The Fall of the House of Usher creator responds after fans call for extremely brutal scene to be removed

With Halloween now once again just around the corner, many people will be looking for spooky viewing to satisfy their horror cravings.

Netflix has released a new series, The Fall of the House of Usher, loosely based on the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, as a staple of the spooky season.

The miniseries, with an ensemble cast including Mark Hamill, has been praised by reviewers - but it's fair to say that it is not for the faint-hearted.

Spoiler alert, by the way!

The series - directed by Mike Flanagan who is responsible for the likes of The Haunting of Hill House - follows the Usher children as they die off in a number of brutal and spooky ways over the course of the series.

But it's not the deaths of the humans in the series which have drawn most attention. In fact, one scene involving a cat has left many viewers horrified.

The episode called The Black Cat is based on Edgar Allen Poe's story of the same name.

Netflix

It follows the demise of Napoleon 'Leo' Usher, played by Rahul Kohli, as he descends into hallucinations focussed around a cat.

But the start of the episode sees Leo's cat supposedly brutally killed, with many viewers horrified over the cat's death.

Seemingly not so much over the people's deaths, though.

In a panic after the cat 'dying', Leo quickly gets another cat which looks just like it, but the cat begins to behave strangely, eventually leading to Leo's death in a paranoid frenzy.

And the cat? Well, it never actually died.

Netflix

Now, director Mike Flanagan has responded to criticism of the episode.

He wrote on Twitter: "Okay. So... "The Black Cat" was written by Edgar Allan Poe. In HIS version, a cat is killed. In MY version, the cat is... (Spoilers) .. in MY version, the killing of the cat is revealed to be a hallucination.

"In MY version, the cat is alive and well. So who hates cats?"

Netflix has also responded to the backlash by posting a meme of a character entirely calm when an Usher dies, but freaking out at the death of the cat.

X/@flanaganfilm

In fairness, the TV version is a lot more tame than Poe's original story.

Poe's story sees the protagonist gouging out his cat's eye and then hanging it from a tree in a drunken rage, before going on to kill his wife.

He then gets another cat to replace the one he killed, but the new cat starts to act more and more strangely.

Eventually, the cat indicates to police where the man had hidden his wife's body, and his horrendous crime is discovered.