Retrospective reviews have continued to hold the film in high regard, with Carlos Clarens calling it ” the best and most unusual” horror film of 1944 in his book An Illustrated History of the Horror Film.
“ The supernatural is dealt with seriously in this dynamic, suspenseful melodrama, chock full of fine acting that will hold audiences glued to their seats for its entire 93 minutes… Once in, they’ll like it, but getting audiences into the seats to stay “glued” there was less than a dead cert due to the film’s “unusual and controversial subject.” — Review from the 5 January 1944 issue of Variety.
In his review of The Uninvited for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther remarked that while the film features a “glaring confusion in the wherefore and why of what goes on,” it effectively showcases the talents of its cast, particularly noting that Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey “do nicely as the couple who get themselves involved” and praising Gail Russell as “wistful and gracious” in her role.”
Paramount’s The Uninvited 1944, MGM’s The Haunting 1963, and Twentieth Century Fox’s The Innocents 1961stand as the finest examples of achievements in the realm of sophisticated supernatural cinema to come out of Hollywood in the forties. Horror in the 1940s were overwhelmingly monster movies, considering Universal’s trend, which was characterized by a blend of classic literary monsters and folktales and their more modern reinterpretations, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and werewolves. The Gothic ghost story has had quite a resurgence in the past few decades and has become its own genre.
All three of the aforementioned Gothic supernatural films are ‘gravely’ serious and refined visions that tell a subtext or deeper meaning about inner psychological conflict and the path of self-discovery, which is effectively brought to life by the presence of ghosts and spirits. Therefore, while on the surface, the films appear to haunt the screen as a well-crafted ghost story, they also delve into meaningful themes that reach beyond their supernatural framework and their sense of the otherworldly.
These films represent a departure from typical ghost stories, offering nuanced, psychologically complex narratives that delve into the human psyche. These narratives are particularly powerful when amplified through the Gothic aesthetic.
With its cold earnestness, Lewis Allen’s stunning prototype of an authentic cinematic ghost story doesn’t expose the uncanny happenings as a mere gimmick perpetrated by human design to misdirect and obscure mischief. These ghosts are very real and dangerous.
Right off the bat, the movie gained attention for being above other horror films —as an early example of “elevated horror” or “higher bracket horror pictures,” as Jack Cartwright wrote at the time.
Hollywood normally sprinkled its ghost stories with a generous dose of comedy or as a subterfuge devised to cover up some criminal operations. Four years earlier, Paramount released the Bob Hope comedy classic The Ghost Breakers; the horror/comedy subgenre shifted to a lighthearted tone characterized by antics with the ‘it can all be explained away by the end of the picture’ flare. We can see this type of over-the-top carnival horror in pictures pulled off by showman William Castle in the 1950s & 60s, with House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts.
Paulette Goddard and Bob Hope in The Ghost Breakers 1940.
Kay Hammond, Rex Harrison and Constance Cummings in Blithe Spirit 1945.
The Uninvited is an innovative approach to the supernatural Hollywood horror formula. It takes a bold stance by presenting these elements as genuine occurrences rather than comedic devices or plot misdirections and was considered “unusual and controversial” at the time, setting it apart from lighter iterations like Blithe Spirit or Topper, refraining from the campy theatrics typical of its predecessors. Allen’s film can be regarded as the first major Hollywood motion picture that transformed ‘ghosts’ into something malignant and threatening.
Gary J. Svehla’s The Uninvited essay in Cinematic Hauntings states: Hollywood’s glib attitude toward ghosts – perhaps they quickly became the caricature of human beings wearing a white sheet in two-reel comedies or the comical howling spirits of Disney cartoons, the ghost in Hollywood has never been taken seriously enough. Hollywood’s attraction to the ghost movie genre has largely been tongue-in-cheek with early thirties encounters between spooks and Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, and the robust, demented Little Rascals. Even the MGM late thirties version of A Christmas Carol, featuring disembodied spirits of the spookiest nature, still managed to keep the proceedings moralistic, tidy, and safe (even fun).
Svehla cites the Halperin Brothers’ deadly serious pre-code horror Supernatural 1933, starring Carole Lombard, as one of the first mature ghost movies. It is still an obscure gem barely remembered today.
The Uninvited emerged as a pivotal work in the supernatural thriller canon, marking a significant shift in the genre’s trajectory, opting for a nuanced exploration of spectral phenomena that would redefine the genre.
This 1944 Paramount picture starred Ray Milland, one of its top stars, and Ruth Hussey, best known for her Oscar-nominated performance as Best Supporting Actress in The Philadelphia Story 1940.
Directed by the English-born Lewis Allen, with over thirty West End productions to his credit and several successful Broadway shows as well, he established himself as a prominent figure in theatre until he went to Los Angeles and joined Paramount.
In his directorial debut, Allen masterfully adapted Irish writer and activist Dorothy Macardle’s 1941 novel Uneasy Freehold, renamed The Uninvited, for its U.S. publication.
While his repertoire includes films like The Unseen 1945(also a Dorothy Macardle adaptation which made it to the screen a year later), Desert Fury (1947), the atmospheric noir So Evil My Love (1948), and the tense thriller Suddenly (1954), it’s The Uninvited (1944) of all his moody offerings; it’s the film that stands out as his crowning achievement. Paramount allocated a substantial budget and assembled a talented cast for the production, resulting in a successful hit!
Joel McCrea and Gail Russell in The Unseen 1945.
Though more of a continuation of the theme rather than a literal sequel, Lewis Allen directed the follow-up, The Unseen (1945), also starring Gail Russell, this time playing a governess – echoing the Gothic themes of The Innocents (1961).
“As we think about The Uninvited today, its production tells us a lot about why it remains so culturally significant. When producer Charles Brackett bought the rights to Dorothy Macardle‘s 1941 novel, he had Alfred Hitchcock in mind to direct. Hitchcock had made Rebecca a year earlier in a similar fashion to what Brackett imagined The Uninvited could be: moody, gothic, and haunting. Brackett met with Hitchcock, who read the book but could not direct it due to scheduling conflicts. Hitchcock did give some suggestions to Brackett, but whether or not he used those suggestions is unknown.” – from The Original Ghostly Thrills of ‘The Uninvited’ published October 26, 2021, by Emily Kubincanek, senior Contributor for Film School Rejects.
The Uninvited will certainly resonate with admirers of Hitchcock’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca 1940,sharing some of its elements of psychological suspense and haunting ‘spirits’ from the past. Both stories explore parallel themes that center around the ‘afterlife’ influence of the idealized woman/wife revered as the epitome of perfection who casts a long, malevolent shadow over a pure-hearted girl.
Dame Judith Anderson and Joan Fontaine in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca 1940.
It’s a complex blend of a psychological thriller and the obvious supernatural horror, blurring the lines between the tangible and the specters of the afterlife. It’s also a harmony of melodrama and Gothic romance, drawing inspiration from films like Rebecca; The Uninvitedutilizes gothic elements such as a foreboding mansion and a sense of lingering past trauma. In addition to that, the murder mystery structure is a story in which Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey uncover clues about past events and dark family secrets as they investigate the haunting.
Allen clues us in on the uncanny phenomena by using sound, melancholic sobbing is particularly powerful, and other unseen forces to suggest a supernatural presence—such as intense cold, the lingering scent of perfume, and an overwhelming sense of oppressive sadness. This likely had a significant impact on another iconic film about a haunted house: Robert Wise’s The Haunting 1963.
Ray Milland was cast as the sophisticated Rick Fitzgerald, who seeks to lighten the tense atmosphere with his comedic flair—a skill playing the charming everyman he frequently showcased in his roles as a romantic lead. That same year, he co-starred with Ginger Rogers in the romantic musical drama Lady in the Dark and Fritz Lang’s spy thriller Ministry of Fear.
“He’s been described as an existential Cary Grant, and his performance here captures that sentiment perfectly. Ultimately, though, the comedy here feels more like genre residue, the persisting remnants of a past cycle that championed comedy over horror in a film pushing new boundaries of otherworldly terror. It’s in the film’s most haunting, stylized moments that it feels most grounded and self-assured.”— from Caleb Allison from the 2021 essay Erotic and Esoteric : The Uninvited as Queer Cult Film.
In her debut role, Gail Russell’s performance as the twenty-year-old Stella Meredith is the driving force of the film, making her character a pivotal element of the story. In her first leading role, Russell masterfully embodies Stella’s complexities; her portrayal captures the essence of a true Gothic heroine, as she combines vulnerability with courageous spirit, gentility with a rebellious heart throughout the picture. She is ideal – haunted and consumed.
She brings a feverish intensity as a waif longing for her mother, who spirals into a state of desperation as a young woman under a spell.
The role of Stella Meredith is widely regarded as one of her best and played a significant role in establishing her as a star in Hollywood. With The Uninvited, and for a brief time during the 1940s, Gail Russell’s spellbinding, ethereal beauty, which trade magazines compared to Hedy Lamarr, the film captured the essence of what might have been for the talented actress, showcased in films like Frank Borzage’s Moonrise 1948. The Western, Angel and the Badman (1947)featuring John Wayne and once again alongside Wayne in the South Seas adventure Wake of the Red Witch (1948). She also starred in John Farrow’s noir/psychological horror film Night Has a Thousand Eyes 1948, co-starring Edward G. Robinson.
Gail Russell and John Lund in Night Has a Thousand Eyes 1948.
From the time she started out at the age of 19, Gail Russell fell victim to the ravages of the Hollywood star factory and descended into a tragic life of alcoholism. Withdrawn, anxious, and out of place for the Hollywood hustle, she drank to calm her nerves while on the set of this movie.
Russell suffered from pathological shyness, preferring to have lived a reclusive life as an artist. Her mother pushed her into an acting career, wishing to exploit her sensual good looks to move the family up in class. It is an ironic twist that she plays a young woman in the grip of her mother’s controlling influence.
By the time she appeared in Budd Boetticher’s Seven Men from Nowin 1956, alcoholism had taken a toll on her once-stunning looks, and her career was nearly at an end. Tragically, she passed away in 1961 at the age of thirty-six due to complications related to her drinking.
The screenplay, brimming with intelligence and wit, was written by Frank Partos, a staff writer for both Paramount and RKO, and Dodie Smith, the established playwright and children’s author known for The Hundred and One Dalmatians,which itself was infused with a few Gothic elements. Partos had often worked with Paramount Producer Charles Brackett, who often collaborated with Billy Wilder.
According to Emily Kubincanek, Partos was “ Only available because he’d turned down co-writing Double Indemnity 1944 because he felt the morally challenging plot of that classic noir was too ‘sordid’ and bound to violate the Hays Code.”
CODED CLASSIC HORROR THEORY “The Uncanny & The Other”
“Scenes of excessive brutality and gruesomeness must be cut to an absolute minimum.”
“As a cultural index, the pre-Code horror film gave a freer rein to psychic turmoil and social disorientation because it possessed a unique freedom from censorship… the Hays Office admits that under the Code it is powerless to take a stand on the subject of ‘gruesomeness.‘(Thomas Doherty)
Horror films in particular have made for a fascinating case study in the evolving perceptions of queer presence; queer-horror filmmakers and actors were often forced to lean into the trope of the “predatory queer” or the “monstrous queer” to claim some sense of power through visibility and blatant expressions of sexuality.- Essential Queer Horror Films by Jordan Crucciola-2018
Though Hollywood execs refused to show explicit queerness, they were willing to pay for scripts that dealt with characters that were social outcasts and sexually non-normative. The horror genre is perhaps the most iconic coded queer playground, which seems to have an affinity with homosexuality because of its apparatus of ‘otherizing’ and the inherent representation of difference. The horror genre crosses over boundaries that include transgressions between heterosexuality and queerness. The villain, fiend, or monster plays around with a variety of elements that, while usually separate, might merge male and female gender traits.
The horror film, in particular, found its place asserting a queer presence on screen. The narratives often embraced tropes of the “˜predatory queer’ or the “˜monstrous queer’ in order to declare themselves visible while cinematic queers were elbowed out of the way. Filmmakers had to maneuver their vision in imaginative ways to subvert the structure laid out for them by the Code.
As Harry M. Benshoff explains in his book Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality in the Horror Film, “Immediately before and during the years of World War II, Universal Studio’s horror films began to employ a more humanistic depiction of their monsters,” and the films of Val Lewton, like Cat People, reflected “a growing awareness of homosexuality, homosexual communities, and the dynamics of homosexual oppression as it was played out in society and the military.”So even though Hollywood execs refused to show explicit queerness, during the first true horror boom in American cinema, they were willing to pay for stories about social outcasts and sexually nonnormative figures. Horror fans thus found themselves awash in some of the genre’s most iconic queer-coded characters of all time.
On a Greek Island, Boris Karloff plays Gen. Nikolas Pherides in Val Lewton/Mark Robsin’s Isle of the Dead 1945. Driven insane by the belief that Thea (Ellen Drew), who suffers from catalepsy, is the embodiment of an evil vampiric force, is a demon called a vorvolaka. Lewton drew on collective fears, and all his work had an undercurrent of queer panic and a decipherable sign of homophobia.
The Vorvolaka has beset the island with plague. Thea- “Laws can be wrong, and laws can be cruel, and the people who live only by the law are both wrong and cruel.”
The Pre-Code era was exploding with American horror films, that reflected the angst, social unrest, and emotional distress that audiences were feeling. Personified in films that used graphic metaphors to act as catharsis, the images were often filled with rage, as Thomas Doherty calls it ‘the quality of gruesomeness, cruelty and vengefulness’. Think of the angry mobs with their flaming torches who hunt down Frankenstein’s monster, eventually crucifying him like a sacrificial embodiment of their fury. James Whale’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1931 was a smash hit for Universal. Other studios were trying to ride the wave of the awakening genre of the horror picture. Paramount released director Rouben Mamoulian’s adaption of the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1886. The film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was released in 1931, stars Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins. During the Pre-Code period, many horror films proposed grisly subject matter that would shock and mesmerize the audience. For example, actor/director Irving Pichel’s The Most Dangerous Game (1932) starring Joel McCrea, Leslie Banks, and Fay Wray.
In 1932 Michael Curtiz directed Doctor Xstarring Lionel Atwill who would become one of the leading mad scientists of the genre.
Michael Curtiz’s macabre horror/fantasy experiment of homosocial ‘men doing science’, crossing over into profane territories and embracing dreadful taboos!
All scenes below from Dr. X (1932).
Fay Wray is Atwill’s daughter who is the only woman surrounded by a group of scientific nonconformists.
The adaptation of Bram Stoker’s story of the Eastern European incubus was interpreted by Tod Browning in Dracula 1931, immortalized by Hungarian stage actor Bela Lugosi with his iconic cape and mesmerizing stare. While his nightly visitations were blood-driven and cinematically sexual in nature, there is a very homoerotic element to his influence over Renfield (Dwight Frye) and his gaze of gorgeous David Manners as John Harker.
Bela Lugosi looks down upon David Manners in a scene from the film ‘Dracula’, 1931. (Photo by Universal/Getty Images)
Robert Florey directed the macabre Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. And a film that has no connection to Poe’s story but in the name is one of the most transgressive, disturbing horror films rampant with vile taboos, such as necrophilia, incest, sadism, satanism, and flaying a man alive, is the unorthodox The Black Cat (1934). The film stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, one of four pictures they would do together. A pair of enemies who have a score to settle, ghosts of a past war, and stolen love all take place with the backdrop of a stylish Bauhaus set design and high-contrast lighting.
Paramount released Murders in the Zoo (1933) with Lionel Atwill, a sadistic owner of a zoo who uses wild animals to ravage and kill off any of his wife’s (Kathleen Burke) suitors. Kathleen Burke is well known as the panther girl in Erle C. Kenton’s horrifically disturbing Island of Lost Souls 1932, an adaptation of master fantasy writer H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. Incidentally, Welles, Laughton, and wife Elsa Lanchester had been good friends earlier on, before the filming of Lost Souls. The film stars Charles Laughton as the unorthodox, depraved scientist who meddles with genetics and nature. He creates gruesome human/animals, torturing them with vivisection in his ‘house of pain.’ The film also stars Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, and Bela Lugosi as The Sayer of the Law.
In 1933, King Kong showed a giant ape grasping the half-naked object of his affection, with unmentionable connotations of bestiality between the ape and Fay Wray. With scenes of Wray writhing in his gigantic paws, he lusts after her until his desire kills him. It’s almost like fantasy noir: the object of your desire will ultimately kill you!
The 1930s and 1940s Fear the Queer Monsters:
Re-assessing the Hitchcock Touch; by Wieland Schwanebeck -As Rhona Berenstein asserts, the horror genre “provides a primary arena for sexualities and practices that fall outside the purview of patriarchal culture, and the subgeneric tropes of the unseen, the host and the haunted house.”
By the same token, Kendra Bean concludes that Mrs. Danvers is portrayed as “a wraith; a sexual predator who is out to make Mrs. de Winter her next victim.”
Queer characters in horror films during the early period, reveal similarities between Mrs. Danvers and the staging of earlier sapphic characters, such as Gloria Holdens’s well-known portrayal of Countess Marya Zaleska in Dracula’s Daughter 1936. Yet, similar to the self-discipline of Mrs. Danvers, Dracula’s Daughter remains a figure of primacy and pity Ellis Hanson argues Dracula’s Daughter presents “the possibilities of a queer Gothic” early on in Hollywood history, “rich in all the paradox and sexual indeterminacy the word queer and the word Gothic imply.
There was a revival of the horror craze during the period of WWII. The Hollywood studios, both major and ‘Poverty Row” like Monogram and Republic, realized that horror movies were a lucrative business. The studios began to revisit the genre, looking for not only fresh formulas but they resurrected the classic monsters, dropping them into new plots. They also envisioned uniting gangster films with horror films, and this homogenizing led to a ‘queering’ of the two styles that demonstrated phallocentric ( guns, scientific penetration) and homoerotic themes and images into a sub-genre.
Public awareness of homosexuality reached a new height during these years, primarily due to the new set of social conditions wrought by war. Slowly , the love that dare not speak its name was being spoken, albeit in ways almost always obscurantist, punitive and homophobic. The linkage of homosexuality with violence and disease remained strong. Monsters in the Closet -Harry Benshoff
Rhona Berenstein, in her insightful book Attack of the Leading Ladies points out that films featuring the mad scientist trope operate with the homosocial principle, which speaks of the homoeroticism of males working together in consort subverting science together as a group of men who hide behind their objectification -the female object of their gaze, are in fact, figures of objectification themselves. They are simultaneously homosocial, homoerotic, and homophobic in aspect; … potentially possessing an extra-normative commitment between the two men.
Mad Doctor movies are homosocial in nature. The Mad Doctor movie is a subgenre that, below the surface, glorifies intimate male camaraderie and male homosexuality, and by the close of the picture, society, the prevailing culture, must, in turn, annihilate that which is repressed. However, it is not exclusively a vehicle to express homosexuality through homosocial interactions. There is a component not only of male bonding, a world without women; the thrust is a synthesis of misogyny and patriarchal tyranny and oppression of women. Homosocial relationships between men in these science horrors show the man’s desire for connection to other men, even one created by his own hand.
According to (Twitchell) in his Dreadful Pleasures, and Attack of the Leading Ladies (Rona Berenstein) Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein in all three Universal pictures, was at least performing bisexuality. Whale’s 1933 Frankenstein might give way to the homosocial realm of the mad scientist trope of ‘homoerotic indulgence’ as these men exclude women from the pursuit of their fulfillment. Twitchell views the scientist’s fluid sexuality in order to examine the concept of a man controlling women’s primacy of giving birth. This might explain Dr. Frankenstein’s venture into unnatural reproduction. A process he wants to divert to himself without women’s exclusive right to motherhood. In the scene where he is as close to giving birth to a full-grown man, he seems to display sexual arousal when his creation comes to life. Henry Frankenstein provokes nature and defies his heterosexuality. As Whale was an openly gay director in Hollywood, it can be pondered whether he knew exactly what he was suggesting. Thesiger’s sexually ambiguous, or okay, not so ambiguous Dr. Pretorius, the mad scientist who pressures Henry Frankenstein to revitalize his experiments and create a mate for the monster. Pretorius is the scientist who insists Henry continue his creative efforts in Bride of Frankenstein. Vitto Russo called Thesiger, a “man who played the effete sissy”¦ with much verve and wit.”
George Zucco, like Lionel Atwill, often portrayed the unorthodox scientist who flirted with taboos. He plays mad scientist Dr. Alfred Morris in The Mad Ghoul (1943) As a university chemistry professor, he exploits medical student Ted Allison (David Bruce) with his experimental gas that transforms Ted into a malleable, yielding macabre ghoul, whom Morris directs to kill and remove the victim’s hearts using the serum to temporarily bring Ted back from his trance like death state. David Bruce’s character is represented as a ‘queer’ sort of young man. He is not quite masculine and is unable to get his girlfriend, Evelyn Ankers, to fall in love with him. As the Mad Ghoul, he becomes a monstrous queer.
In 1932, director Tod Browning’s Dracula based on Bram Stoker’s story of a fiendish vampire who in a sexually implicit way, violates his victims by penetrating them with his fangs. The story pushed the boundaries of storytelling, and there was an inherent subtext of ‘queer’ ravishment when he sucks the blood of Dwight Frye to make him his loyal servant.
In Jonathan Harker’s Journal, the protagonist recounts his impressions of his interaction with the vampire, Dracula “As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which do what I would, I could not conceal.”For (Noël Carroll) the entry in his diary conveys revulsion by the Count’s closeness and offensive presence, which causes him to become sickened.
But it also could be read that Harker’s ‘shudder’ is not about his revulsion, but rather, an uncontrolled sexual response to the vampire’s looming over him, which could be interpreted not just as hunger for his ‘blood’ but an expression of repressed sexual desire and the fear it causes.
Horror movies have always pushed the boundaries of normalcy, by virtue of the fact that these films are inhabited by ‘monsters’, something ‘queerly’ different. And it is natural to observe two diverging responses to the impact of the horror genre and often, its persecution of what is ‘different’ and the source of what causes our anxiety.
Dracula may appear as the image of a man, but the count is far from human. While monsters in classical horror films are based on systems of maleness, they are split from being actual men. Although there are physical interactions and suggestive contact with the heroine, there isn’t the foundation of heterosexuality, but something quite deviant within their aggressively erotic encounters and/or assaults. The understanding of sexuality and the most narrow identifications that are assigned to varying orientations in a large sense is not translatable for the deeper layers of the monster and their relationship to their victims. In Hollywood, horror films can be seen as heterosexuality being invaded by an abhorrent outside force; inherent in the underlying message could be racism, classism, sexism, and gay panic. Though it can be interpreted as a landscape of heterosexuality that is in the full power of its universal presence, horror films are perfect platforms that can illustrate the collapse of heterosexuality and the subversion of sexuality.
The horror genre is a breeding ground for portrayals of the shattering of heterosexual power. This can be seen in Lambert Hillyer’s Dracula’s Daughter (1936) starring Gloria Holden as the sapphic vampire who lives in a New Village-type artist’s den, it signals her outsider status from domesticity and normalcy.
In White Zombie (1932), Bela Lugosi plays the eerily menacing Legendre. He turns men into lifeless workers who run the sugar mill. Legendre also begins to turn the plantation owner, Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer), into one of his zombies. His motivation for his control over people is ambiguous, though there seems to be sexual reasoning for both the beautiful Madeline (Madge Bellamy) and Beaumont. In the scene where Beaumont is nearly paralyzed, Legendre’s control over his male victim parallels the sexual entrapment of the movie’s heroine.
MAD LOVE (1935) I have conquered science! Why can’t I conquer love?
Karl Freund’s Grand Guignol Mad Love (1935) shifts from gazing at the female to gazing at the male. Here the focus is on Peter Lorre in his American screen debut as Dr. Gogol, who has an obsession with Frances Drake as Yvonne Orlac an actress who works at Grand Guignol Theatre. To Gogol, she is the typified defenseless heroine whom he tries to lure away from her husband, Stephen (Colin Clive), using his knowledge of scientific alchemy.
Though Gogol tries to become Yvonne’s master, his Galatea, there are critics who read the struggle between the two men as not just a rivalry for Yvonne’s love but Gogol’s desire for Stephen as well. Gogol is responsible for grafting new hands onto Stephen’s mangled body after a train crash. Mad Love could fit the criteria for the subgenre of science/horror films where the male gaze is diverted from the female object toward other men, in this case, what connected the two was the preservation of Stephen’s hands. Why, then, is it not possible that the focus could shift from Gogol’s attraction to Yvonne to the homosocial dynamics between Gogol as a doctor and his subject, Stephen?
Mad Lovepossesses some of the horror genre’s most tenacious performances of gender play. (Carol Clover) asks us to take a closer look at Freund’s film. It is less about the “suffering experienced by women, but at a deeper, more sustained level, it is dedicated to the unspeakable terrors endured by men.”
In a similar fashion to Waldo Lydecker’s (Laura) and Hardy Cathcart’s (The Dark Corner) pathology of objectifying Laura and Mari, Gogol worships Yvonne – his Galatea, with a measure of scopophilia that lies within his gaze upon the perfection of female beauty. To control and possess it. The pleasure is aroused by the mere indulgence of looking at her.
Gogol pays 75 francs to purchase the wax statue of Galatea. The seller remarks, “There’s queer people on the streets of Montmartre tonight.”
Gogol’s maid Francoise talks to the statue, “Whatever made him bring you here. There’s never been any woman in this house except maybe me… “I prefer live ones to dead ones.”
A Time Magazine review of Mad Love in 1933 notes this queer appeal directly, even comparing Lorre’s acting skills to those of another homosexual coded actor: I find the comment about their faces rude and insulting to both Lorre and Laughton, both of whom I am a tremendous fan.
Mad Love’s insane doctor is feminized throughout the film… In fact, the same reporter who noted Gogol’s sadism argues for his feminine demeanor: “Lorre, perfectly cast, uses the technique popularized by Charles Laughton of suggesting the most unspeakable obsessions by the roll of a protuberant eyeball, an almost feminine mildness of tone, an occasional quiver of thick lips set flat in his cretinous ellipsoidal face. This reviewer came closer than any other to articulate the subtext of mad doctor movies. He seems on the verge of noting that Lorre, Like Laughton is an effeminate madman obsessed by unspeakable homosocial desire.– Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender Sexuality and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema by Rhona Berenstein
Frances Drake’s heroine masquerades as a wife who deludes herself into believing that her husband is more masculine than he really is. Gogol has a curious empathy with Stephen, whom he touches frequently and prolonged. Although Gogol pursues the heroine, Yvonne, at the theater, forcing a kiss on her, his focus is primarily manipulating Stephen’s body, rejoining his hands and massaging them to stimulate life back into them. When he realizes that Stephen’s hands cannot be grafted back successfully to his wrists, he turns to another man, the hands of a knife thrower who was executed as a notorious murderer. Once Stephen recovers from the surgery, he can no longer continue as a concert pianist but does develop the desire to throw sharp knives.
On the surface the plot of Mad Loveappears to be a heterosexual obsession, the most unspoken context is the connection between Gogol and Stephen. “As is true of Frankenstein’s labor of love in Whale’s first film, Gogol sews men’s body parts together and the result is a monster of sorts. (Berenstein)
In the film’s climax, Yvonne hides in Gogol’s bedroom and pretends to be the wax statue of Galatea. When Gogol touches the statue, she lets out a scream. In a euphoric daze (as in the original story), he believes that he has the power to bring Galatea’s statue to life. Yvonne begs him to let her go as he tries to strangle her.
Stephen then rushes to his wife and holds her in his arms. With his eyes fixed on the offscreen space in which Gogol’s body lies, he croons: “My darling.” The homosocial desire is destroyed when Stephen murders Gogol who intones, “Each man kills the thing he loves”“” echoing on the soundtrack.
In the film’s closing moments, the secret desire is finally spoken out loud…Has Stephen killed the man he loves? Given that the phrase that Gogol mutters was written originally by Oscar Wilde, whose homosexuality scandalized the British social and legal system in 1895, reading the homosocial desire intoMad Love within the very last moments, we are left to decipher the suspended cues. We are left with Stephen’s gazing at Gogol’s face and his knifed body as he lay dying, he speaks the words, “˜My darling” while the camera frames the two men sharing that moment in the closing scene.
The mad doctor narrative is particularly predisposed to homosocial impulses. “intense male homosocial desire as at once the most compulsory and the most prohibited of social bonds” – Epistemology of the Closet (Sedgwick)
Sedgwick investigated early fantasy/horror novels, Shelley’s Frankenstein 1818, Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1886, and Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau 1895. At the beginning of the 1930s, these stories centered around mad doctors who delved into unorthodox, profane explorations and were all adapted to the screen. All of these nefarious or scientific, inquisitive men cultivated secret experiments, challenging the laws of nature. What Sedgwick found was that the Gothic literary representations of men performing homosocial collaborations were ‘not socially sanctioned and shunned.’
It was considered a necessary narrative element as well as a monstrous possibility that threatened to subvert the status quo. The combination of these two attitudes is expressed in homosocial narratives- male bonding is both horrifying and guaranteed, entailing the simultaneous introjection and expulsion of femininity. (Sedgwick)
“My darling”…
James Whale was a gay auteur who often imbued his work intentionally or with the ‘intentional fallacy’ of a ‘queer’ sense of dark humor. This comical, campy absurdity was always on the edge of his vision of horror and subtle profanity. His picture The Invisible Man (1933), adapted from H.G. Wells’s story and starring Claude Rains, was classified as a horror film by the Code.
Dr. Jack Griffin (Rains), the antihero, is a frenzied scientist addicted to his formula as he seeks the ability to make himself invisible. His sanity begins to ‘vanish’ as his hunger for power, delusions of grandeur, and bursts of megalomania grow out of control. He plans on assassinating government officials, and he becomes more belligerent the longer he turns invisible. The idea that he displays radical ideas and runs around in the nude didn’t seem to arouse the censors; in 1933, a letter from James Wingate to Hays states, “highly fantastic and exotic [sic] vein, and presents no particular censorship difficulties.”
What’s interesting about the presentation of the story is that the coded gay leitmotifs were paraded out, right under the Code’s noses, and didn’t stir any indignation for its ‘queer’ humor.
Gloria Stuart and Claude Rains in James Whale’s The Invisible Man 1933
The Invisible Man perpetrates campy assaults on all the ‘normal’ people in his way, with intervals of sardonic cackles and golden wit and, at the same time, a menacing reflection of light and shadow. Claude Rains is a concealed jester who makes folly of his victims.
“An invisible man can rule the world. Nobody will see him come, nobody will see him go. He can hear every secret. He can rob, and wreck, and kill.” –Dr. Jack Griffin (The Invisible Man)
Claude Rains plays Dr. Jack Griffin, an outsider (a favorite of James Whale’s characters) who discovers the secret of invisibility, which changes him from a mild yet arrogant scientist into a maniacal killer. The film bears much of Whale’s campy sense of humor, with Griffin’s comic shenanigans abound until things turn dark and he becomes uncontrollably violent. “We’ll begin with a reign of terror, a few murders here and there, Murders of great men, Murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction. I might even wreck a train or two… just these fingers around a signalman’s throat, that’s all.”
According to Gary Morris (Bright Lights Film Journal), ‘The film demands crypto-faggot reading in poignant scenes such as the one where he reassures his ex-girlfriend, who begs him to hide from the authorities: “the whole worlds my hiding place. I can stand out there amongst them in the day or night and laugh at them.”
Though Griffin’s (Claude Rains) character is unseen at times, there are potent moments, when he is animated as he skips to the tune, “Here we go gathering nuts in May” flitting around like a fairy.
It is suggested that The Invisible Man is a metaphor for the way homosexuals are seen/not seen by society – as “effeminate, dangerous when naked, seeking a male partner in “crime,” tending to idolize his fiance rather than love her, and becoming ‘visible’ only when shot by the police…monitored by doctors, and heard regretting his sin against God (i.e., made into a statistic by the three primary forces oppressing queers: the law, the medical establishment, and religious orthodoxy” (Sedgwick)
The Invisble Man [undressing] “They’ve asked for it, the country bumpkins. This will give them a bit of a shock, something to write home about. A nice bedtime story for the kids, too, if they want it”
