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DVD Spiral Staircase
An unusual suspense film, The Spiral Staircase tells the story of a mute servant girl threatened by a murderer who has a penchant for killing the handicapped. Ethel Barrymore, Elsa Lanchester, and George Brent co-star, while Dorothy McGuire expertly captures the dilemma of the mute Helen Capel. Capel, who has not been able to speak since childhood, must somehow call for help before becoming the killer's next victim. McGuire's performance carries the film far past any B-movie qualities in the plot, and the last line is one of the most memorable in film history. Silent movie buffs will especially enjoy the opening scene, which takes place at a turn-of-the-century movie parlor. --Mark Savary
"I'm never more witty than when I've had a little nip."
I did some checking and I discovered this film, The Spiral Staircase, originally released in 1946, has been remade a few times over the years...once in 1961 with Eddie Albert, Hayley Mills, Elizabeth Montgomery, and Gig Young (a made for TV feature), again in 1975 with Jacqueline Bisset, Christopher Plummer, and John Phillip Law (a full length feature this time), and then yet again in 2000 with Nicollette Sheridan and Judd Nelson (this last one, also a made for TV feature, sounds like a real winner). Adapted from the novel "Some Must Watch" by Ethel Lina White, and directed Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Criss Cross, The Crimson Pirate), the film stars the demure, beautiful, and extremely talented Dorothy McGuire (Three Coins in the Fountain, Old Yeller, Swiss Family Robinson). Also appearing is George Brent (The Corpse Came C.O.D., FBI Girl), Kent Smith (Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People), Rhonda Fleming (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court), Gordon Oliver (Jezebel), Elsa Lanchester (Bride of Frankenstein, Murder by Death), Sara Allgood (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Rhys Williams (How Green Was My Valley), James Bell (I Walked with a Zombie), and Ethel Barrymore, who won an Oscar in her previous, supporting role in the Cary Grant film None But the Lonely Heart (1944).
The film, set at the turn of the century, begins with the murder of a woman at a hotel, one where a crowd of people just happen to be in attendance of an old timey picture show (the kind where a pianist plays the accompanying score), including Helen (McGuire), a mute woman who works as a servant for a local well to do family. Around this time we learn the murder is not an isolated incident, as someone is stalking women with physical infirmities and doing way with them (the woman in the hotel had a severe limp). Dr. Parry (Smith), who has a keen interest in Helen and her condition, makes the scene and offers her a ride home, but halfway there he's called away so Helen must walk the rest of the way, and it seems, along with the darkness (and a menacing figure lurking about), a storm is coming (in more ways than one). Once Helen arrives at her place of employment, a very large manor owned by a family named Warren, we meet a whole slew of interesting characters. There's Professor Warren (Brent), his secretary Blanche (Fleming), the Professor's playboy half brother Stephen (Oliver) who's just returned from a long European trip, their bedridden mother Mrs. Warren (Barrymore), Mrs. Oates (Lanchester), the cook, her husband (Williams), and finally Nurse Barker (Allgood). As the storm outside continues to build, so does the ominous sense of danger, due in part to Mrs. Warren's continual insistences Helen leave the house as soon as possible, as she seems to have serious doubts about Helen's safety (one couldn't blame her given her sons, one a smarmy mouth ne'er-do-well, the other a bookish fop). There's safety in numbers, but as various members of the household are called away for whatever reason, Helen soon discovers she probably should have listened to Mrs. Warren and got while the gettin' was good...
I enjoyed this film a lot, especially in terms of the huge, slightly creepy manor which most of the story took place. The distinctive shadows, darkened corridors, elaborate sets pieces, combined with masterful directing, featuring some strong and off putting killer point of view shots, and spooky musical scoring, all went a long way towards creating an overall eerie atmosphere, a continual sense of evil present as right from the beginning...that and the fact we knew from early on the killer followed Helen home and gained entry into the house. The characters are very distinctive, and played expertly by a highly professional cast, the real standouts being Dorothy McGuire, who has practically no speaking lines throughout the film and must rely solely on her expressionistic abilities, and also Ethel Barrymore as the infirmed, but certainly not mentally impaired Mrs. Warren, once a woman of great strength, now confined to her bed by afflictions brought on by advanced age (she was actually nominated for an Oscar in her role here). The one thing that really gave me the heebie jeebies as far as this film went was Ms. Barrymore as she would often seem to be feigning sleep, but then you'd look over at her and her eyes would be wide open, taking in everything that was going on...Bette Davis may have had peepers distinctive enough for Kim Carnes to pen a song about, but Ethel Barrymore certainly could have given her a run for the money (that and the fact the words Bette Davis comes across much better in a song than the words Ethel Barrymore). And talking about eyes, the killer was often displayed only in much abbreviated form, hands, a foot, etc., but usually by a close up of one wide, glaring eye full of murderous intent. As far as the identity of the killer, it was really anyone's game up until a certain point, and by then the writers wisely saw no point in keeping it a mystery anymore, as most everyone should have gotten clued in by then. I did pick up on it a little earlier than I expected, but only because of the not entirely subtle pushing of other characters as suspects drove me to my own conclusions. As to the motive behind the murders, that aspect did remain secret until it was revealed. I suppose one might be able to discern it before the reveal, but I think this is a much more difficult element to peel away from the story, even though the pieces were there, which is, in my opinion, a real credit towards those who originally wrote, and then adapted this intricate story to the screen. For me, the most harrowing sequences involved the latter ones where various characters ventured, armed only with a candle, down into the dark, drafty, spooky, cobwebbed basement, filled with niches and hidey holes. All in all this is a wonderfully crafted film, and while I haven't seen the various remakes, I have a pretty good feeling the original is probably still the best.
The picture, presented in fullscreen, original aspect ratio (1.33:1), looks beautifully sharp and clean, and the Dolby Digital mono audio comes through extremely clear. The only extra featured on the DVD is a theatrical trailer for the Johnny Depp film Secret Window (2004), and odd inclusion, I thought, but whatever.
Cookieman108
THE ORIGINAL-AND ONLY-SPIRAL STAIRCASE; THIS IS ONE CLASSIC
that NEVER should have suffered a remake. No need to go into the grim details, but if you want style, thrills and chills, see the 1946 version with George Brent, Dorothy McGuire and Ethel Barrymore and ignore the dreadful attempt to update a classic that needed no updating.
This is the one that set the template for all horror movies that followed; the original from which all others flowed. The spooky music, which, in it's time, was as groundbreaking as the theme from Jaws. The classic 3 notes sent chills down my spine, and when I first saw this movie I was 7 years old and it really did scare the hell out of me. I watched it with my father and he loved it too; we had a Million Dollar Movie that played 5 nights for one week and we watched it every night.
Ethel Barrymore is, as always, superb and lends the perfect touch to this spooky, suspenseful movie. George Brent is wonderful as the smooth soft-spoken professor, the head of the house, and the caretaker of the family. Dorothy McGuire conveys tremendous emotion given her muted state; she has, throughout most of the movie, not one word of dialogue but a world of emotions and you can tell what she's thinking and feeling.
The setting is a New England town, circa 1890, and the house is a huge Victorian, very luxurious and beautifully furnished. The opening scene shows a group of people in a room in a hotel breathlessly watching "The Kiss", which was groundbreaking in it's time, because it showed the first kiss ever put on film and was quite shocking back then. The music for "The Kiss" consists of a woman playing the piano according to whatever mood is onscreen, and is perfect for the score for SS also.
There is a serial killer on the loose; preying on women with handicaps/afflictions, which puts Dorothy McGuire, as Helen, in a very precarious situation and it is her safety we are concerned with. The house is populated with a disparate group, and one by one each is somehow removed in varying circumstances, leaving Helen vulnerable to an attack. To enhance the mood, there is a violent thunderstorm throughout the movie, and the lightning flashes occasionally reveal hidden dangers outside and inside (!) the house.
So, for an appreciation of truly excellent moviemaking, (and "thrills and chills")see this gem, it is as scary today as it was in it's film debut back in 1946...
Some clarification ...
If you look this title up under DVD-s, this movie is the original Spiral Staircase - not the remake from the 70-s. I'm surprised to see reviews for the remake when this movie has 1946 attached to it. It is B&W - not color, and hopefully Amazon will correct the description. For some reasons the reviews for the 1946 movie are also attached to the 1975 movie.
The Anchor Bay version of the 1946 movie was out of print for some time so I'm sure glad to see MGM issued its own copy on October 4, 2005.
It is a movie very much in the tradition of Hitchcock and Audrey Hepburn's "Wait Until Dark". The movie received good reviews: 4/5 at AMG.
This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Leave Her to Heaven is one of the most unblinkingly perverse movies ever offered up as a prestige picture by a major studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Gene Tierney, whose lambent eyes, porcelain features, and sweep of healthy-American-girl hair customarily made her a 20th Century Fox icon of purity, scored an Oscar nomination playing a demonically obsessive daughter of privilege with her own monstrous notion of love. By the time she crosses eyebeams with popular novelist Cornel Wilde on a New Mexico-bound train, her jealous manipulations have driven her parents apart and her father to his grave. Well, no, not grave: Wilde soon gets to watch her gallop a glorious palomino across a red-rock horizon as she metronomically sows Dad's ashes to the winds. Mere screen moments later,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Cornel Wilde Director(s): John M. Stahl DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Val Lewton's name is synonymous with the subtlest, most mysterious brand of horror filmmaking in Hollywood's golden age, and the nine horror classics he produced at RKO between 1942 and 1946 constitute the most remarkable cycle of creativity in B-movie history. (For the record, the Lewton/RKO legacy also includes two non-horror entries, Youth Runs Wild and Mademoiselle Fifi.)
Before becoming a film producer, the Russian-born Lewton was a prolific writer of pulp fiction, nonfiction, and a couple of pornographic novels. He also worked for years as assistant to David O. Selznick, a legendary producer with a distinctive personal signature--and a flair for grandiosity Lewton himself never emulated. It's ever so revealing that, on Selznick's Gone With the Wind, it was... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Boris Karloff DVD Release Date: Released the 04 October 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The definitive screen adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, the 1961 production of The Innocents remains one of the most effective ghost stories ever filmed. Originally promoted as the first truly "adult" chiller of the big screen (a marginally valid claim considering the release of Psycho a year earlier), the film arrived at a time when the thematic depth of James's story could finally be addressed without the compromise of reductive discretion. And while the Freudian anxiety that fuels the story may seem tame by today's standards, the psychological horrors that comprise the story's "dark secret" are given full expression in a film that brilliantly clouds the boundary between tragic reality and frightful imagination.
Part mystery, part wartime polemic, Lifeboat finds director Alfred Hitchcock tackling a cinematic challenge that foreshadows the self-imposed handicaps of Rope and Rear Window. As with those subsequent features, Hitchcock confines his action and characters to a single set, in this instance the lone surviving lifeboat from an Allied freighter sunk by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic. A less confident, ingenious filmmaker might have opened up John Steinbeck's dialogue-driven character study beyond the battered boat and its cargo of survivors, but Hitchcock instead revels in his predicament to exploit the enforced intimacy between his characters.
