Robert Siodmak (1945)

An entertaining old dark house story, based on a novel by Ethel Lina White.  The novel is called Some Must Watch and The Spiral Staircase is an improvement on that, although the original name would still have made sense (in the book the main character is a cripple, here she’s a mute).  The house is in New England and the epicentre of the nefarious activity in it is a cellar at the foot of the eponymous staircase:  the last of the victims of a serial killer (young women, variously afflicted) meets her end there.  This is an unusual thriller because I found it easy to spot whodunnit from an early stage, for two reasons:  (a) George Brent was the biggest male name in the cast and it was soon obvious he hadn’t a romantic function; (b) Brent is playing a professor whose specialism is unexplained and who it’s therefore safe to assume, because he’s too clever by half, is up to no good.

Although the scary episodes in the house are effective enough, it’s the heroine Helen (Dorothy Maguire)’s journey back there as a spectacular storm gets underway (it continues for pretty well the rest of the picture) that’s perhaps the highlight of The Spiral Staircase – the sequence is wonderfully lit by Nicholas Musuraca.    In spite of his character’s hidden depths, George Brent is rather dull as the murderer but Dorothy Maguire is likeably energetic as Helen and there are enjoyable supporting turns – from Ethel Barrymore as the family matriarch (Helen is companion to the old lady), Gordon Oliver as her vaguely disreputable son (Brent is a stepson), Sara Allgood as a not unreasonably huffy nurse, Elsa Lanchester as a tipsy cook (the alcohol may explain why her accent keeps slipping), James Bell as a police constable, and a bulldog called (in the story) Carlton.   Robert Siodmak gives the proceedings plenty of pace and is well-served by Mel Dinelli’s efficient script.  Rhonda Fleming (although she has no discernible disability) is the final cellar victim and Kent Smith the young doctor who’s going to take Helen away from all this.   He tells her there are specialists in Boston who can cure her silence (it descended as a result of girlhood trauma).  The shocking events of the story do the trick without Helen’s needing to see a medic.

20 November 2010