especially the actors in the gentlemen's club!), & a cheap imitation on a literary classic (note daylight in the night scenes!). This kind of film would make Edward Wood Jr. blush, and makes films like the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series look lavish & expensive. Please, if you ever think of watching this, don't, it is pure rubbish!

A sinister hag, but little else

[SSteveL · 3/10 · 26 October 2012]

This film might be worth a look for horror buffs and Poe completists, but others beware.

There are a few highlights. A framing device has Poe's title story being read aloud at a modern-day men's club. The sequence in which the narrator rides to the Usher house is faithful to Poe's description of the countryside. The creeping hag (not in the original tale) could be nightmare fuel for sensitive viewers.

Flaws include flat acting, terrible additional (non-Poe) dialogue, shots that drag on pointlessly, and illogical character behaviour (e.g., no search for, or even concern about, the hag intruder). Absurdly, the narrating character disappears early in the story and is absent for half the film, a 30-minute segment which consists of a silly, incongruous, gratuitous subplot cooked up by the screenwriters (and which resembles Joseph Payne Brennan's 1963 short story "The Horror at Chilton Castle", itself perhaps based on a legend of Scotland's Glamis Castle) and crudely shoehorned into Poe's narrative to explain the family curse.

There were strange errors. The exterior of the house, for example, is represented by three distinct buildings, one of which is clearly revealed as a model (and which differs in appearance from the other two) in the climax by the small scale of the flames that engulf it. When Roderick Usher hammers nails into the lid of his sister's coffin, the blows are obviously without real force, and when Madeline later breaks out, the underside of the lid is devoid of nails and their holes.

Unfairly forgotten

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 6 May 2016]

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER is a low budget British adaptation of the storyline that has been somewhat eclipsed by the lush and colourful Roger Corman/Vincent Price version of the tale. That's a shame, because this is an interesting little movie in its own right, a film where every penny of the budget has been put on screen.

The film has a disjointed, almost dream-like atmosphere to it which reminded me of the horror classic VAMPYR. The set design is absolutely wonderful and the film as a whole is packed with creepy and atmospheric locales which really add to the experience. Some aspects of the Poe tale have been altered, and the acting from the unknown cast members is nothing to get excited about, but the quality of the direction and script helps make up for these shortcomings. The addition of the hag character for a number of jump scares is a good one too, although the make-up job is a little crude by modern standards.

Amateurish and strangely modern

[vfx3 · 1/10 · 18 September 2014]

I saw this on TCM (and I do appreciate them showing it) but I found the film unbelievably amateurish, like something made by a Kinema Club in the late forties. It seemed to be filmed over a long period of time, with gaps in continuity and actors. Probably was some home-grown experiment that someone (must have been desperate) thought could be a commercial property, and they tacked on a prologue and epilogue filmed by a different director. The scenes in the crypt have a gruesome directness that seems strangely contemporary, and my only praise is for the actress who plays the old woman: she has a nice intensity. I agree with the other reviewer that this would embarrass even Edward D. Wood, Jr! Horrible musical score.

Actually pretty good

[preppy-3 · 7/10 · 25 April 2013]

VERY loose adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story. Jonathan (Irving Steen) pays a visit to childhood friend Roderick Usher (Kaye Tendeter). He finds Roderick terribly depressed and his sister Madeline Usher (Gwen Witford) suffering some kind of illness. And what's in that old house in the woods?

They took the main characters from the book, added new ones, changed the ending of the story but it still works. It is slow-moving, static and has bad dialogue but I've seen worse. There's an eerie atmosphere throughout with spooky music and depressing dark sets. The acting isn't half bad but only Witford went on to a career in the field. It all ends on a dark and stormy night which is actually quite chilling. A pretty good unknown horror film. I give it a 7.

I'm surprised how positive the reviews are for this one.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 30 January 2015]

This 1949 version of "The Fall of the House of Usher" appears to be very cheaply made. The incidental music is mostly absent, the acting not very good and the overall look pretty poor. I am very surprised in light of this that the reviews are actually pretty good her on IMDb. While it does stick much closer to the source material than the famous 'Poe' films of Roger Corman, this movie is also lifeless, flat and unappealing. My favorite bad scene is the one where the narrator delivers his line and then, almost as if he forgot, he buried his face in his hands...and it all seems so unnatural and silly. See it if you must, but try to find the shortened version, as watching all 72 minutes of this one was difficult at times. Watchable perhaps but it could have easily been so much better.

'Ivan Barnett's grimly oppressive Gothic chiller is doomily drenched in a shuddersome pall of inky, expressionistic doom!

[Weirdling_Wolf · 8/10 · 9 April 2022]

Sadly one of the lesser known film adaptations of the immortal Poe classic, this effectively eerie, modestly budget version benefits greatly from the prodigious film-making talents of Ivan Barnett who produces, directs and photographs this sinister, shadow-slaked shocker to great effect, Barnett showing remarkable flair as a D. O. P, darkly drenching his creepy iteration of 'The Fall of The House of Usher' in a sublime shuddersome pall of inky, expressionistic doom! This macabre tale of ancestral doom is anxiously narrated by family friend Jonathan (Irving Steen), and not long into his fateful visit to this benighted locale, the dilapidated House of Usher ominously reveals a deleterious taint that appears to have greatly affected his vastly neurotic friend Roderick Usher (Kaye Tendeter) with Roderick's morbidly pale sister Lady Madeline Usher (Gwen Watford) no less grievously disturbed, both being dutifully 'tended' by the faintly disingenuous Dr. Cordwell (Vernon Charles), who shockingly recounts the miserable origins of the family 'curse' with questionable zeal! 'The Fall of The House of Usher' is fearfully festooned with all the delicious cerements of creepy celluloid terror, murderous infidelity, garishly adorned torture chamber, distressingly dank ill-lit secret passages, the demonstratively disturbing Witch-hag, and a diabolical-looking disembodied head, all grimly guaranteed to put a debilitating quiver in the most resolute liver. While Kaye Tendeter somewhat laboured performance as the increasingly unhinged Roderick suffers from an acute case of the screaming am-drams, the supremely gifted Gwen Watford is suitably ethereal as the spectrally wafting lady Madeline. Eagle-eyed Brit-Horror fans might also be aware that the beguiling Gwen Watford also starred in 'The Ghoul' and 'Taste The Blood of Dracula'.

Not THAT bad, considering...

[arel_1 · 6/10 · 27 October 2012]

I caught up with this on TCM as part of their October 2012 schedule. It's really not that bad, given that it was made on a budget of about two shillings thruppence and someone decided to tack on that ghastly footage in the gentlemen's club to pad the length. Granted, it's not quite the story Poe wrote, but taken as an old-dark-house thriller that just happens to be about the House of Usher... Anyway, I've seen worse photography in higher budget films, the amateur actors in the story proper were reasonably competent (especially young Gwen Watford, who went on from this film debut to better things in film, on stage, and on the Beeb), and the climax closeups were quite convincing--as well they should be, since many of the closeups came from WWII newsreel footage carefully edited.

"Buried alive? That takes a bit of swallowing."

[utgard14 · 4/10 · 1 November 2015]

Stiff, creaky British adaptation of the famous Edgar Allan Poe story. The movie uses a framing device, wherein a group of stuffed shirts in a gentleman's club discuss Poe and one of them reads the Usher story aloud. This results in a beginning that is like watching paint dry. But if you can suffer through it for a few minutes, you'll get to the story proper...and more paint to watch dry. Seriously the enthusiasm level in this movie is akin to walking through a graveyard. Everything is so staid and dreary I found myself thinking about how much fun Roger Corman's House of Usher movie was and how I wished I was watching it instead. There's also quite a bit of dialogue that appears to have been re-recorded. The result is that the voices of the actors seem disconnected from their moving mouths. It's weird and distracting. There are some atmospheric and creepy moments here and there. The scenes with the mad woman are easily the best parts of the film. But mostly this is just a very dull experience that feels like it will never end, despite its relatively short runtime.

Decent Version of the Poe Story

[Michael_Elliott · 25 October 2012]

The Fall of the House of Usher (1949)

** (out of 4)

This British version of the Edgar Allan Poe story has pretty much been forgotten over the years thanks to two very good versions from 1928 and of course the Roger Corman/Vincent Price film that was released after. This here features a cast of unknowns, most of them making their first and only film appearance. The story is the same that you're used to as a friend (Irving Steen) shows up at the house of Roderick Usher (Kay Tendeter) and gets caught up in a mystery. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination but it's unique enough to where it can hold your attention throughout its short 70-minute running time. I think the biggest problem with the movie is the fact that director Ivan Barnett isn't able to create any sort of pacing and this becomes a problem. It really does seem like every scene is something onto its own and it was hard to really feel that the film ever really connected together. This is again due to the pacing, which is just all over the place. I will say that the director manages to create a pretty good atmosphere and the ending is actually extremely good. The performances are all a mixed bag but for the most part I thought they were just fine. If you've seen any other version of the story then it's doubtful this one here is going to blow you away. Still, it's a rather interesting movie and its forgotten status makes it even more curious.

Disaster

[Bored_Dragon · 1/10 · 28 January 2017]

I could not find the original movie from 1928 anywhere, so I finally decided to switch to the next adaptation of "House of Usher". Terrible mistake. At the beginning, it looks like a black and white silent film, but then you realize it is not silent. Body language is completely in silent movie style, there is almost none facial expression, and diction in dialogues forced me to give up on this crap after 25 minutes. All speech in this movie sounds like one person, extremely bored with their task, speak all words at slow, monotonous pace, with uniform bored voice, without any emotion or connection with words they speak. It's like a heavily drugged person is trying to clearly and correctly read a text they don't even slightly understand. If it was a silent movie from the '20s it still wouldn't be good, but it would be acceptable. For a sound film from the '50s, this is unwatchable.

1/10

"My illness is a family evil..."

[classicsoncall · 5/10 · 7 November 2015]

Perhaps my best recommendation for this film would be the truly creepy and atmospheric sets used to simulate the Gothic House of Usher; one might consider it the 'Psycho' house on steroids. Beyond that however, the premise of this Edgar Allan Poe tale is executed rather poorly, made somewhat difficult to follow with poor sound quality, especially when the setting transitions to the 'temple' basement where the acoustics really take a hit. The makings of a good story are readily apparent, but the actors perform in a rather stagy manner, and ancillary characters like the family servants pop up and disappear in random fashion. Particularly puzzling was the gentleman named Richard (Tony-Powell Bristow) who showed up long enough to get his foot caught in a bear trap; we never do find out what happened to him. I suppose one is to assume that Lady Madeline (Gwendoline Watford) was a ghost even though some interpretations claim she was 'buried' alive. Brother Roderick's (Kat Tendeter) gunshots apparently had no effect on her, either that or they missed all together. Especially curious to me was why the Usher Mansion burst into flames to close out the tragedy; after all it was made of stone. Curiosity seekers may find this film interesting in some aspects, but don't look for any credibility to the story. The old hag (Lucy Pavey) was a nice touch, but you have to take it on faith that she was the mother of Sir Roderick and Lady Madeline. Apparently they didn't know she was alive and well (in a manner of speaking) in the chamber of horrors known as the temple.

An admirably bizarre, beautifully photographed but not quite satisfying adaptation

[lonchaney20 · 5/10 · 15 February 2016]

I checked this obscure British horror film out after reading that it's a personal favorite of French critic Alain Petit (an early champion of and collaborator with Jess Franco). Despite it barely running over an hour, Barnett opens his film with a banal and unnecessary wraparound segment in which a bunch of snobs at a "Gentlemen's Club" start arguing about the merits of horror stories. A doctor (played by the utterly forgettable Vernon Charles) mentions that his favorite horror story is Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," then grabs a Poe collection off of a nearby shelf and begins to read it to the other club members. Evidently he gets bored with Poe's original story, because he starts making up a bunch of crazy nonsense about torture chambers, old hags, and demonic severed heads that can only be killed with fire - all things that Poe was famous for.

Admittedly I was extremely tired and may or may not have dreamed half of this, but the story (or what fraction of it I could make out through the muffled audio) concerns a curse put on Roderick and Madeline Usher after their father beheads his wife's lover, having caught them making whoopee in the local torture chamber. The curse, as the family butler tells Roderick in the exposition-heavy opening, can only be ended by setting the head on fire, but it's guarded by a deadly hag - none other than their long lost mother! If they fail to burn the head, then Roderick and his sister will die when they turn thirty. The first half hour or so thus deals with attempts by the butler and Roderick to get the head, which predictably end with a family friend getting brutally murdered while Roderick and his faithful butler flee like the cowards they are. After this the butler claims that the only other way for Roderick to save his own life is to murder his sister (the logic of this completely eludes me), to which end they start poisoning her nightly milk, Hitchcock-style. Only in the last twenty minutes or so do we finally get to a reasonably faithful adaptation of Poe's story.

There is a lot to recommend about this film: the moody, low-key cinematography by director Barnett is often stunning, evoking both German Expressionism and Carl Dreyer's Vampyr. I was also intrigued by Barnett's unconventional, almost somnambulistic handling of the film's action scenes, which largely play out in wide shots and without any music, anticipating Jean Rollin by almost two decades. Speaking of Rollin, I feel this film gave me greater insight into why his films are better appreciated outside of France. As I noted, Petit was a huge fan of this film, blown away by its strange visuals and dreamlike horror. As an English-speaking viewer, however, I found my enjoyment somewhat hindered by the wooden dialogue and even more wooden performances. French viewers frequently complain about these things in Rollin's work, so I felt this gave me a taste of how his work might play to the average French viewer. That said, there is a poetic vision at work in Rollin that I didn't detect here; it's beautifully photographed, yes, but ultimately rather hollow and lacking in sincerity. While I appreciate the oddball touches that Barnett and company add to Poe's story, it's not nearly enough for me to recommend this as some lost classic. If you can only bring yourself to watch one obscure Usher adaptation, check out the Spanish version of Jess Franco's El hundimiento de la casa Usher (1983) instead.

(It should be noted this film occasionally plays on TCM, but I watched a mediocre bootleg copy which may have been missing about ten minutes. It was already too long at one hour and two minutes, so I can only imagine what excitement I missed out on.)

Obscure and decently scary.

[wlbtraveler · 7/10 · 31 October 2018]

I watched this one night by myself after coming across it by chance. I thought I might as well give it a go and kill some time. I was actually quite impressed by the film. It wasn't some amazingly famous movie with an all-star cast. It was a small and fairly amateur film that won me over with its quiet but definitely present unease. It's ever-present darkness, both physically and mentally, sets the mood for a bleak and unsettling movie that uses visuals more than dialogue. It's an obscure and relatively unknown movie, but it's one of the best amateur thrillers I've ever seen.

Terrible day for night scenes

[Stevieboy666 · 4/10 · 21 April 2018]

Creaky, low budget British adaptation of the Edgar A Poe story As a horror fan of over 35 years I have just watched this one for the first time, with it turning up on British TV on the Talking Pictures channel. It appears to be quite rare. It oozes gothic horror but sadly it's not a very good film. The acting is painfully wooden, the story is a tad confusing at times and the day for night scenes are awful (OK, Hammer later did the same but not quite as bad as here). There is an old hag, who is pretty creepy. Overall this is a bit of an oddity but watch the Corman version instead.

The 19 Year Old Gwen Watford

[richardchatten · 7/10 · 16 March 2020]

Gwen Watford (1927-1994) was yet another British thespian with a long and successful stage & TV career not reflected in her film work. Her most respectable film credits were as Calpurnia in 'Cleopatra' (1963) and in 'Cry Freedom' (1987), but her larger big screen roles were in thrillers and horror films, beginning with the theoretically plumb role of Madeleine Usher in this tinny if atmospheric shoestring version of Poe with largely post-synced dialogue shot on the Sussex coast which was the first postwar British feature to carry an 'H' Certificate, and makes you realise what Roger Corman and Vincent Price brought to their studio-bound and quite possibly even cheaper version (apart from Price's fee) in 1960.

Billed as 'Gwendoline' Watford, she frequently resembles Sybille Schmitz in 'Vampyr' (complete with flowing robes and big haunted brown eyes), and looks little different from when she was taken before her time at the age of 66.

An awful movie only vaguely resembling Poe's story

[tom-456 · 1/10 · 29 January 2015]

I don't see the point of this movie at all. I don't know why TCM bothers to show it, except that they probably don't have to pay anything at all to show it. The story is only vaguely similar to Poe's story. The similarities are largely superficial and barely adequate to justify borrowing the title from Poe's story. It is just weird. The story is just strange, most of it involving the old hag that escapes and wanders all over everywhere. The acting is horrifically bad. The technical quality is so bad that I could barely believe that it was made in the post-WWII era. It just does not have any redeeming qualities whatsoever. And it certainly does a horrible injustice to Poe. Evidently, some people believe that because Poe wrote stories that were macabre, that this makes it okay for anyone to re-write the story however they see fit, leaving out some elements and adding whole other aspects that they made up, as if Poe's work should be viewed as a template of sorts for other would-be Poes to embellish in whatever manner suits the fancy. If ever there was a movie that would not be any regret for all copies to be lost and the movie itself forgotten, this would probably be it.

For all its flaws this is an atmospheric watch.

[stewart7864-672-662500 · 7/10 · 26 December 2020]

An amateur cast support the brilliant Gwendoline Watford playing Usher's sister. Nevertheless the stilted acting ( Watford excepted) just adds to the overall menace and weirdness of this adaptation. High on atmosphere and with some outstanding scenes but obviously hampered by a low budget and plot adaptation of Poe's classic. Watford's solo piano performance is one of the highlights( she was a professional pianist and may have been performed live). Also watch out for the clever play on wall shadows. The hag mounting the main stairs and more impressive Watford in silhouette lighting the candle stick and blowing out the taper after her piano performance. A more impressive play on a silhouette on the wall you could not get from 100 takes in a modern film. Simply outstanding cinematography. The film was a huge success when it got belately released in 1950 and is said to have been the forerunner to the later Hammer Horror films. It was certificated with a (then) rare H certificate ( adult's only).

The Fall of the House of Usher

[CinemaSerf · 4/10 · 27 December 2022]

This is a bit wooden, to be honest... The budget was clearly stretched by the bar bill from the opening, introductory, sequence in the gentleman's club where one of the group starts to read this story from a compendium of Poe stories. We are quickly transferred to the sinister mansion in which the "Usher" siblings - "Lord Roderick" (Kaye Tendeter) and "Lady Madeleine" (Gwen Watford) abide. "Jonathan" (Irving Steen) arrives at the house to visit his friend and discovers that both have been afflicted by strange maladies that their doctor can only explain by suggesting "Jonathan" leave, and leave quickly... What ensues is not the best story Poe ever wrote, and this depiction is truly static. The staging is theatrical in the most third rate "rep" of fashions: lines are delivered as if being individually cued, the photography is almost as stilted and the overall pace of the film - though not entirely devoid of peril and aided well by eerie scenarios and a great storm sequence at the end, just flows like treacle. Like many stories from this author, there isn't a conclusion as such, just an ending - but in this case, sadly, it couldn't really come quick enough.

A lost and forgotten treasure

[Sir_SK · 9 August 2001]

This film is one of my favorite versions of "House of Usher." Unlike the Roger Corman version, this film treats the viewer with a variety of sets and locations with unique concepts and ideas not widely known. This film was a great effort for its day, with beautiful black and white cinematography and a gothic mood. This film is probably one of the closest to the original story, with some great new ideas thrown in, like the hag in the woods and further explaining the family curse. The music is really cute and catchy, further giving a feeling of the renaissance time, and it's quite catchy (by the end of the movie I was humming the main theme, as it was repetitive throughout the film). Through the brilliant (and realistic) thunderstorm sequence we are led up to a great climax, and I love the ending. The originality of the whole film, and the last words must've left people talking about the film as they left the theatre, discussing what they thought really happened. I was surprised that this film had so little success (if it did, I know not about it, it's quite rare you see). I wonder if it had international distribution, or if it was made by a very small company and didn't get the attention it deserved? This is definitely an excellent film and I highly recommend it to anyone, except perhaps some of today's modern youth(what is the world coming to? Can't they recognize fine art when they see it?)