The 2024-25 Movies & Music on the Lawn season - which is free and open to everyone all season long - continues on Saturday, October 26 with a special Halloween edition! Don’t miss a special night of cinema and sound under the stars when local hard rock outfit Woorms performs live alongside the 1928 silent film adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
Since 1998, the series has been a cultural staple in Baton Rouge, bringing contemporary Louisiana-based musicians to compose and perform original scores for silent-era classic films while they’re projected on a towering inflatable screen inside BREC’s City-Brooks Community Park.
Thanks to the support of our sponsors all of the four Movies & Music on the Lawn events this season are available to everyone at absolutely no cost. And did we mention the free, bottomless popcorn??
Scroll down for info on Woorms & The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)
About Woorms: The band describes themselves as “extra crispy Sludge/noise rock” and have called Baton Rouge home since their beginnings in 2017. The band’s anthems thunder with elements of dirge, grit, groove, and bellowing amplification foundationally attributed to masters of the realms of noise rock, sludge, and psychedelic metal scenes, making them a perfect fit to take on the one and only Edgar Allan Poe. Woorms on Spotify
About The Fall of the House of Usher (1928): Directed by French visionary filmmaker Jean Epstein, this is one of several films based on the 1839 Gothic short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” by Edgar Allan Poe. The story sees Roderick Usher summon his friend, Allan, to his crumbling old mansion in the remote countryside while he cares for his dying wife, Madeline. Consumed by melancholy and dread, Usher has been obsessed with painting a portrait of her, though every brushstroke seems to be stealing more and more time from the love of his life. More details at IMDB
Film critic Troy Howarth commented that the film was "one of the most renowned of experimental silent films" noting "The rapid cutting, fetishistic closeups and generally dreamy ambience bring the movie closer to the realm of filmic poetry than anything else". In 2021, The Daily Star ranked The Fall of the House of Usher 8th on its list of the greatest short story adaptations, praising it for "manag[ing] the almost impossible feat of the perfect Edgar Allan Poe adaption". The famed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, meanwhile, has cited it as one of his 100 favorite films.
