190 House of Usher ( 1960 )

This  was  the  first  of   Roger  Corman's  Edgar  Allen  Poe  adaptations. I  must  confess  I've  yet  to  be  converted  to  Poe  and  his  morbid  fantasies  and  this  is  a  wearing  film  that  seems  longer  than  it  actually  is.  It's  big  on  gloomy  atmospherics  but  short  on  a  really  involving  storyline.

Charles  Winthrop  ( Mark  Damon )  calls  at  the  ancestral  mansion  of  the  Ushers  to  see  his  fiance  Madeline. Her   sickly  brother  Roderick  ( Vincent  Price ) resists  his  intentions. He  believes  the  family  line  is  tainted  by  insanity  and  must  be  allowed  to  die  out  and  takes  drastic  action  to  see  that  it  does.

Myrna  Fahey  ( as  Madeline  Usher )

Sex : No

Death : Perishes  in  the  fire  that  destroys  the  house

This  was  the  last  of  very  few  films  Myrna  made  although  she  was  a  very  popular  TV  actress,  particularly  in  Western  series  like Bonanza. She  had  a  starring  role  in  Father of  the  Bride  , it  was  said,  because   she  looked  like  Elizabeth  Taylor, a  suggestion  she  deeply resented. She  died  of  cancer  in  1973  aged  40.