Behind the Velvet Curtain: Unveiling 8 Hidden Gems of 1940s Suspense Cinema

There’s a peculiar melancholy that lingers in the shadows of 1940s suspense cinema—a decade when the world seemed poised on a knife’s edge. The silver screen became a mirror for our deepest anxieties and desires. These films do so much more than simply entertain: they wrap us in a velvet shroud of uncertainty, where every footstep echoes with suspicion. Every silhouette threatens to dissolve into menace. They’re films spun from the fevered minds of visionary directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Jacques Tourneur, whose names became synonymous with the undercurrent of unease and tension, psychological intrigue, and atmospheric storytelling.

When I think about what makes 1940s suspense so compelling, often entering into noir territory, I always end up circling back to Robert Siodmak and Jacques Tourneur. Both directors had such a distinctive touch, but their approaches to tension and atmosphere were uniquely their own.

Robert Siodmak left a significant mark on cinema, blending noir atmosphere with psychological depth. He was a master of shadow and suspense, and you can see his roots in German Expressionism all over his films. He used black-and-white cinematography and urban landscapes not just for style, but to create a mood where darkness and light almost become characters themselves.

His films are packed with high-contrast lighting, inventive camera angles, and a sense of claustrophobia. He sets a mood that wraps the narrative in an airless vise like walls closing steadily around the story, unsettling and persistent.

Siodmak’s Phantom Lady starring Thomas Gomez, Ella Raines, and Franchot Tone.

Siodmak loved intricate, sometimes non-linear narratives—think of how The Killers unfolds through flashbacks, or how Criss Cross twists around on itself with betrayals and doomed romance. His characters are rarely straightforward heroes or villains; instead, they’re flawed, morally ambiguous, and often trapped by fate. Some of his best work includes noir masterpieces like The Killers 1946 and Criss Cross 1949, and suspenseful classics like Phantom Lady 1944 and The Spiral Staircase 1946—with Dorothy McGuire’s Helen navigating the labyrinth of shadows and peril—stand as cornerstones in the canon of suspense cinema, helping to define the genre’s enduring legacy of psychological complexity, visual innovation, and atmospheric dread.

Jacques Tourneur, on the other hand, brought a supernatural and Gothic edge to the genre. He was all about atmosphere and suggestion. He had this gift for making you feel like something terrifying was lurking just out of sight, using shadows, mood, and sound to let your imagination fill in the blanks. In his horror films—like Cat People 1942, I Walked with a Zombie 1943, and The Leopard Man 1943—he cultivates a cinematic spirit where the supernatural is always ambiguous, hovering just beyond the grasp of certainty.

James Bell and Jean Brooks in The Leopard Man 1943.

The sense of “the uncanny” is central: his films obscure any concrete visual cue, leaving us suspended between rational explanation and the possibility of something otherworldly. He rarely showed the threat outright, which somehow made things even more frightening.

Even when he shifted to noir with Out of the Past 1947, he brought that same sense of ambiguity and unease, blending hard-boiled crime with an almost ghostly mood. Tourneur’s camera work was elegant and fluid, and he had a real knack for subtle storytelling, leaving things unsaid, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. His best films (Out of the Past, Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, Night of the Demon) are masterpieces of mood and restraint, proving that sometimes what you don’t see is even more powerful than what you do.

Both directors left a huge mark on suspense and noir, but in very different ways: Siodmak through his brooding, fatalistic cityscapes and tangled plots, and Tourneur through his poetic minimalism and haunting, ambiguous worlds.

Alfred Hitchcock stood at the high point of this thrilling movement— his American debut with Rebecca (1940), followed by Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942), Spellbound (1945), and Notorious (1946). And one of Hitchcock’s most suspenseful works of the 1940s, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), with its chilling portrait of small-town innocence corrupted by Joseph Cotten’s unforgettable Merry Widow killer, Uncle Charlie. Hitchcock’s sensibility helped define the modern suspense film, blending ordinary protagonists, in seemingly ordinary situations, who find themselves mixed up with extraordinary danger.

Teresa Wright in Alfred Hitchcock’s suspense masterpiece Shadow of a Doubt 1943.

These directors dominated the suspense scene with pioneering cinematic techniques that heightened audience anxiety. I always marvel at how Hitchcock could make even the most mundane moments feel loaded with dread—he really knew how to keep us all on edge.

Honestly, I find myself endlessly drawn back to the suspense films of the 1940s—they just have this magnetic pull. Every time I revisit one, there’s that familiar jolt of excitement, like stepping into a world where danger is always just out of sight. The atmosphere is impossible to shake: shadows that seem to conspire, and a sense that every corner hides someone with sinister intentions. There’s something so compelling about watching depraved or nefarious characters weave their schemes while unsuspecting victims edge ever closer to peril. It’s that constant dance between predator and prey, menace and vulnerability, that keeps me hooked and makes these films feel so alive and unnerving. Suspense is painted with a palette of chiaroscuro, their stories flickering between light and shadow, hope and doom.

Fritz Lang was another towering figure. He brought his German Expressionist sensibilities to Hollywood and delivered classics like Man Hunt (1941), Ministry of Fear (1944), Secret Beyond the Door (1947), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945). Lang’s films were marked by shadowy visuals, moral ambiguity, and a deep sense of fatalism.

Laird Cregar in Brahm’s The Lodger 1944.

John Brahm (Hangover Square, 1945; The Lodger, 1944) also contributed iconic suspense films that remain influential. Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich (1940) and later The Third Man (1949) showcased British suspense at its finest, blending espionage with psychological tension. Alongside these luminaries, the decade was rich with directors who worked more quietly or off the beaten path, crafting understated or cult-favorite suspense thrillers. Mark Robson delivered the eerie The Seventh Victim (1943), a film that has grown in reputation for its ambiguous, atmospheric horror.

Carol Reed’s The Third Man starring Orson Welles as Harry Lime.

André De Toth’s Dark Waters (1944) offered a Southern Gothic take on suspense, while Stuart Heisler’s Among the Living (1941) explored madness and mistaken identity in a moody, underseen gem. Delmer Daves’ two superb 1947 gems – Dark Passage (1947), starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall is a suspenseful thriller about a man falsely convicted of his wife’s murder who escapes from prison and goes on the run to prove his innocence, aided by a mysterious woman, and The Red House a psychological mystery starring Edward G. Robinson and Judith Anderson, that centers on a secluded farmhouse, a mysterious red house in the woods, and dark family secrets that gradually come to light.

Joseph H. Lewis’s My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) is another compact, chilling entry, now celebrated for its taut direction and psychological depth. British directors also contributed to the genre’s richness. Norman Lee’s The Door with Seven Locks (1940) is a prime example of the “old dark house” thriller, and Thorold Dickinson’s Gaslight (1940) (the original British version) remains a masterclass in psychological manipulation and dread. There’s also George Cukor’s 1944 version of Gaslight starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), though initially overlooked, is now recognized as a foundational film in both suspense and noir, with its surreal visuals and Kafkaesque atmosphere. Mexican director Roberto Gavaldón contributed with films such as La otra (The Other One 1946), a suspenseful tale of twins, murder, and identity. Starring Dolores del Río, La otra was later remade by Warner Bros. as Dead Ringer (1964) starring Bette Davis.

“A life that should have been but never was! A fate that moved on twisting and tortuous paths!”
– Dolores del Río, La Otra (The Other One)

Charles Boyer and Ingrid-Bergman in George Cukor’s Gaslight 1940.

Italian director Mario Soldati’s Malombra (1942) is a Gothic thriller with psychological suspense, featuring a haunted castle and a woman tormented by the past. Spanish director Edgar Neville stands out as the filmmaker most closely associated with suspense and crime thrillers in 1940s Spain. His film The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (La torre de los siete jorobados 1944) is a prime example—a fantastical mystery that plunges beneath the streets of old Madrid into a hidden world of intrigue, secret societies, and atmospheric menace.

The era’s thrillers-whether set in fog-choked London alleys, rain-soaked American mansions, or the labyrinthine byways of the mind-wove together noir’s bruised romanticism with the Gothic’s haunted longing all left their mark.

To revisit these films is to wander through that gallery of haunted rooms and rain-slicked streets, to step into a hall of mirrors, where every reflection is tinged with longing and every corridor leads deeper into uncertainty. Guided by directors who understood that suspense isn’t just about who did it or how—it’s about why we’re so drawn to the darkness at the edge of the frame. The legacy of 1940s suspense lies not just in its twists and revelations, but in the way these stories taught us to savor tension, to live inside the question, and to find beauty—even solace—suspensce is not just in the twists and revelations but in the way these stories taught us to savor the tension. It’s the melancholy art of not knowing what comes next.

The suspense thrillers of the 1940s were far more than products of their time—they were blueprints for the future, boldly blurring the lines between crime, horror, melodrama, and psychological drama. This willingness to experiment with genre boundaries opened the door to hybrid storytelling and tonal complexity. What makes these films so enduring isn’t just their style, but the way they tapped into the anxieties and shifting social landscape of their era, layering narrative daring with emotional depth and visual invention.

At their heart, these films revolve around recurring themes that resonate as strongly now as they did then. The “innocent-on-the-run” motif—ordinary people ensnared in webs of danger, mistaken identity, or conspiracy—heightened suspense by placing vulnerable protagonists in unfamiliar, often threatening situations, as seen in Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940).

There are recurring tropes of Psychological Manipulation and Gaslighting: Films like Gaslight (1944) explored the theme of psychological abuse and manipulation, often within domestic or romantic relationships. Films that include Hitchcock’s Suspicion 1941, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Dragonwyck 1946, and Douglas Sirk’s Sleep, My Love 1948. These stories delved into the erosion of sanity, the questioning of reality, and the power dynamics between abuser and victim, reflecting broader anxieties and inherent fear about trust and control.

Some stories dealt with Doomed Romance, Paranoia, Conspiracy, and Betrayal—the pursuit of the object of desire and the fatal consequences of passion or unrequited love became a staple theme. Shaped by the looming shadow of war, these stories have a sense of dread and moral ambiguity. At the same time, claustrophobic settings and the motif of “the trap” amplified the tension, both literal and psychological. The shadow of World War II and the emerging Cold War infused thrillers with a sense of paranoia and distrust.

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau 1943.

Films like Rebecca 1940, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau 1943, The Mask of Dimitrios 1944 directed by Jean Negulesco, Hitchcock’s Notorious 1946, and The Stranger (1946), directed by and starring Orson Welles, The Two Mrs. Carrolls 1947 directed by Peter Godfrey. Reed’s The Third Man 1949, like many plots, often revolved around espionage, hidden enemies, and conspiracies, blurring the line between friend and foe and tapping into the era’s fear of infiltration and betrayal.

Moral Ambiguity and the Blurring of Good and Evil: Claustrophobia and the Trap: Many suspense films used confined or oppressive settings- locked rooms, shadowy mansions, fog-bound cities- to create a sense of entrapment. The “structure of the trap” was a key motif, with suspense built around the hero or heroine’s efforts to escape both literal and psychological confinement—Delmer Daves’s The Red House 1947. We also see Psychological Struggle and Internal Conflict: The best thrillers of the era didn’t just pit their characters against external threats, but also explored their inner turmoil. Themes of mental instability, trauma, and existential dread ran through films like Spellbound (1945) and The Spiral Staircase (1946), and Sorry, Wrong Number 1948, directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Barbara Stanwyck, where the real enemy was often within.

Barbara Stanwyck in Anatole Litvak’s Sorry, Wrong Number 1948.

Quite often, there was Patriarchal Control and Vulnerable Women: Many thrillers, especially those with noir or Gothic elements, explored the vulnerability of women in a patriarchal system, highlighting themes of emotional control, manipulation, and the struggle for autonomy, as seen in Gaslight and similar films. Women in Hiding 1940, directed by Richard Thorpe, and Uncle Silas 1947 (released in the U.S. as The Inheritance) starring Jean Simmons. Experiment Perilous 1944 directed by Jacques Tourneur. Starring Hedy Lamarr, it is a Gothic suspense film in which Hedy Lamarr’s character is trapped in a mansion with a controlling, possibly murderous husband. The story revolves around a woman’s struggle to survive and assert her autonomy amid a suffocating, patriarchal household. There was Undercurrent 1946, directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Katharine Hepburn as a new bride who becomes increasingly fearful of her husband’s dark secrets and controlling behavior. The film explores the dangers of male authority and the erasure of female agency within marriage.

Crime, Murder, and the “Whodunit” Puzzle: Many suspense thrillers center on the mystery of a crime, often murder, and the gradual unraveling of clues, red herrings, and secrets. The “whodunit” structure provided a framework for suspense and brought us into the obstacle course and the tension of the mystery.

Olivia de Havilland in a dual role in Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror 1946.

And, of course, we can forget: Psychological and Psycho-Sexual Disturbance. Beneath the shadowy intrigue of 1940s suspense thrillers pulses a current of psychological and psycho-sexual disturbance, where repressed desires, fractured identities, and taboo obsessions drive characters to the brink of madness and violence. This captures both the psychological and the psycho-sexual elements- think of films like The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), directed by Lewis Milestone, Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door 1947, Phantom Lady 1944, Spellbound 1945, The Dark Mirror 1946, and that same year, Hedy Lamarr would become the dark antiheroine in Edge G. Ulmer’s taut, The Strange Woman. Ulmer brought a distinctive, atmospheric touch to this tale of power, desire, and moral ambiguity. Also in 1946, there was John Brahm’s The Locket, where inner turmoil and forbidden impulses are as suspenseful as any external threat.

Noirvember – Freudian Femme Fatales – 1946 : The Dark Mirror (1946) & The Locket (1946) ‘Twisted Inside’

One of the most unforgettable images comes from Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942), where the climactic confrontation atop the Statue of Liberty’s torch delivers a harrowing blend of vertigo and dread. As the real saboteur Norman Lloyd as the villain Frank Fry, clings desperately to the statue’s hand, we’re left breathless, suspended between sky and sea, in a sequence that remains a blueprint for tension in visual suspense.

Norman Lloyd as the villain Frank Fry in Hitchcock’s Saboteur 1942.

One of the most haunting moments in 1940s suspense comes courtesy of Dorothy McGuire as Helen in Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase 1946. There’s a particular sequence that has stayed with me: Helen, mute and utterly alone in the storm-battered mansion, senses the killer closing in. McGuire’s expressive eyes and trembling hands do all the speaking—her fear is so palpable it practically seeps off the screen. As Helen ascends the shadow-soaked spiral staircase, every twist of the banister seems to tighten the grip of dread, the candlelight flickering across her face as if the house itself is conspiring to keep her silent. The camera coils around her, mirroring her mounting panic, while thunder rattles the windows and the killer’s presence presses in from every dark corner. It’s a stroke of genius in Silent Terror: McGuire’s Helen, trapped between floors and fate, becomes the embodiment of vulnerability and resilience, and in that moment, you can’t help but hold your breath right along with her.

For this collection of suspense that lurks off the beaten path, I’m hoping you’ll join me in descending these winding staircases and wander through this particular hall of mirrors, as we honor the spellbinding legacy of 1940s suspense- a genre that, like a half-remembered dream, refuses to fade with the dawn.

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MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #94 THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG 1927/ THE LODGER 1944 & HANGOVER SQUARE 1945

Echoes in the Fog: The Lodger Legend and Its Shadows from Hitchcock to Hangover Square

THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG 1927

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) stands as a watershed moment in both his career and the evolution of the suspense thriller. Though it was his third feature, Hitchcock himself would later call it his “first true film,” and it’s easy to see why: here, the director’s signature obsessions—wrongly accused men, dangerous allure, and the shadow of violence—emerge fully formed, set against a fog-choked London that feels both timeless and distinctly modern.

Drawing from Marie Belloc Lowndes’s 1913 novel and its stage adaptation, the film takes its inspiration from the Jack the Ripper murders, but is less interested in true crime in reality it is more about the feverish paranoia that settles over a city when evil seems to be lurking just out of sight, prowling the streets.

The story itself is deceptively simple: a serial killer known as “The Avenger” is targeting blonde women, sending London into a state of panic. Right in the middle of all this, the mysterious lodger—played by Ivor Novello—shows up and rents a room from the Buntings just as the murders edge closer to home.

Novello is both magnetic and ambiguous; his haunted eyes and secretive ways make him suspicious and yet strangely fascinating, especially to the Buntings’ daughter Daisy (June Tripp).

As Daisy’s policeman boyfriend Joe (Malcolm Keen) gets more jealous and the Buntings’ suspicions grow, the film really tightens the noose of doubt around their lodger, leading to a dramatic sequence of accusation, pursuit, and mob justice before the truth finally comes to light.

Hitchcock’s direction, deeply influenced by the German Expressionist cinema he encountered in Berlin, is on full display. Working with cinematographer Gaetano di Ventimiglia, he floods the film with mist, shadow, and oblique camera angles, creating a visual world where fear and uncertainty seep into every frame.

The film’s look is both expressionist and modern: glass floors allow us to see the lodger’s anxious pacing from below, staircases become vertiginous chasms, and the fog itself seems to swallow up the city. The rhythm of the editing—dynamic, almost musical—heightens the sense of unease, while the absence of spoken dialogue only sharpens Hitchcock’s focus on pure visual storytelling.

The cast brings a strange, almost theatrical intensity to the film. Marie Ault and Arthur Chesney are quietly compelling as the Buntings, their growing fear for Daisy palpable in every gesture. June Tripp’s Daisy is luminous and vulnerable, while Malcolm Keen’s Joe simmers with suspicion. But it’s Novello who dominates, his performance walking a tightrope between innocence and menace. Hitchcock’s own cameo—his first—comes early, a sly touch that would become a trademark. Historically, The Lodger arrived at a moment when British cinema was searching for its own voice, and Hitchcock’s film was immediately recognized as a leap forward. Critics hailed its technical innovation and atmospheric power, and it quickly established Hitchcock as a director of rare vision.

The film’s themes—media-fueled hysteria, the dangers of mob justice, the ambiguity of guilt—feel as relevant today as they did nearly a century ago. What lingers most, though, is the film’s atmosphere: a city shrouded in fog, where every footstep echoes with dread, and where the line between hunter and hunted is never quite clear. The Lodger is not just a story of murder, but of suspicion, desire, and the perilous search for truth in the haunting, murky shadows.

THE LODGER 1944

John Brahm’s 1944 adaptation of The Lodger stands out as one of the most atmospheric and psychologically charged takes on the Jack the Ripper legend, setting the tone for the era’s horror cinema. Drawing once again from Lowndes’s 1913 novel, the film drops us right into a foggy, gaslit London where fear and suspicion seem to hang heavy in the air.

At the center are the Bontings, a respectable couple who are struggling to make ends meet. So they decide to rent a room to the enigmatic Mr. Slade—played by Laird Cregar—a brooding man whose unsettling habits and haunted look, which bears the mark of something dark and dangerous, quickly disturb the household.

Slade, played with mesmerizing intensity by Laird Cregar, is a figure both pitiable and terrifying, his every movement weighted with obsession and barely contained madness.

As the city reels from a series of brutal murders targeting actresses, Slade becomes fixated on the Bontings’ niece Kitty Langley (Merle Oberon), a luminous music-hall performer.

Laird Cregar was a remarkably gifted American actor whose brief career left a lasting impression on classic Hollywood cinema. Known for his commanding presence and expressive performances, Cregar excelled in roles that demanded both menace and vulnerability, bringing a unique depth to villains and tortured souls alike. He rose to prominence with standout performances in films such as I Wake Up Screaming (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), and, notably, this role as the haunted Mr. Slade in The Lodger, followed by his performance as the tragic composer George Harvey Bone in Hangover Square (1945).

Cregar’s acting was marked by a rare ability to convey complex inner turmoil—his characters often seemed caught between longing and darkness, their emotional conflict visible in every gesture and expression.

Offscreen, Laird Cregar’s life was just as complicated. He was ambitious but also very aware of how his imposing size shaped the roles he was offered, struggling with Hollywood’s expectations of their leading men. This drove him to try a risky crash diet in hopes of landing more romantic parts. Sadly, this decision contributed to his early death at only 31. Privately, his sexuality was something only close friends and colleagues knew about, and his relationships—including a notable romance with actor David Bacon—were often the subject of both gossip and tragedy.

Despite his short life, Laird Cregar’s career was filled with highlights: he was celebrated for his villainous roles, brought unexpected sympathy to his darkest characters, and was praised by contemporaries for his stage work as well as his films. His performances in The Lodger and Hangover Square remain iconic, showcasing a talent that could evoke both fear and pity, and leaving a legacy as one of Hollywood’s most memorable and enigmatic actors.

As Mr. Slade, Cregar’s performance dominates the film, imbuing Slade with a tragic depth. His physical presence—imposing yet oddly vulnerable—makes him an unforgettable figure, whose yes are constantly shifting, moving between longing and menace, as if he’s always caught between wanting and warning at the same time.

The supporting cast brings their own vivid energy: Merle Oberon’s Kitty is both glamorous and sympathetic, while George Sanders, as the suave Inspector Warwick, brings a dry wit and dogged determination to the hunt for the killer. Wonderful character actors, Cedric Hardwicke and Sara Allgood, as the Bontings, ground the film with their blend of domestic warmth and deepening apprehension, their household slowly unraveling under the weight of suspicion.

What really stands out to me about The Lodger is how visually it leans into a moody, noir-inflected style. Lucien Ballard’s cinematography bathes everything in deep shadows and swirling fog, clearly inspired by German Expressionism. The result is a world that feels at once claustrophobic and strangely dreamlike.

Every frame seems alive with narrow alleyways, rain-slicked streets, and dark, shadowy interiors, conjuring a London that feels like it’s on the verge of hysteria.

The camera lingers on faces, hands, and fleeting, telling glances that say more than words, adding to the tension and uncertainty that drive the story forward.

And Hugo Friedhofer’s score? It quietly threads the film with a subtle but undeniable force that adds to the sense of doom, giving The Lodger its lingering, haunted melancholy that hangs over every scene.

Brahm tightly holds the reins—there’s this careful balance between those quiet, psychologically uneasy moments and sudden bursts of violence and panic. Compared to Hitchcock’s silent version, which focused more on suspicion and the threat of mob justice, this film seems to delve deeper into the psychology of its characters, especially Salde, whose twisted motivations are revealed in chilling detail. The story deviates from the novel and its earlier adaptations, but it manages to add a sense of unpredictability and dread. The Lodger isn’t so much a whodunit as it is about consuming shadows of fear and obsession.

The Lodger was released at a time when Hollywood was dealing with all the anxieties that come with war and the lingering shadows of the past. Brahm, a German émigré, brought a distinctly European sensibility to the film, blending that polished Hollywood studio gloss with the moody, intense vibe of 1930s Expressionism. The end result is a film that somehow feels both timeless and completely of its moment—a suspenseful, unsettling meditation on evil, desire, and the darkness that can hide behind even the most respectable facades.

In the end, The Lodger is less a straightforward thriller than a feverish portrait of a city—and a mind—unraveling. With its unforgettable performances, haunting visuals, and lingering sense of unease, it remains a high point of 1940s horror.

There is a memorable line in the 1944 film The Lodger that touches on the paradox of love and hate. Laird Cregar’s character, Mr. Slade, utters:

“To hate a thing and love it too, and to love it so much that you hate it.”

This line is delivered during one of Slade’s intense, confessional moments, revealing the tortured duality at the heart of his character. Slade is speaking to Kitty, who has become both his obsession and his undoing. The quote sums up the film’s central tension—Slade’s simultaneous attraction to and resentment of women, especially those who remind him of his tragic past. It’s a moment that not only deepens our understanding of Slade’s psychological torment but also highlights the film’s exploration of the thin, often blurred line between love and hate.

This duality drives the suspense and emotional complexity of The Lodger, leaving us unsettled by the realization that the two emotions can coexist so fiercely within a single soul and Cregar is masterful at bringing to life the aching duality of a soul at war with itself, embodying both longing and menace with a grace that makes his torment feel hauntingly real. His performance shimmers with the tension of a man forever caught between shadow and light, desire and dread, each emotion reflected in his face like a secret he can never quite escape.

HANGOVER SQUARE 1945

Cregar reignites his role as a tormented soul. Once again, John Brahm returns with Hangover Square (1945), a feverish, noir-soaked descent into madness, obsession, and the perilous intersection of art and violence. Set in Edwardian London, the film follows George Harvey Bone, a gifted composer played with haunting vulnerability and intensity by Laird Cregar. Bone’s life is a study in contrasts: outwardly gentle and unassuming, inwardly tormented by blackouts triggered by discordant sounds—episodes that leave him with no memory and, as we soon learns, a trail of violence in his wake.

The film opens with a jolt: Bone, in a fugue state, murders a shop owner and sets the scene ablaze, then stumbles home, bloodied and bewildered, unable to recall his actions. This pattern of lost time and chilling gloom becomes the film’s pulse as Bone seeks help from Dr. Allan Middleton (George Sanders), a renowned police surgeon and psychological consultant at Scotland Yard.

After committing the murder during one of his amnesiac episodes, George seeks help for his troubling blackouts. He confides in Barbara Chapman, played by Faye Marlowe, who is the supportive and caring daughter of Sir Henry Chapman, a well-known conductor and George Harvey Bone’s mentor, who takes him to see Dr. Middleton.

At the heart of Bone’s unraveling is his infatuation with Netta Longdon, a cunning and ambitious music hall singer brought to life by Linda Darnell. Netta’s beauty and charm mask a ruthless opportunism; she manipulates Bone’s affections, using his talent to advance her own career while stringing him along with false promises.

Cregar’s Bone is desperate, yearning, and increasingly unstable, while Darnell’s Netta is dazzling and cold, her self-interest sharpening every exchange. Faye Marlowe’s Barbara Chapman, the compassionate daughter of Bone’s mentor, offers a gentler counterpoint, her concern for Bone underscoring the tragedy of a man pulled between light and darkness.

Visually, Hangover Square is a vivid illustration of a noir/thriller atmosphere. Cinematographer Joseph LaShelle (Fallen Angel 1945, Road House 1948, Where the Sidewalk Ends 1950, Marty 1955, The Apartment 1960, How the West Was Won 1962) bathes the film in inky shadows and soft, gaslit haze, creating a world that feels both lush and claustrophobic. Brahm’s direction is dynamic and inventive—overhead shots, Dutch angles, and low perspectives lend a sense of instability and tension, mirroring Bone’s fractured psyche. The film’s most striking set pieces—particularly the Guy Fawkes bonfire scene, with masked revelers encircling a towering blaze—are both grandly theatrical and chillingly intimate, the camera swooping and gliding as Bone’s fate closes in around him.

Bernard Herrmann’s score is also integral to the film’s impact, his original piano concerto serving as both a narrative centerpiece and a psychological battleground. The music swells and recedes with Bone’s moods, the climactic concert sequence a brilliant flourish of sound and image: as flames consume the concert hall, Bone plays on, lost in his own creation, the boundaries between art, madness, and destruction dissolving in the inferno.

Hangover Square is rooted in the mood of its time. It starts with Patrick Hamilton’s 1941 novel, but is transformed into a kind of Gothic melodrama that’s full of the era’s anxieties. The Edwardian setting comes alive with all the rich period details—those sumptuous costumes, busy pubs, and clouds of smoke swirling through every scene. But what really sets the film apart is its noir edge, that constant sense of dread and inevitability running underneath it all that defines its style. Cregar’s performance, tragically his last truly, becomes the beating heart of the film. He embodies the duality of a man gifted and doomed. His torment is visible in every gesture, every look, and every move he makes.

In the end, Hangover Square is a story of a soul at war with itself, of love curdled into obsession, and of genius consumed by its own fire.

#94 Down, 56 to go! Your EverLovin Joey formally & affectionately known as MosnterGirl!

Chapter 4 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:

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 who 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 Robson’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 adaptation 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 X starring 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 are 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 against 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 his 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, but also 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 that 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 was 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 (NoÃ«l 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, which 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 the 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 Love possesses 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 Love appears 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 into Mad 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 world’s 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”

Continue reading “Chapter 4 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:” →