SPOILER ALERT!
GAMES 1967
Deadly Diversions: Curtis Harrington’s Games and the Art of Psychological Deception:
I’ll be diving deeper into the chilling world of Curtis Harrington with a special feature on his thematic Horror of Personality at The Last Drive In, taking a close look at two of these fascinating psychological thrillers: What’s the Matter with Helen?-a feverish, Gothic tale of paranoia and unraveling sanity starring Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds-and of course a deeper dive into Games 1967, this stylish, twisted exploration of manipulation and deceit. Harrington’s films are masterclasses in atmospheric tension and the dark corners of the human psyche, blending Gothic horror with a uniquely personal, psychological edge.
Today, as a bonus, while it’s not a Harrington film, I’ll also be including The Mad Room 1969 in this lineup. Its claustrophobic tension, psycho-sexual spiral, and focus on madness and the terrors lurking within the mind make it a natural companion to Harrington’s work, fitting snugly alongside Games and What’s the Matter with Helen?
Curtis Harrington’s Games (1967) is a cocktail of psychological suspense, Gothic intrigue, and icy social satire- a film that marries Harrington’s avant-garde sensibilities with the polished veneer of studio-era Hollywood. Set in a labyrinthine Upper East Side townhouse dripping with pop art and baroque curios, the story follows Paul and Jennifer Montgomery (James Caan and Katharine Ross), a wealthy, thrill-starved couple whose penchant for macabre parlor games spirals into lethal consequences when they invite Lisa Schindler (Simone Signoret), a mysterious German cosmetics saleswoman, into their decadent world. Harrington, a maverick director who bridged underground cinema and mainstream horror, crafts a claustrophobic nightmare where identity, desire, and deception blur into a deadly charade.
The Plot: A Deadly Masquerade:
The Montgomerys’ existence is one of curated ennui. Their home, a museum of kitsch and high art, doubles as a stage for cruel theatrics: staged séances, mock duels with antique pistols, and sadistic pranks played on guests. Lisa’s arrival, after a feigned fainting spell, disrupts their sterile routine. Claiming psychic abilities using her tarot cards, she suggests increasingly twisted “games,” including a fabricated affair between Jennifer and Norman (Don Stroud), a grocery deliveryman. What begins as a playful ruse turns fatal when Paul, wielding a pistol he believes loaded with blanks, shoots Norman in a fit of jealousy. The couple’s panic-stricken attempt to conceal the body- hoisting it via dumbwaiter, encasing it in plaster as a grotesque art piece- unravels into a cascade of paranoia, apparitions, and double-crosses. By the finale, Paul, who had been gaslighting Jennifer all along, conspiring with Lisa, winds up on the receiving end of her cool, maniacal trickery. She reveals herself as the true puppet master, orchestrating the conniving and cutthroat Paul’s poisoning to claim Jennifer’s fortune, leaving the audience to ponder who has been playing whom.
Harrington’s Legacy: From Avant-Garde to Hollywood Gothic:
Harrington, an associate of Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren, brought a subversive edge to Games. His early experimental works, like Night Tide (1961), explored existential dread through surreal imagery, a theme he transposed here into a bourgeois nightmare. While Universal marketed Games as a Hitchcockian thriller, Harrington infused it with camp irony and Freudian subtext.
The townhouse, designed by visual consultant Morton Haack, becomes a character itself: walls adorned with death-themed pinball machines (“Fatalities,” “Serious Injuries”), masks evoking commedia dell’arte, and a recurring crystal ball that refracts truth and illusion.
Harrington’s direction leans into the absurd- a hooded figure pumping a pipe organ during a faux-sacrifice, interrupted by lawyers bearing paperwork, while maintaining a suffocating tension. Critics like Roger Ebert dismissed it as “standard horror fare,” but modern reassessments praise its audacious blend of high camp and psychological horror, Harrington’s film an important forerunner in the evolution of the sophisticated, puzzle-box thriller, and a precursor to later works like Herbert Ross’s The Last of Sheila (1973).
Curtis Harrington’s most prominent work in the horror and thriller genres is distinguished by his flair for atmosphere, psychological tension, and his ability to draw extraordinary performances from legendary actresses. In Ruby (1977), Harrington cast Piper Laurie, fresh off her Oscar-nominated turn in Carrie 1976, as a former gangster’s moll haunted by her past and besieged by supernatural forces at her Florida drive-in theater. Laurie’s sultry performance is haunting and sexy, and the film is often cited as an off-beat gem that showcases Harrington’s “particular sensitivity and sympathetic eye for the vulnerability in women, much like Tennessee Williams”. The film’s grim, gritty atmosphere and supernatural setpieces, including the eerie possession of Ruby’s mute daughter, are hallmarks of Harrington’s style.
Equally notable, which I’ll be talking about in a sec, is What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971), a Gothic psychological thriller starring Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds as two mothers tormented by guilt and paranoia after their sons are convicted of murder. Harrington’s direction draws out chilling, complex performances, especially from Winters, whose descent into madness is both tragic and terrifying. The film is remembered for its stylish period detail, mounting suspense, and the way Harrington turns Hollywood nostalgia into a backdrop for psychological horror.
Throughout his career, Harrington was celebrated for revitalizing the careers of classic actresses and infusing his films with a sense of operatic melodrama and visual elegance. As Piper Laurie herself noted, working with Harrington was a “great experience,” and she praised his ability to create “complex characterizations of women in each of his films.” She told me that he was a lovely man to work with, and she thoroughly enjoyed making Ruby. Actually, she was delighted I wanted to talk about it as much as her more well-known work in Carrie!
These works are enduring testaments to Harrington’s unique voice in American horror and his gift for blending camp, tragedy, and genuine emotional depth.
The Cast: Performances of Deception and Desperation:
Simone Signoret (Lisa): Fresh off her Oscar win for Room at the Top (1958), subverts her Diabolique persona with a role both maternal and menacing. Her Lisa is a spider in a black turban, her world-weariness masking a calculating mind. For me, Signoret’s haunting presence-smoldering cigarettes, tarot card readings, and a climactic smirk-elevates the film from B-movie to high art.
Signoret stands as one of the most luminous and formidable figures in twentieth-century cinema, her career defined by a rare blend of sensuality, intelligence, and emotional depth. Born in Germany and raised in France, Signoret began her ascent during the tumultuous years of World War II, supporting her family through bit parts while hiding her Jewish heritage behind her mother’s maiden name. Her beauty was never of the conventional Hollywood variety; instead, critics and audiences alike were captivated by her earthy allure, expressive eyes, and a presence that radiated both strength and vulnerability.
Her artistry was “marked by their minimalism and restraint, relying on small gestures, her incendiary eyes, a look, a purposeful walk, and few words.”– from Philip Kemp in his essay “The Secret to Simone Signoret’s Staying Power,”
This understated power allowed her to transcend the often typecast roles of tragic seductresses and prostitutes, which she initially played in films like La Ronde (1950) and Casque d’Or (1952).
In Casque d’Or, her portrayal of Marie, a woman torn between love and danger, became iconic, earning her a BAFTA and cementing her image as a symbol of troubled desire and resilience. The British Film Institute notes that “the image of her in full belle époque styling became one of the most famous of the era,” and her ability to elevate even clichéd roles was widely recognized.
Her turn to villainy in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) displayed her range, as she embodied Nicole, the calculating femme fatale, with a chillingly lucid performance that remains a benchmark of psychological suspense.
Signoret’s international breakthrough came with Room at the Top (1959), where her nuanced, sensual portrayal of Alice Aisgill won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, the first for a non-American film, as well as the Best Female Performance Prize at Cannes. Historian assessments often highlight how she “bypassed the clichéd writing that sometimes typified such characters,” bringing complexity and humanity to every role.
Signoret’s later career was equally distinguished, with acclaimed performances, one of my favorites was in Ship of Fools (1965). She also stunned audiences with Army of Shadows (1969), Le Chat (1971), and Madame Rosa (1977), the latter earning her a César Award for her portrayal of a weary Holocaust survivor. Throughout, she remained committed to portraying strong, complex women, unafraid of aging or embracing roles that challenged societal norms. As she famously remarked, “I got old the way women who aren’t actresses grow old.”
Her legacy is not only cinematic but also cultural. Signoret was a passionate advocate for human rights; the shadows of war and resistance shaped her life and work.
As the Criterion Collection observed, she was “an actor, a mother, a politically engaged artist, a lover, and a writer,” whose performances possessed “bravery, honesty, and commitment to cinema that remained of the highest order.” Simone Signoret’s career is a testament to the enduring power of authenticity, intelligence, and emotional truth in film.
Games also feature James Caan (Paul): Pre-Godfather, Caan channels Sonny Corleone’s volatility into Paul’s petulant cruelty. His descent from smirking manipulator to frantic conspirator shines with his performance in controlled hysteria.
Katharine Ross (Jennifer): Ross, months before The Graduate (1967), embodies brittle glamour, her wide-eyed vulnerability masking a latent ruthlessness. Her final breakdown- shooting a resurrected Norman in a pitch-black room- is visceral and tragic.
The Supporting Cast includes: Don Stroud’s Norman, a pawn in the Montgomerys’ games, embodies doomed naivete. Kent Smith (Cat People) and the delightfully dotty Estelle Winwood as their neighbor. Also on board are a mix of extras that add ghoulish levity as party guests, including Harrington’s Queen of Blood 1966 space vampire, Florence Marly. At the same time, the omnipresent character actor Ian Wolfe plays the bemused doctor who anchors the madness.
Don Stroud is a cult-favorite actor known for his rugged, imposing presence and a career spanning over five decades across film and television. Discovered as a surfer in Waikiki, Stroud brought a striking 6’2″ athletic build, chiseled features, and an intense, brooding charisma to the screen, making him a natural fit for tough, often villainous roles. Critics and writers have described his style as “raw,” “volatile,” and “magnetic,” with a penchant for playing outlaws, bikers, and morally ambiguous characters. I have always found him to possess smoldering, outlaw charm and a sense that trouble and temptation ride side by side whenever he enters a room.
Among his most prominent and cult works are not just in Games (1967), but also Coogan’s Bluff (1968), Bloody Mama (1970), The Amityville Horror (1979), and the James Bond film Licence to Kill (1989).
He also made his mark on television with recurring roles in series like Hawaii Five-O, Mike Hammer, and The New Gidget. Stroud’s on-screen persona is often described as “dangerously unpredictable,” combining physicality with a sly, rebellious edge that made him a memorable presence in both mainstream and genre cinema.
Visual Alchemy: Fraker’s Cinematography and Haack’s Design:
Cinematographer William A. Fraker, later famed for Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Bullitt (1968), paints Games in lurid hues and disorienting angles. Dutch tilts mirror the couple’s moral decay, while chiaroscuro lighting- faces half-shadowed, bodies emerging from darkness- heightens the paranoia. Fraker’s camera lingers on grotesque details: blood seeping through a shroud, a prosthetic eye dangling from Norman’s socket. The townhouse’s cluttered opulence, juxtaposing Warhol-esque pop art with Gothic relics, becomes a prison of the protagonists’ own design. A standout sequence- Jennifer’s drugged hallucination of Norman’s ghostly return- uses double exposures and jarring cuts to fracture reality, a technique Harrington honed in his experimental shorts.
A forgotten gem of psychological horror, Games bombed on release, dismissed as a Diabolique knockoff, but its legacy endures as a testament to Harrington’s singular vision. It has never lost its allure for me. It is a film about the performance of identity, of sanity, of love, where every gesture is a lie and every room a stage. Harrington, ever the outsider, skewers the emptiness of wealth and the seduction of control, curated personas, and viral deception. With its razor-sharp performances, audacious design, and Fraker’s hypnotic lens, Games remains a chilling reminder that the most dangerous monsters wear human faces- and the deadliest games are played without us knowing that there are no rules.
“The thrust of the film is to present the artist as an alchemist who, through her creative work, becomes herself transmuted into gold.” -Curtis Harrington.
WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? 1971
Curtis Harrington’s What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971) is an overwrought, lurid, baroque descent into the anxieties and obsessions of two women bound by guilt, paranoia, and a shared brush with infamy. Set against the backdrop of 1930s Hollywood – land of faded glamour, desperate ambition, and lurking menace- Harrington’s film stands as a quintessential entry in the “grand dame guignol” cycle, but with a psychological complexity and visual elegance that mark it as one of his most personal and accomplished works.
Certainly in part because of Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds, who bring a remarkable duality and psychological complexity to What’s the Matter with Helen?, their screen presence is both complementary and strikingly distinct. Winters, with her brooding intensity and expressive melancholy, masterfully charts Helen’s gradual descent into paranoia and delusion; her performance is a study in mounting instability, where even the smallest gesture or shift in tone signals the character’s unraveling. Winters’ portrayal, described as “utterly mesmerizing,” imbues Helen with a tragic vulnerability that is as chilling as it is sympathetic. By the film’s denouement, the shocking revelation is an utter fevered nightmarish tableau.
I’m thrilled to announce two major upcoming features at The Last Drive In that celebrate the remarkable legacy of Shelley Winters and challenge the narrow confines of Hollywood’s so-called “hag cinema.” First, The Bloodiest Mama of Them All will be a tribute to Winters herself, a larger-than-life talent whose fearless performance in What’s the Matter with Helen? stands as a testament to her range and power. This piece will explore how Winters redefined the boundaries of screen acting, especially for women cast aside by an industry obsessed with youth.
Her work in What’s the Matter with Helen? also serves as a springboard for my second feature, Deconstructing Hag Cinema, a critical deep dive that pushes back against the pejorative label assigned to actresses who “aged out” or I should say “pushed out” of Hollywood and were relegated to campy horror roles in the wake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? With Deconstructing Hag Cinema, I aim to reclaim and reframe these performances, spotlighting the artistry, complexity, and enduring influence of the women who made this genre unforgettable. Stay tuned for both features- coming soon to The Last Drive In.
Reynolds, meanwhile, subverts her wholesome star persona to inhabit Adelle’s brittle glamour and self-deluding ambition, revealing layers of vanity, longing, and desperation beneath the surface.
Her presence is dramatic, self-obsessed, and unexpectedly sharp, with critics noting the pleasure of seeing her play against type as a woman whose dreams of Hollywood stardom mask a deep-seated fear of irrelevance. Together, Winters and Reynolds command the screen with a sophisticated interplay: Winters’ haunted fragility and Reynolds’ performative optimism create a dynamic that is both haunting and electric, elevating the film’s gothic melodrama into a mesmerizing psychological duet, or dance – their pas de deux.
The story opens in Iowa, where Helen Hill (Shelley Winters) and Adelle Bruckner (Debbie Reynolds) are besieged by the press and public after their sons are convicted of a brutal murder. Fleeing the judgment and anonymous threats- one chillingly delivered by a man who slices Helen’s palm “to see her bleed”- the women reinvent themselves in Los Angeles, opening a dance academy for little girls whose mothers dream of Shirley Temple stardom.
With new names, platinum hair, and a veneer of optimism, Adelle and Helen attempt to escape their past, but the film’s atmosphere is thick with dread from the start.
Harrington’s genius is in how he layers this surface of Hollywood fantasy with undercurrents of repression, transferred guilt, and psychological unraveling. The dance school, with its chorus lines of precocious children and pushy stage mothers, becomes a grotesque funhouse mirror of lost innocence and thwarted dreams. Adelle, vivacious and self-deluding, quickly adapts, charming wealthy widower Lincoln Palmer (Dennis Weaver) and chasing her own vision of reinvention. Helen, by contrast, is consumed by religious guilt and paranoia, her fragile psyche haunted by visions of blood and retribution motifs that Harrington and screenwriter Henry Farrell (of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? fame) weave throughout the film, most memorably in the recurring image of Helen’s wounded, bleeding hands.
In one of the film’s most haunting flashbacks, Helen is seized by a vivid, nightmarish memory of her husband’s gruesome death in a thresher accident. The scene unfolds with a visceral intensity: Helen envisions the brutal moment when her husband is mutilated by the farm machinery, blood and violence erupting in a blur of guilt and horror. The imagery is fragmented and expressionistic, reflecting Helen’s fractured psyche, her face contorted with anguish as the mechanical violence of the accident replays in her mind. This flashback not only underscores the trauma that haunts Helen but also foreshadows her later confession that she was responsible for pushing her husband to his death, layering her present paranoia with the inescapable weight of her past sins.
The visual style, courtesy of legendary cinematographer Lucien Ballard, is lush yet claustrophobic. Ballard, known for his work with Sam Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick, bathes the film in a sepia-tinged palette that evokes both period nostalgia and a sense of rot beneath the surface.
Lucien Ballard, widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s most accomplished cinematographers, left an indelible mark across genres and decades. Uncredited, he contributed to the visual poetry of Laura (1944), a foundational film noir whose shadowy elegance and psychological complexity helped define the noir sensibility and its visual language. In The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), Ballard’s lens heightened the film’s gothic suspense and postwar paranoia, making it one of the era’s quintessential noirs, set against the fog-draped streets of San Francisco.
31 Flavors of Noir on the Fringe to Lure you in! Part 4 The last Killing in a Lineup of unsung noir
With Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956), Ballard crafted a tense, atmospheric heist thriller that broke new ground in film noir, blending documentary realism with existential dread. A Kiss Before Dying (1956) stands as a late-period noir, its sunlit exteriors and shocking violence subverting the genre’s conventions and leaving a lasting sting on audiences.
Ballard’s artistry extended to the Western, most notably with Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (1962), a revisionist take that balanced classic genre values with a new, somber realism. His work reached its zenith in The Wild Bunch (1969), where his sweeping, sun-drenched vistas and kinetic camerawork redefined the Western with unprecedented brutality and lyricism, earning Ballard the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Cinematography. Finally, The Getaway (1972) starring Steve McQueen showcased his versatility, bringing a gritty, propulsive energy to the action thriller and further cementing his legacy as a master of cinematic mood and movement.
In What’s the Matter With Helen? shadows loom, staircases twist, and mirrors reflect fractured identities, echoing the characters’ descent into madness. Harrington’s direction is both theatrical and intimate, lingering on Shelley Winters’ increasingly unhinged performance as Helen’s grip on reality slips. Debbie Reynolds, cast against type, brings a brittle glamour and cunning to Adelle, her optimism shading into self-preservation and, ultimately, complicity in the film’s spiral of violence.
The supporting cast adds further texture: Micheál Mac Liammóir is memorably sinister as Hamilton Starr, the elocution coach whose ambiguous motives unsettle both women, while Agnes Moorehead’s radio evangelist Sister Alma offers an austere, false comfort to Helen’s spiritual torment. The film’s set pieces- Helen’s hallucinations backstage at the recital, the murder and disposal of a would-be avenger, the slaughter of Helen’s beloved rabbits- are staged with a mix of Gothic excess and psychological realism that is pure Harrington.
What makes What’s the Matter with Helen? so unique within the psychological thriller and “hagsploitation” genres is its empathy for its damaged protagonists. Rather than simply exploiting their unraveling for shock, Harrington probes the loneliness, guilt, and desperation that drive them. The film’s climax- Helen, having murdered Adelle in a jealous frenzy, playing “Goody Goody” on the piano for Adelle’s corpse, dressed in a child’s dance costume- is both grotesque and heartbreaking, a tableau of madness that lingers long after the credits roll. This lasting, grisly snapshot stuck with me days after seeing the film in its original theatrical run -and for years beyond. Its power is such that it imprints itself on the memory, refusing to fade.
Harrington’s legacy is that of a director who brought a painter’s eye and a poet’s sensitivity to genre filmmaking. His work, from the dreamy Night Tide to the campy menace of Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, also starring Winters, is marked by atmosphere, psychological depth, and an ability to elicit career-best performances from his stars.
What’s the Matter with Helen? is perhaps his most personal film-a meditation on guilt, female friendship, and the price of survival in a world that punishes women for both their sins and their suffering.
Though the film was compromised by studio interference- Harrington lamented the loss of his preferred dissolves and the toning down of the murder scene to secure a GP rating- it remains a visually sumptuous, emotionally resonant work. Critics at the time were divided, but the film has since been reclaimed as a cult classic, its blend of Gothic melodrama, psychological horror, and Hollywood satire as potent now as it was unsettling then. It has not lost any of its disturbing impact and knack for provoking unease.
In the end, What’s the Matter with Helen? is a tragic masquerade, a cautionary tale about the impossibility of escaping one’s past, and a showcase for Harrington’s singular vision – a vision haunted by lost ideals, painted in blood and shadow, and illuminated by the flickering hope of redemption.
THE MAD ROOM 1969
Bernard Girard’s The Mad Room (1969) is a brooding, atmospheric entry in the late-1960s cycle of psychological thrillers that probe the darkness lurking within the domestic sphere.
Loosely adapted from the 1941 noir Ladies in Retirement, the film is reimagined for a more sensational era, blending gothic suspense, familial trauma, and the corrosive effects of secrets into a single, claustrophobic narrative. At its heart is Ellen Hardy, played with wide-eyed intensity by Stella Stevens, a poised but increasingly fragile young woman whose carefully constructed world begins to unravel with the return of her troubled siblings.
Ellen serves as a live-in assistant to the wealthy, eccentric Mrs. Gladys Armstrong, portrayed by Shelley Winters in another one of her signature late-career roles. Winters brings to the part a brittle authority and sly humor, her presence both domineering and oddly sympathetic- a matriarch whose suspicions are as sharp as her tongue. Ellen’s plans to marry Mrs. Armstrong’s stepson, Sam, are thrown into chaos when she is summoned to retrieve her younger siblings, George and Mandy, from the mental institution where they’ve been confined since childhood, after being suspected of the brutal murder of their parents. Desperate to keep their past a secret, Ellen persuades Mrs. Armstrong to let George and Mandy stay in the mansion, fabricating a story about a dying uncle.
From the moment the siblings arrive, a sense of unease takes hold. Mandy, played with unnerving innocence by Barbara Sammeth, insists on having a “mad room” – a private space to vent frustration and anxiety, echoing the siblings’ institutional upbringing. Ellen reluctantly allows them access to Mr. Armstrong’s forbidden study, deepening the house’s atmosphere of secrets and locked doors. The mansion itself, shot by cinematographer Harry Stradling Jr., becomes a labyrinth of shadowy corridors and cluttered relics, its claustrophobic interiors amplifying the psychological tension that simmers among the characters.
One of the film’s most unsettling motifs is the use of gore and bloody imagery as a form of disturbed expression, most memorably, when blood is used to daub crude, childlike finger painting flowers on the walls of the mansion. These painted flowers, rendered in vivid red, are both grotesque and eerily innocent, their cheerful shapes clashing with the violence of their creation. The sight of these sanguine blooms transforms the domestic space into a nightmarish tableau, blurring the line between trauma and art, and serving as a haunting visual reminder that madness and violence lurk just beneath the surface of the everyday. This motif lingers in the mind, its disquieting effect amplified by the tension between the innocence of the imagery and the horror of its medium.
As Mrs. Armstrong’s suspicions mount, the film’s suspense tightens. Ellen’s increasingly desperate lies and erratic behavior raise the possibility that she may be more unstable than she appears. The tension erupts one night when Mrs. Armstrong is found dead in the “mad room,” her throat slashed by a saber.
In a panic, Ellen orchestrates a cover-up, telling the staff that Mrs. Armstrong has left on business and hiding the body- a macabre charade that unravels with the discovery of the family dog carrying a severed hand through the estate’s manicured grounds. The siblings, meanwhile, turn on each other, accusing one another of murder, while Ellen’s own sanity teeters on the brink.
The supporting cast adds further texture: Michael Burns plays George with a blend of inscrutability and suppressed menace, while Beverly Garland’s scene-stealing turn as the drunken, embittered Mrs. Racine injects the film with a jolt of Grand Guignol camp. Yet it is Stevens and Winters who anchor the film, their performances oscillating between vulnerability and ferocity, fear and calculation.
What sets The Mad Room apart is its ability to sustain a mood of dread and ambiguity. The film never fully embraces the madness its premise promises, but it simmers with the threat of violence, the weight of repressed trauma, and the ever-present possibility of collapse. Its focus on damaged women, family secrets, and the thin veneer of respectability aligns it with contemporaneous works like What’s the Matter with Helen? and Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, assuring its cult status among fans of domestic Gothic and camp-inflected thrillers.
Though sometimes criticized for its uneven tone and missed opportunities for deeper psychological exploration, The Mad Room remains a compelling artifact of its era- a chamber piece of paranoia, repression, and melodramatic menace, elevated by committed performances and a suffocating sense of doom. It is a film that lingers on the edge of madness, never quite plunging in, but always threatening to do so, leaving us with a disquiting feeling of dis-ease and an uncomfortable sense that the true horror lies not in the supernatural, but in the secrets we keep and the rooms kept lock inside ourselves.
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