The Uninvited (1944)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

As Good As It Gets

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Composer Roderick Fitzgerald (a fine and engaging performance by Ray Milland) and his spunky sister Pamela (a solid and appealing portrayal by Ruth Hussey) purchase a palatial house located on a cliff by the sea for a pittance. However, said abode turns out to be haunted. Director Lewis Allen relates the complex and absorbing story at a steady pace, grounds the fantastic premise in a believable everyday reality, takes time to flesh out the characters, and expertly crafts a supremely spooky atmosphere. Moreover, Allen takes an admirably subtle and understated approach to the supernatural aspects of the plot, with such things as flowers that suddenly wilt in a cold clammy room and ghostly weeping happening in the dead of night proving to be much more frightening and unnerving than your standard array of cheap jump-out-at-you scares. The intricate and intelligent script by Dodie Smith and Frank Partos offers a pleasing blend of humor, romance, and mystery. The uniformly sound acting by the tip-top cast helps a lot, with especially stand-out contributions from Gail Russell as the sweet, but fragile Stella Meredith, Donald Crisp as Stella's stern and protective father Commander Beech, and Cornelia Otis Skinner as the sinister Miss Holloway. Kudos are also in order for Victor Young's lush orchestral score and Charles Lang's sumptuous black and white cinematography. Classy and well crafted, this film deserves its classic status.

An atmospheric haunted-house yarn nestled on the coast of Cornwall, Broadway workman Lewis Allen's directorial feature debut THE UNINVITED is not a spine-tingling scare-fest one might expect it to be, but a decorous melodrama seeking out the truth about a past tragedy tinged with a tint of Gothic spookiness owing to Charles Lang's stupendous Oscar-worthy camera work through minimal torchlight and candlelight in the mansion where the London siblings Rick (Milland) and Pamela (Hussey) Fitzgerald dwell. The mansion is called Windward House, which the siblings buy from Commander Beech (a lumpen Crisp) for a knockdown price. The Commander is very cagey about the history of the house and whose only intention is to get the pecuniary profit to secure the future for his 20-year-old granddaughter Stella Meredith (Russell), he brazenly makes it clear that they don't want anything to do with the Fitzgeralds after the deal is cut and dried, intriguing, isn't it? It is not every day someone is offering to buy a jinxed house. But an impressionable and spontaneous Stella takes a liking for the debonair but expansive Rick, confides in him that she feels a strong yet strange connection toward the house where she has been forbidden to set her foot since she was three, when her mother fell to her death from the escarpment in front. So, apparently it is the apparition of Mary, Stella's mother who torments the new residents with the nightly wailing, chilling draft and pungent scent of mimosa (a clever olfactory indicator as we have to take the characters at their word), but the plot thickens when more details are disclosed: Stella's father had a gypsy mistress Carmel, and the rumor says that it is her who murdered Stella's mother then died of illness afterward. At this step, the ghosts become plural, the rub is whether it is Mary's benevolent calling or Carmel's malignant hex that draws Stella back to the place? Or, as we are all fully aware, there would be a final reveal to overturn all the previous presumptions, after the fuss of a seance and the intervention of a formal nurse, Mary's best friend Miss Holloway (Skinner), there is something fishy about Stella's real identity. Not quite often a pair of siblings is put in the center of a household, Milland and Hussey make do with their rivalry-free interaction and instill a patina of sangfroid which doesn't seem to be congruent with the mystical happenings, and willfully gives the movie a jocund vibe, if they are not spooked, how can we, armchair rubberneckers, be startled through vicariousness? Forever remembered by Victor Young's theme strain STELLA BY STARLIGHT, a fresh-faced Gail Russell is pleasant to behold, but couldn't be bothered to register a convincing reaction after receiving the bolt from the blue, which mars this otherwise fairly sustained suspense (along with Rick's half- hearted final smack-down with Mary's misty specter). In fact, the best part comes from a scrumptiously scenery-chewing Cornelia Otis Skinner, flagrantly furnishes the story with the requisite venom which one cannot get enough in the genre of uncanny mysteries, which, if really is your cuppa, bearing in mind that Jack Clayton's THE INNOCENTS (1961) is a far superior achievement to be amazed, transfixed and awe-struck.

I have always admired the sumptuous look of this film. These days, with the special effects available, the ghosts in the story would be awesome, but this 70-year old film didn't really need all that, it works just fine on every level.The film has a haunting quality, but that also has a lot to do with the stars, all of them gone now.Rick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland) and his sister Pamela (Ruth Hussey) buy a large house on a clifftop in Cornwall. They soon discover that it is haunted, and it's all to do with the previous owners, Commander Beech (Donald Crisp) and his granddaughter Stella Meredith (Gail Russell). In fact Stella is the focus of all the ghostly intentions, and in the end we find out why.The story is set in 1937 in Cornwall, but it was made in Hollywood at the height of WW2. It was created on sound stages married with location footage along the Californian coast. Its slightly unreal look adds to the atmosphere.The film has fascinating stars including Gail Russell in her third film. She was one the most tragic stars of them all. She died at 36, the same age as Marilyn Monroe. She had a look that captivated audiences from the moment she hit the screen and when you see how luminous she is in this film, its hard to believe her life had already begun its downward spiral caused by paralysing stage fright, depression and alcoholism.The tragedy of her life has haunted more than one writer, and in the most recent biography, "Fallen Star", author Glen Ochoa details her lifelong fear of facing crowds and the unblinking eye of the movie camera. Knowing this gives an insight into her performance in "The Uninvited", which was edited together from short takes. In a way, her hesitancy underlined the vulnerability of Stella Meredith.Another fascinating actor was the striking Cornelius Otis Skinner as Miss Holloway whose obsessive devotion to Stella's dead mother had subtext written all over it."The Uninvited" is a testimony to the talents of Paramount's art department; I love those scenes of the house sitting on the headland with the crashing waves below. Along with moody black and white photography, Victor Young contributed a rich score with a famous main theme."The Uninvited' is still scary, but also has touches of wit with an ending that rivals the "The Sixth Sense" for surprise value.

This film worked a lot better for me as a mystery than the purported scary ghost story it was set up to be by Turner Classic Movie host Ben Mankiewicz when I watched it this morning. The story holds one's attention level well enough, but I never got the impression that there was something really ominous about to happen. Roderick 'Rick' Fitzgerald (Ray Milland) sort of dropped that ball when he ducked under the covers like a grown up scaredy cat.Probably the scariest aspect of the film turned out to be old Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner, even that name sounds scary) as the proprietor of the Mary Meredith retreat - 'Health Through Harmony' - that was a good one. It was more than a little fitting that the biddy went a little bit crackers of her own after sending Stella Meredith (Gail Russell) on her way back to the Windward homestead. And speaking of Stella, didn't it seem like she wasn't even the slightest bit astonished when she found out that her mother wasn't her mother, but that she was the daughter of the gypsy mistress? I think that would have freaked me out just a little bit if it happened to me.Say, you know, and I don't know why stuff like this intrigues me, but how do you think the film makers got the squirrel to act squirrelly enough to pull off the scene with Bobby the pooch. The rodent hit his marks perfectly across the floors and up the chimney, just like a real pro. I mean, you can't teach or direct a squirrel to do what you want them to do like a dog, so I'm just a bit puzzled by it all. As well as Rick sticking his hand under the dresser to find the animal, geez, what a dumb move that was.Well, I may sound a little flippant here with my review but I actually liked the picture well enough to recommend it for classic movie fans. Once again, the horror or scary aspects of the film are not what drives it, but the odd, almost sinister motivations of characters like Commander Beech (Donald Crisp) and the aforementioned Miss Holloway. The Commander was actually quite a creep when you get right down to it, at one point he even stated that his granddaughter Stella wasn't as beautiful as her mother. In retrospect, I wonder who he was talking about?