A brother and sister (Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey) purchase a beautiful seaside house for far less than it is worth from Commander Beech (Donald Crisp). Beech’s granddaughter Stella (Gail Russel) is obviously unhappy about the sale, thinking of the house as hers, the only connection to her dead mother. It seems Stella’s father was an unpleasant artist with a roving eye and her mother was a kindly woman who either jumped, fell, or was pushed off of a cliff to her death. The new owners quickly discover the reason for the cheap selling price: The house is haunted. With a little help from Doctor Scott (Alan Napier), they set out to discover the the hidden past of the house that endangers Stella’s life and leads to Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner), a strong-willed and odd woman who runs a creepy sanitarium.
The Uninvited is the first Hollywood talkie that dealt with a haunting in a horror context. Before this ghosts showed up in comedies. Most of the sub-genres of horror have an iconic film, one that is skillfully made and that contains a story whose elements are repeated in a majority of the others, one that sets characteristics of any “monsters.” For vampires it is the 1931 Dracula. For flesh-eating zombies it is Dawn of the Dead. For werewolves it is The Wolf Man (even though there were earlier films in the sub-genre such as Werewolf of London) For ghost stories, films of hauntings, it is The Uninvited. If you’ve seen any cinematic ghost stories of the last sixty year, you’ll recognize the basic structure: The entrance of people not connected to previous events who find themselves at risk, the slowly building supernatural activity, the threat to an individual, the search for the secret that created the ghost, and the climax when the heroes confront the ghost with events of the past. No film has done it better. It is subtle, but not slow. The horror is present, with several of the great cinematic fright scenes, but the whole doesn’t dwell in it. This is not a heavy picture.
While taking place in “modern” times, The Uninvited is a gothic horror tale. Partly this is due to location. As the house is situated in an isolated location on the coast, lacking electricity, everything has the look of a hundred years earlier—until they leave the haunted house at which point the world becomes lighter and far less frighting. It’s a clever bit of tone juggling. The film (and to some degree, the novel it was based on, Uneasy Freehold) takes some inspiration from Rebecca, one of the classic gothic romances. It would be a spoiler to say what it borrows but I can say it does a better job with the material than Rebecca does.
The cinematography is superb (it was nominated for an Oscar, and should have won) and the piano piece, “Stella by Starlight” became a hit. Ray Milland portrays Roderick Fitzgerald with the proper mixture of determination and humor. It is one of his finest performances and if I’d had my way, he would have been nominated for an Oscar, though he should have lost to Fred McMurry in Double Indemnity. The Academy had different plans so nominated neither. The supporting cast is also excellent, except Gail Russell as Stella, who is acceptable if a bit shrill. Cornelia Otis Skinner is particularly good as the overbearing, cultish “psychologist.” Alan Napier, best known now as Alfred, Batman’s butler in the ’60s TV show, anchors the film as the voice of calm and reason.
I’ve commented elsewhere that I am rarely frightened by horror movies. In fact, I’ve only found three frightening. This is one.