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A Movie A Day: THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1945) Anything can happen in the dark.
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the newest October special horror run of A Movie A Day!
[For the entirety of October I will be showcasing one horror film each day. Every film is pulled from my DVD shelf, recorded on the home DVR or streamed via Instant Netflix and will be one I haven’t seen. Unlike my usual A Movie A Day or A Movie A Week columns there won’t necessarily be connectors between each film, but you’ll more than likely see patterns emerge day to day. At the end of each standard AMAD I’m going to include a recommendation of a genre film that is either one of my personal favorites or too good of a double feature with the AMAD title to pass up a mention.]
Horror film hint #39: If someone says “You can’t trust anybody” in a genre picture it is that exact person who cannot be trusted.
It’s not too hard to figure out who the killer is in this early entry into the stalker genre, 1945’s THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, but that’s no big deal. The success or failure of this picture doesn’t ride on the whodunit aspect, but on the level of classy suspense. There’s an elegance to this movie that is noticeable right away with the sharp and almost gothic black and white photography. Add on to that assured direction by Robert Siodmak (THE KILLERS, SON OF DRACULA) and the high caliber of actors cast and you see RKO was taking this movie pretty seriously.
There’s a series of killings in a small town. It’s been happening for years, but after a period of quiet it has started up again. All the victims seem to be handicapped, we come to find out, and that doesn’t bode well for our lead, the gorgeous, but mute Helen played by Dorothy McGuire. We later discover our killer can’t tolerate imperfection and Helen straddles that line.
Her dumbness comes from a childhood shock. It’s a mental block, not a physical affliction, so there’s the possibility that she’ll be cured at some point.
We first meet Helen watching a movie, but this story takes place at the turn of the century so the movie is still a brand new experience, a magical window operated by a dude hand-cranking a projector and a church lady playing an organ to supply the soundtrack.
McGuire reminded me a bit of Audrey Tautou as Amelie with this introduction. There’s something so adorably innocent about her, which makes her the absolute perfect target in a horror movie. The audience is on McGuire’s side the second we see her.
And we know she’s in for it straight away as her introduction is tied in with the film’s first killing. The movie is being shown in a hotel’s ballroom and one of the residents is killed in the room above the makeshift theater.
The language of horror movies is pretty distinct and it’s easy to mark the various generations by the language of horror. For example, Bob Clark and John Carpenter dictated how horror movies were made with their films BLACK CHRISTMAS and HALLOWEEN respectively. The killer’s POV, the level of gore, the beats of suspense. Those films influenced the horror of the ‘70s and ‘80s more than any other.
So, I was frankly a little surprised to see little hints of that formula, precursors of that kind of cinematic language, in THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE some 30 years before it’d be the norm.
In this first scene we see a girl in her room, casually milling about. It’s all very natural. She goes to the closet, opens it and the camera holds on the conspicuously arranged rack of clothes. Without us seeing a bulge the clothing or a shuffling or anything we know instantly there’s a killer in the closet.
There’s POV work here, but the most cutting edge horror film language is just in how this sequence is edited for maximum suspense and the immediate feeling of danger.
Then we we get a shot that is straight out of BLACK CHRISTMAS. We see an extreme close up of a man’s eyeball, opened wide and menacing. Reflected in the eye is the woman, still unawares of his presence.
Now they don’t graphically show any killing in this movie, as you’d have to expect from anything made in this era. It just wasn’t done, but like I said the beats are there for the kind of suspense that would later become the go to for good genre fare.
The bulk of the flick takes place in an old Victorian mansion where McGuire works, under the employ of a feeble and mean old woman, Mrs. Warren, played by Ethel Barrymore. Barrymore, in fact, was nominated for supporting actress because of her work in this movie and I can see why. The lady relishes in being a huge bitch to everybody in the house, with the exception of McGuire. For some reason she likes this girl, lighting up whenever she comes in and treating her like an actual human being.
A dark and stormy night serves as the backdrop for this entire story, which is told over the course of one night in this old creepy house. There’s a cavalcade of characters… the kindly doctor/love interest Dr. Parry (Kent Smith), Mrs. Warren’s two adult children, George Brent (the responsible one) and Gordon Oliver (the slack-off), a boozing housemaid (played by the Bride herself, Mrs. Elsa Lanchester, a matronly nurse who is the recipient of most of Barrymore’s abuse (Sara Allgood) and Rhonda Fleming as Brent’s woman.
Barrymore knows something is up and keeps trying to get McGuire out of the house for good. She knows McGuire is in danger and it’s clear she knows a lot more than that, but she won’t spill.
Of course we get to the point where it’s just the bedridden old lady and the mute young woman alone in the house with the killer and the last act is a cat and mouse game as McGuire does her best to survive.
It’s such a great premise. I mean, the killer doesn’t really even have to cut the power or disconnect the old-timey phone because what’s McGuire gonna do? Call for help? Tap it out in morse?
Frequent Val Lewton cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca (BEDLAM, CAT PEOPLE) shoots the hell out of this movie, creating that perfect forbidding tone that makes this movie pop with nervous energy. I love seeing that in movies. Siodmak doesn’t move the camera around a ton, but uses editing to keep the flow alive and depends on Musuraca to keep the energy up with the photography. THE INNOCENTS is another example of that kind of filmmaking.
There’s a 1975 remake that I’d like to see if only for the casting of Christopher Plummer as the doctor/love interest, Jacqueline Bisset as the mute Helen, Mildred Dunnock (Mrs. Wiggs from Hitchcock’s THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY) as the mean old lady and the odd casting of John Phillip Law as the slacker brother and the fact that it’s directed by THE ITALIAN JOB’s Peter Collinson. That said, a cursory glance at the reaction to the remake dulls my interest quite a bit. But it’s still Christopher Plummer and Jacqueline Bisset, so I will watch it some day.
Final Thoughts: As pure entertainment THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE still works some 64 years after release and digging deeper shows just how ahead of the curve this film was. The movie rests in a sweet-spot, right on verge of being overly theatrical and almost fantastic in nature, but still residing in a realistic world. Atmosphere, acting, script, direction, editing, production design, score… all work together to craft an enduring thriller.
I was so very tempted to keep the high class rolling and maybe pair this movie with another black and white thriller classic like THE INNOCENTS or maybe Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to keep the leading lady with a disability stalked by a killer theme going, so I settled on:
That DVD cover isn’t horrible for a slasher movie, but not nearly as cool as the original artwork. Check it out:
1981’s EYES OF A STRANGER is a low budget horror flick about a reporter (Lauren Tewes) and her blind, mute and deaf… the trifecta of vulnerability… younger sister, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh in her first big screen role, who are under the evil eye of a tubby serial killer. Tewes suspects the serial murderer and rapist does indeed live in their same apartment building and goes about trying to prove it, which invites danger to her and her sister.
Directed by Ken Wiederhorn of SHOCK WAVES (the Peter Cushing Nazi zombie movie) and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 2 fame EYES OF A STRANGER has a gritty, creepy vibe to it from the very first scene, something it shares with THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE. Also, like today’s AMAD, the acting is surprisingly good especially from Leigh who has one of her most important tools of the trade taken from her (voice).
Wiederhorn’s direction is sharper than you might expect from this era as well. There’s an incredibly suspenseful scene in Leigh’s kitchen as she’s preparing something for herself and the killer is right there with her. She has no way of knowing he’s there and he teases her… moves things around, confusing the poor girl. It’s a scene about power. In fact I’d go so far as to call it a rape scene although it doesn’t go that far. The intent is still the same.
Tom Savini is in charge of the effects in this movie and as you'd expect from Savini of this era you get some decent gore.
It might not be the kind of film that sets the world on fire, but I think it’s good enough not to live in obscurity.
Here are the next week’s worth of AMAD titles:
Tuesday, October 20th: DEMON SEED (1977)
Wednesday, October 21th: STAGEFRIGHT (1987)
Thursday, October 22th: DEAD OF NIGHT (1977)
Friday, October 23th: THE SERPENT’S EGG (1978)
Saturday, October 24th: THE SWARM (1978)
Sunday, October 25th: THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS (1960)
Monday, October 26th: COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE (1970)
Tomorrow we move on to Julie Christie getting some up close and personal time with the supernatural in DEMON SEED! See you then!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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AMAD Halloween Spectacular 2009:
October 1st: Nothing But The Night (& The Wicker Man)
October 2nd: Beware! Children At Play (& The Devil Times Five)
October 3rd: Cameron’s Closet (& Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood)
October 4th: Afraid of the Dark (& The Lady In White)
October 5th: The Pit (& The Gate)
October 6th: Brain Damage (& Basket Case)
October 7th: Brain Dead (& Braindead, aka Dead Alive)
October 8th: Visiting Hours (& Dressed To Kill)
October 9th: Macabre (& The Beyond)
October 10th: Private Parts (& Eating Raoul)
October 11th: Road Games (& Duel)
October 12th: Dead End Drive-In (& Repo Man)
October 13th: Psychic Killer (& Alone In The Dark)
October 14th: The Body Snatcher (& Son of Frankenstein)
October 15th: The Leopard Man (& The Ghost and The Darkness)
October 16th: Wolfen (& Cujo)
October 17th: Madhouse (& Happy Birthday To Me)
October 18th: The House With The Laughing Windows (& Deep Red)
Click here for the full 215 movie run of A Movie A Day!
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Like in Birth of a Nation, in the scene outdoors where the girl is being stalked.
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...that you haven't seen? I suppose THE SWARM kind of counts (great Goldsmith score), but I'd love to hear your take on RAZORBACK ("JAWS with trotters") or even LINK. :-) In the meantime, thanks for the recommend on SPIRAL STAIRCASE ... sounds like the kind of film I'd dig. Definitely adding it to the Netflix queue.
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Seriously, at one time, the dark was a perceptual veil of concealment of which people lived in fear because of invisible threats undetected...but now, in the age of night vision, thermal sensing, and automated night time surveillance equipment...the dark is becoming irrelevant. There's nothing supernatural hiding in it.
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Uzumaki, a Lovecraftian movie about a town cursed by spirals.
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...been trying to find the double feature with The return of...
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This site is getting to be such horseshit. I mean you guys average 4 posts throughout the ENTIRE day and it's news that I've already seen or heard of over at joblo.com. I'm done with this site.
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top 20 of his favourite horror movies.check them out,especially the Giant Claw: http://tinyurl.com/4vd7o2
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Excellent choice for a future review.
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Vern reviewed EYES OF A STRANGER recently, if this is a coincidence it's a pretty interesting one
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...had some pretty disgusting scenes involving a kitten as food. Ew.
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"Julie Christie getting some up close and personal time with the supernatural in DEMON SEED!"I guess the premise of that movie must be less famous than I thought it was, if Quint thinks it's about the supernatural.
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Saw this about 3 yrs. ago and the very best thing in the still scary movie is the cinematography and the light direction. They just don't do it like that anymore.Another Double Feature suggestion is 1994's "Mute Witness." A mute woman who works on a film crew is stalked in Moscow after seeing a woman killed on the film set after hours as part of a "snuff film."***SPOILER******has a cameo by Alec Guinness*******END SPOILER*********IMDB says "Mute Witness" has been optioned for a remake, but that doesn't mean it will get made. I'll have to check out "Eyes of a Stranger", young Jennifer Jason Leigh is a good thing!------later-----m
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Cruise to cameo as Captain America!!!!!!!! http://sickpicks.blogspot.com/
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"Shock Waves", Peter Cushing Nazi Zombie movie? How in the hell did I miss that one? And, it has Brooke Adams in all her mid 70's hotness, too? Aye Carumba!
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of the couples,its not about supernatural horror.Scientist who neglects his wife,returns home and finds her being banged by his PC computer.He smashes it and decides to listen to the mac guy and buy himself a brand new iMac,and has a happy life with his wife.
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"I'm done with this site. "
Seven posts later:
"Iron Man 2 Rumors!!!"
You're co-dependent, man.
And BingoTheClown... Uzumaki is an awesome movie. Every talkbacker should watch it. -
Even with subtitles, I had no idea what was going on, but really great J-horror, with some horrifying imagery.
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Wait a minute, I haven't seen this movie yet! Holy shit, is that even possible? I've heard good things about The Spiral Staircase and it's been languishing on my Amazon wishlist for awhile. I think I'll go ahead and make that purchase. Hell, I'll probably through down the dough for Eyes of a Stranger as well. Only 11 more days left in good ol' October, then no more AMAD... So sad, but we all know you'll keep watchin' movies and building on your film knowledge. Like any good student.
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Oct 20, 2009 4:59:11 PM CDT
How about reviewing some movies we might actually like?
by lockesbrokenleg
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Seriously the killer is also the one who seems most stricken by the murders or who points out clues himself.
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wow that guy is really entering internet popculture fast.
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Good movie!!!
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It's one of those "watch it with your friends with a couple of twelve packs and revel in the weirdness" type of movies.
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MGM's Midnite Movies has the two-fer, and it's a good price. Purchase it, support MGM's Midnite Movies!
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Pretty good flick...and your right about the atmosphere..it all seems a bit prepackaged today. But the skys, the rain, made me feel like I could smell the house. A good double Bill could also be Death Trap or maybe the 70's Cat and Canary. But I want to hear a review of the Godawful Godsend British horror from 1979.
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...these movies just don't seem to be anywhere near anything that might be considered "scary". It just goes to show that it's hard to find decent horror films...but I there are still several that get points for cult status, or even an overall cheesy quality that lends itself to moderate horror greatness. But a lot of these ones just seem boring.
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...is an example of a film that is worthy of mention for its cheesy quality and elements of minor greatness. It's based on the novel by Bram Stoker, has tons of sexual imagery, includes a scene where Amanda Donahue chomps on a 14 year old boys penis while about to perform fellatio on him, and one of Hugh Grant's early roles. Not exactly a scary movie, but still worthy of mention.
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Filmed in the 80's, when tiny little monsters were becoming all the rage with films like Ghoulies, Gate, and Gremlines, this film went somewhat unnoticed but is should still be ranked among those I just mentioned. A family stumbles upon a mansion full of murderous dolls. What's not to love?
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It aired between 1981 and 1982, and it was like a horror version of the Twilight Zone, and was hosted by James Coburn. I remember being scared shitless by it, but loved every minute of it. I found the opening on YouTube and the fear I felt as a child flooded back...and also the awesomeness of it. Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKEviu7T2NI
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It's titled "The Boogeyman will Get You", and stars a young Helen Hunt looking a lot like Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween It's not their best episode (from what I remember) but it's a decent bit of 80's television: http://tinyurl.com/yfwdwrx
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but the laundry room visual has stayed with me.
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The VHS you hired because there might have been even the tinniest hint of boobs, which was great for my friends but me i was more interested in the movie...why were all the boob horror movies shit I ask ya?
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Lair of the White Worm and Dolls are both awesome flicks
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"Horror film hint #39: If someone says “You can’t trust anybody” in a genre picture it is that exact person who cannot be trusted." Not true. In Shadow Zone: The Undead Express, Valentine (played by Ron Silver) says this, he says "don't trust anybody," and he's the most trustworthy character.
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So I checked out JoBlo.com and it turns out it SUCKS.
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