MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #107 NIGHT MUST FALL 1937 / SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR 1947 & NIGHT OF THE HUNTER 1955

SPOILER ALERT!

NIGHT MUST FALL 1937

You know, I still remember the first time I stumbled onto Night Must Fall—a vastly underrated British shocker, and honestly, it rattled me in a way few films from the 1930s ever have. Here I was, expecting a cozy little drawing-room mystery, maybe some clever repartee and a bit of melodrama, but what I got instead was this icy, slow-burn descent into the mind of a killer, years before “serial killer” was even a term in the public consciousness. There’s something deeply chilling about the idea that a film from 1937 could so nakedly explore the psychology of a psychopath, and not just as a shadowy figure lurking off-screen, but right there in the parlor, charming the socks off everyone—except, maybe, us.

And Robert Montgomery—my god, Montgomery! I’d always thought of him as the affable leading man from those fizzy 1930s comedies, but here, he’s a revelation. His Danny is all surface warmth and boyish charm, but you can feel the ice water running underneath. There’s this uncanny calm in the way he moves through the Bramson house, as if he’s rehearsed every gesture, every smile, every glint in his eye. It’s almost as if he’s studied people, learned how to mimic empathy, but never actually felt it. That “series of performances” quality—one minute he’s the devoted son figure, the next he’s whistling a tune with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and then, with a flicker, you see the void behind his eyes.

What really got under my skin was how the film never lets you—or the characters—fully relax. The ticking clock, the way the camera lingers just a beat too long on a locked hatbox, the suffocating sense that something truly evil is at work, but it’s wearing a human face. Montgomery’s performance is so modern in its iciness, so heartless and yet so magnetic, that you can’t look away. There’s a moment where he’s alone, the mask slips, and you see that raw, festering wound of a person underneath—no glamour, just a kind of animal panic and emptiness. It’s a performance that anticipates everything from Psycho 1960 to In Cold Blood 1967, and it’s still as unnerving as anything you’ll find in later noir or horror.

Night Must Fall (1937) is one of those rare masterpieces of psychological suspense that leaves a mark. It’s about the terror of realizing that the real monster might be the person pouring your tea, the one everyone else finds so charming. The film’s darkness doesn’t just seep in from the edges—it’s right there, smiling at you, daring you to look away. Decades later, I still can’t shake the feeling it left me with. That’s the power of a film that truly understands how to get inside your head—and stay there.

Night Must Fall stands as a chilling landmark in psychological horror, translating Emlyn Williams’ stage success to the screen with unnerving precision under director Richard Thorpe. Adapted by John Van Druten, it moves with the slow, inexorable dread of a nightmare, its surface calm masking a psychological storm. The film plunges you into the claustrophobic world of Forest Corner, an isolated English estate where wealthy, cantankerous widow Mrs. Bramson (Dame May Whitty) feigns invalidism, reigning as a wheelchair-bound tyrant over her niece and companion. Her niece, Olivia Grayne (Rosalind Russell), is intelligent, repressed, and quietly resentful, trapped by financial dependence and emotional isolation. Mrs. Bramson also rules her household staff with manipulative cruelty. The household is completed by the tart-tongued cook Mrs. Terence, the anxious maid Dora (Merle Tottenham), and then there’s the unremarkable suitor Justin Laurie (Alan Marshal), whose proposals Olivia repeatedly rebuffs.

The film opens with the local police searching for Mrs. Shellbrook, dragging the river and scouring the countryside looking for a woman who has vanished from a nearby hotel. The mood at Forst Corner is already tense: Mrs. Bramson berates Dora for minor infractions, threatening her job until Dora, desperate, mentions her boyfriend Danny (Robert Montgomery), a page at the hotel. Danny arrives, bringing with him an air of breezy enchanment and a hint of something darker.

The arrival of Danny (Robert Montgomery), a disarmingly charming handyman engaged to the maid Dora, sets the plot in motion. Danny’s calculated charisma—a blend of Irish brogue and predatory charm—masks a sinister core, as evidenced by his unnerving habit of carrying a locked hatbox and his eerie fixation on decapitation. When a local woman is found murdered and headless near the estate, Olivia’s suspicions escalate into a visceral battle of wits and wills, torn between her dread of Danny and a dangerous, reluctant attraction.

He flatters Mrs. Bramson, quickly discerning her need for attention and motherly affection, and manipulates her into offering him a job as her personal attendant. Olivia is immediately suspicious, her intuition pricked by Danny’s effortlessly insincere charm and inconsistencies—she catches him lying about a shawl supposedly belonging to his mother, the price tag still attached.

As Danny insinuates himself into the household, the film’s tension ratchets up. Olivia’s suspicions are dismissed by Mrs. Bramson, who is increasingly besotted with Danny, calling him “my boy” and basking in his attentions.

Danny’s seduction of Mrs. Bramson’s affections in Night Must Fall is as cunning as it is seemingly innocent, and chocolates are one of his secret weapons. For Mrs. Bramson, chocolates aren’t just a treat—they’re a rare, almost forbidden luxury, a symbol of indulgence and comfort that she seldom allows herself. Living in her self-imposed isolation, surrounded by servants who resent her and a niece who barely tolerates her, Mrs. Bramson is starved for genuine attention and pleasure. Danny, with his instinctive knack for reading people’s desires, recognizes this immediately. He offers her chocolates with a flourish and a conspiratorial wink, transforming a simple sweet into a gesture of intimacy and delight. In Danny’s hands, chocolate becomes both a treat and a trap!

Danny, meanwhile, observes everything—Mrs. Bramson’s habit of locking cash in her safe, the routines of the staff, and Olivia’s wary intelligence. The outside world intrudes when Mrs. Bramson’s attorney, Justin, warns her about keeping so much cash at home, and the police visit to inquire about the missing Mrs. Shellbrook. The threat is close: a headless body is soon discovered in the woods near the house, and the entire village buzzes with morbid curiosity.

The discovery of the body brings a macabre celebrity to Mrs. Bramson’s house; she relishes the attention, even as Olivia’s anxiety grows. Danny’s duplicity becomes more apparent as he juggles his attentions between Dora (whom he has gotten pregnant and now avoids), Mrs. Bramson, and Olivia, whose mixture of suspicion and reluctant attraction to Danny gives their scenes a charged ambiguity. In a chilling sequence, the curious and suspicious household searches Danny’s belongings for evidence, their curiosity piqued by his heavy, locked hatbox—a possible hiding place for the missing head. Olivia, torn between fear and fascination, intervenes to protect him, claiming the hatbox as her own when the police arrive. This act, both reckless and intimate, binds her fate to Danny’s and deepens the film’s psychosexual undercurrents.

The film’s atmosphere, shaped by Ray June’s cinematography, is thick with shadow and silence: ticking clocks, creaking floorboards, and the omnipresent threat of violence. One of the most striking visual moments occurs after the body is found. This sequence isolates Danny in his dimly lit bedroom after the victim’s discovery:

Danny, alone in his room, is seen through his window, a box of light in the darkness, the camera tracking inward until ot hovers intimately, trapping us alongside his panic, his bravado stripped away. As night falls, the household fragments. Olivia, unable to bear the tension, leaves, urging Mrs. Bramson to do the same. The other servants depart, leaving Mrs. Bramson alone in the house with Danny. The old woman, now frightened by the noises and shadows she once dismissed, calls for Danny, who soothes her with gentle words and a drink—then, in a moment of cold calculation, suffocates her and empties her safe.

Danny’s murder of Mrs. Bramson unfolds with the chilling intimacy of a lullaby turned lethal. In the hush of the night, as shadows pool around the edges of her bed, he leans in with the gentleness of a dutiful son—his voice soft, his hands steady. The pillow, so often a symbol of comfort and rest, becomes in his grasp a velvet shroud. He lowers it, slow and deliberate, as if tucking her in against the world’s cruelties, but instead, he seals her away from breath and the morning that will never come for her again. The room fills with the silence of withheld air, the weight of unspoken terror pressing down until her struggles ebb, and the only sound left is the faint, final sigh of a life quietly extinguished beneath the guise of his affection and devoted care.

The film’s tension crescendos through the masterful cinematography by Ray June (he also directed two other psychological thrillers Barbary Coast (1935) – Nominated for an Academy Award for cinematography, which blends adventure with noirish visual style, and in 1950 Shadow on the Wall), who uses shadow and framing to mirror Danny’s fractured psyche.

Olivia returns, compelled by a need to confront the truth. She finds Danny preparing to burn the house and destroy the evidence. In a final confrontation, Danny confesses his resentment at being “looked down upon,” his sense of entitlement, and his belief that murder is his only way to assert himself. Danny tells her, “You’re afraid of yourself, aren’t you? You’re like me, really. Only you’re afraid to admit it.”

Olivia, her attraction now replaced by horror, tells him she sees him for what he is—a killer, as Danny moves to silence her. This visual claustrophobia amplifies the narrative’s dread, particularly as Danny’s facade crumbles—first suffocating Mrs. Bramson in her bed, then confessing to Olivia with manic glee, “Everything I love… dies.” The climax, where Danny prepares to burn the house with Olivia inside, is interrupted only by the timely arrival of Justin and the police, exposing his madness in a final, shattering confrontation.

The film’s power lies in its performances. Production anecdotes abound: Montgomery, captivated by the play, “badgered” MGM into casting him and funded part of the shoot, while Sherwood Forest, California, doubled for the English countryside. Robert Montgomery, cast against type, delivers a mesmerizing portrayal of Danny—a charming sociopath whose menace is all the more chilling for being cloaked in wit and vulnerability. Robert Montgomery’s performance as Danny remains the film’s spine, subverting his typical “matinee idol” persona to embody a narcissistic sociopath. Critics of the day were astonished; the National Board of Review named it the best film of 1937, and Montgomery received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. His Oscar-nominated portrayal balances seductive wit with volcanic menace, particularly in scenes where he toys with Olivia’s fraying nerves.

Dame May Whitty, reprising her stage role, is equally compelling as Mrs. Bramson, her imperiousness giving way to terror in her final moments. It earned a Supporting Actress nomination for her turn as the manipulative matriarch, whose gullibility masks a latent terror. Rosalind Russell, in an early dramatic role, though initially overlooked, delivers a nuanced Olivia—icy yet vulnerable, hinting at the comedic prowess she’d later hone. She brings depth to Olivia’s conflicted intelligence and suppressed longing.

Let’s be honest: the true unsung heroines of Night Must Fall aren’t just the ones cowering in the shadow of Danny’s hatbox—they’re the two central staff women, each a comic archetype and a minor miracle of casting. First, we have Merle Tottenham’s Dora, the “pretty but naive and submissive” maid who spends the film in a state of perpetual fluster, as if she’s just remembered she left the kettle on and possibly also the back door open for a murderer.

Tottenham, who had a knack for playing the eternally put-upon servant (see her in This Happy Breed or Cavalcade), brings to Dora a kind of wide-eyed, breathless panic—she’s the sort of girl who’d apologize to a doorknob for bumping into it, and who, when confronted with a crisis, looks as if she’s about to faint into the nearest teacup. Then there’s Kathleen Harrison’s Mrs. Terence, the Cockney cook who is, frankly, the only person in the household with both feet on the ground and a tongue sharp enough to slice bread. Harrison’s style is pure British working-class comedy—she’s got a face like a weathered apple and the kind of voice that can cut through Mrs. Bramson’s self-pity like a hot knife through suet pudding. Mrs. Terence is the comic relief and the unofficial head of the Bramson household, forever muttering about her employer’s “malingering” and not above telling the old bat exactly what everyone else is too terrified to say. She’s the only one who isn’t remotely cowed by Mrs. Bramson’s theatrics, and she provides a much-needed dose of reality (and sarcasm) whenever the suspense threatens to get too thick.

Together, Dora and Mrs. Terence are like a mismatched vaudeville act: Dora, the human embodiment of a nervous squeak, and Mrs. Terence, the world-weary cynic with a rolling pin and a comeback for every occasion. They’re the glue that holds the Bramson house together, even as the whole place teeters on the edge of melodramatic disaster. If you ask me, they’re the only two who’d survive a sequel—Dora by accident, Mrs. Terence by sheer force of will and a well-timed eye-roll.

Contemporary critics were polarized. While some reviewers praised the film’s intelligence and restraint. “A marvelous, suspenseful, tension-filled, atmospheric thriller with absolutely NO ‘blood and guts’… the epitome of an intelligent horror film,” wrote one critic, noting that the film “really did give me the creeps and frightened me, especially in its closing scenes.” Others admired the adaptation’s ability to transcend its stage origins, crediting Thorpe’s direction and June’s cinematography for creating a sense of claustrophobic dread

While the New York Daily News hailed Montgomery’s “eminent position among top-notchers,” Graham Greene dismissed it as “a long, dim film… no more than a photographed stage play”

Audiences, warned by MGM’s unprecedented disclaimer trailer about the film’s “spurious content,” flocked regardless, drawn by its psychological audacity. Retrospectively, the film is celebrated for pioneering themes of repressed sexuality and class resentment—Danny’s rage at being “looked down upon” mirrors the era’s social anxieties—and its influence on later thrillers like Psycho is unmistakable.

Production anecdotes abound: Montgomery, captivated by the play, “badgered” MGM into casting him and funded part of the shoot, while Sherwood Forest, California, doubled for the English countryside.

Despite its tepid box office, Night Must Fall endures as a fine example of suspense, proving that true horror lies not in sensationalism or gore, but in the slow unraveling of a smile that hides a panicked scream.

Night Must Fall endures not just as a psycho-sexual horror film but as a proto-noir classic, remarkable for its psychological complexity, its subversion of genre expectations, and its exploration of the darkness lurking beneath ordinary lives. Its legacy is seen in later thrillers that probe the mind of the killer, and in its refusal to offer easy answers or catharsis. The film’s final image—Danny, exposed and defeated, but still defiant—lingers as a warning: evil is not always monstrous in appearance, but may arrive with a smile and a song at the door.

SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR 1947

There’s a singular, haunted beauty to Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door (1947), a film that feels like wandering through a dream where every corridor leads deeper into the labyrinth of the mind, like the myriad doors in Michael Redgrave’s murder tableaux in the film. It’s a work that wears its influences on its sleeve—Bluebeard 1944, Rebecca 1940, Gaslight 1944, and the Freudian fever of its era—but what Lang conjures is something uniquely his own: a psychological thriller that’s both lush and claustrophobic, as much a love letter to Gothic romance as it is a meditation on the architecture of fear.

The story begins with Celia Barrett, played by Joan Bennett with a mix of cool sophistication and vulnerable curiosity, an heiress whose life of privilege is upended by the sudden death of her brother. Celia’s older brother, Rick, dies early in the film, leaving her with a large trust fund and setting the story in motion. Adrift, she takes a holiday in Mexico, where she meets the enigmatic architect Mark Lamphere, portrayed by Michael Redgrave in his first Hollywood role. Their whirlwind romance is painted in sun-drenched colors, but even here, shadows flicker at the edges—a playful locking-out on their honeymoon turns into Mark’s abrupt withdrawal, and Celia is left alone, already sensing the chill that lies beneath his charm.

In Secret Beyond the Door, the moment when Mark Lamphere realizes his attraction to Celia is charged with a kind of electric, forbidden energy that lingers long after the scene fades. It happens in Mexico, in the thick of a sun-drenched plaza, where Celia and friend Edith (Natalie Schafer) stumble upon a knife fight erupting between two men over a woman. The violence is raw, almost ritualistic—a duel as old as myth, with the crowd pressing in, the air shimmering with heat and danger. Celia is transfixed, not recoiling but instead drawn in, her eyes wide with a secret thrill. She watches the woman at the center of the storm and, with a flicker of envy, wonders what it must feel like to inspire such passion—how proud that woman must be to cause death in the streets.

It’s here, in this fevered moment, that Mark notices Celia. He’s watching her as much as she’s watching the fight, his gaze like a hand tracing the outline of her excitement. There’s a current between them—Celia later describes it as “eyes touching me like fingers,” a tingling at the nape of her neck as if the air itself had turned cool and electric.

The violence in the street becomes a kind of mirror, reflecting the turbulence inside both of them. Mark is captivated by the hush before Celia’s smile, likening her to “wheat country before a cyclone—a flat, gold, shimmering stillness,” and when she smiles, it’s like the first gust of wind bending the fields, hinting at the storm beneath.

In that instant, the knife fight is more than a spectacle—it’s a catalyst, a spark that draws these two haunted souls together. Celia, intoxicated by the spectacle of danger and desire, finds herself seen in a way she never has before. Mark, in turn, is drawn not just to her beauty, but to the darkness he recognizes in her—a shared taste for the edge, for the thrill that comes just before chaos. The scene is a dance of glances and unsaid words, a duel played out not with knives but with longing, and it sets the tone for everything that follows: a love story built on the precipice of violence, where passion and peril are forever entwined.

The wedding in Secret Beyond the Door is a fevered vision—Lang’s camera lingers on the Mexican church, its arches and iconography forming a halo around Celia and Mark as they exchange vows. Circles and rings are everywhere: the semi-circular archway framing the church entrance, the ring of candles around the wishing well, the domed balcony railings, and the wedding ring itself—a motif that pulses with both promise and foreboding. The church is thick with religious imagery: saints gazing down in silent witness, the Virgin’s sorrowful eyes, and the flicker of votive candles casting halos of light and shadow. It’s a sacred space, but also a threshold—one that Celia, radiant and a little uncertain, steps across with a sense of both hope and gathering storm.

After the ceremony, the couple retires to their hacienda. There’s a lush, almost erotic haze to these honeymoon scenes: Celia, still in her bridal glow, is attended by a local woman who helps brush out her hair, the ritual both intimate and faintly ceremonial. The bedroom is airy, with white curtains billowing in the heat, and the world outside is all fountains and birdsong. But beneath the languor, tension coils. Mark, playful and teasing, is locked out of the bedroom by Celia—just a bit of newlywed mischief, she thinks, a way to prolong the anticipation. But when he finally returns, his mood has shifted. The playful spark in his eyes is replaced by a sudden chill; he’s distant, almost wounded, and soon after, he announces he must leave for urgent business in America, leaving Celia alone in the echoing villa.

That night—their wedding night—becomes the first fracture in Celia’s fairy tale. The lock on the bedroom door, meant as a flirtatious gesture, has instead triggered something dark and unresolved in Mark. She senses it at once: the way he withdraws, the way the room seems to grow colder, the sense that she’s suddenly on the wrong side of a threshold. The circular imagery that surrounded their union vanishes, replaced by the linear, shadowy corridors of the hacienda as Celia wanders, searching for her absent husband, her white nightgown ghostly in the moonlight.

It is only later that she understands the significance of that night—how her innocent prank awakened Mark’s childhood trauma, his terror of locked doors, and set in motion the chain of suspicion, secrecy, and psychological peril that will haunt their marriage. For all its beauty, the wedding is less a beginning than an initiation: a crossing into a world where love and danger are forever entwined, and every locked door is a question waiting to be answered.

When Celia arrives at Mark’s sprawling New England estate, Blade’s Creek, the film’s true atmosphere settles in: a house as much a character as any of its inhabitants, filled with locked doors, echoing hallways, and secrets that seem to seep from the walls. Here, Lang’s gift for visual storytelling is everywhere—Stanley Cortez’s chiaroscuro cinematography bathes the interiors in pools of light and shadow, every corner a potential hiding place for the past.

The supporting cast is a gallery of Gothic archetypes: Anne Revere as Caroline, Mark’s severe sister; Barbara O’Neil as Miss Robey, the veiled, enigmatic secretary whose scarred face and secretive manner recall Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca; and Mark’s estranged son David, who whispers to Celia that his father murdered his first wife.

The house itself is a museum of violence. Mark, whose fascination with murder borders on obsession, has built a wing of rooms that are meticulous recreations of infamous murder scenes—each one a shrine to a crime of passion, each one haunted by the memory of a woman’s death. At a party, Mark leads his guests through these rooms, narrating the grisly histories with a collector’s pride, but when they reach the seventh room, the door is locked and Mark refuses to open it. The tension is palpable, and Celia’s curiosity becomes a compulsion: what secret lies beyond that door?

As Celia settles into her new role as wife and detective, the film’s psychological machinery clicks into place. She is both observer and participant, her interior monologue (aided by Joan Bennett’s voiceover) guiding us through her mounting unease. Mark’s behavior grows more erratic—tender one moment, distant and cold the next, as if he’s at war with himself. Celia’s investigation brings her into uneasy alliance and rivalry with Miss Robey, who is revealed to be faking her disfigurement to keep her place in the household and whose loyalty to Mark is tinged with jealousy and resentment.

The pivotal moment comes when Celia, having stolen Mark’s key and made a copy, finally enters the forbidden seventh room. What she finds is a perfect replica of her own bedroom, a chilling confirmation of her worst fears: Mark has built a murder room for her, just as he did for his first wife. The revelation is underscored by Miklós Rózsa’s lush, anxiety-laced score, and for a moment, the film teeters on the edge of horror and a true merging of suspense and noir.

Mark’s violent aversion to lilacs in Secret Beyond the Door is rooted in a deeply traumatic childhood memory that becomes one of the film’s most potent psychological triggers. Lilacs are not just flowers for Mark—they are a symbol of betrayal, abandonment, and the suffocating pain of being locked away, both literally and emotionally.

The history behind this is revealed in the film’s climactic sequence, when Celia, determined to confront Mark’s compulsion and save him, brings the lilacs with her to the infamous seventh room, where she waits for Mark, forcing him to confront the buried trauma at the heart of his homicidal urges. The sight and smell of the lilacs, combined with the locked door, trigger his psychological crisis. The room, the perfect replica of her bedroom, is surrounded by lilacs. As she sits with the flowers, she urges Mark to search his mind, to dig back into the memories he’s kept locked away as tightly as the murder room itself. It’s here that Mark’s trauma comes pouring out: as a child, he adored his mother, who filled their home with lilacs. One summer afternoon, after helping her gather armfuls of the fragrant blooms, Mark was promised a bedtime story. But when he went to her room that night, he found the door locked—his mother had gone out dancing, leaving him behind. In his anguish, he pounded on the door until his hands bled, and when he saw her drive away with another man, his love curdled into hatred. In a fit of grief and rage, he crushed the lilacs they had picked together, associating their scent forever with loss and betrayal.

Celia’s use of lilacs is deliberate and pivotal in the film’s final act. Celia flees, but love and obsession draw her back. Mark, tormented by urges he cannot control, confesses his compulsion to kill her. In a climax that is as Freudian as it is melodramatic, Celia helps Mark confront the truth: it was NOT his mother, but his sister, who locked him in as a child. This moment of revelation breaks the spell, allowing him to reclaim his sanity and ultimately, their chance at redemption, but they are interrupted by Miss Robey, who, believing Celia to be alone, locks the couple in the murder room and sets the house ablaze. In a final act of will, Mark breaks down the door, saving Celia and himself from the fire—and from the cycle of violence that haunted them both.

The film closes with Mark and Celia resuming their honeymoon in Mexico, Mark declaring that she has “killed the root of the evil in him.” It’s a conclusion that strains credulity, but in Lang’s hands, it feels less like a tidy resolution and more like the closing of a dream—a return to the surface, but not without scars.

Critics of the day were divided. Some found it ‘overwhelming’ and ‘transformative.’ Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the film a pretty silly yarn,” but admitted that Lang “knows how to turn the obvious… into strangely tingling stuff.” Variety found it arty and almost surrealistic, while others dismissed it as synthetic psychological suspense incredibility wrapped in a gravity so pretentious it is to laugh.”

Yet even detractors acknowledged the film’s atmosphere, its “precisely-articulated suspense,” and its exquisite visual composition. Later critics, like Jonathan Rosenbaum, have argued that the film’s very murkiness is its strength, and some have gone so far as to call it one of Lang’s greatest American films—a rare Hollywood art-movie, as beautiful as it is strange.

What lingers about Secret Beyond the Door is not its logic, but its mood: the sense of wandering through a house built from memory and fear, where every locked door is a question and every answer is another mystery. Joan Bennett’s performance is a study in controlled anxiety, Michael Redgrave’s Mark is a man fractured by his own mind, and Lang’s direction is a vivid illustration of how to turn the architecture of a house—and a marriage—into a map of the unconscious. It’s a film that may not always make sense, but like the best dreams, it’s impossible to forget.

Secret Beyond the Door (1947) Freud, Lang, the Dream State, and Repressed Poison

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER 1955

I’ll soon be diving deep into The Night of the Hunter with a full-blown essay that explores every shadow and shimmer of Charles Laughton’s singular directorial vision. This piece will be part of a larger feature examining Robert Mitchum’s unforgettable turns as malevolent forces—first as the preacher Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter, and then as the relentless Max Cady in J. Lee Thompson’s Cape Fear 1962. I’ll look at how Mitchum’s performances redefined cinematic villainy, the directors who shaped these films, and the way each story blends nightmare, suspense, and a kind of dark poetry. Stay tuned for an in-depth journey into the heart of darkness—twice over.

“A Hymn in Shadow: The Night of the Hunter and the Spell of Laughton’s Dark Fairytale:

There are films that haunt you, and then there is The Night of the Hunter 1955—a fever dream of a movie that feels as if it was conjured from the deepest, most mythic well of American storytelling.

Charles Laughton’s one and only directorial effort, this 1955 masterpiece is less a conventional thriller than a dark lullaby, a parable sung in chiaroscuro and river mist. It’s the kind of film that, once you’ve seen it, never really lets you go; it lingers in the mind like a half-remembered nightmare, or the echo of a hymn drifting through a balmy summer night, serenaded by the haunting songs of chorus frogs.

Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955) unfolds like a Grimm fairy tale dipped in ink and moonlight—a singular, haunting vision from an actor-director who never again stepped behind the camera, poured his love for German Expressionism and silent-era lyricism into this Gothic fable of innocence stalked by evil.

Though dismissed upon release and a box-office failure, time has crowned it a masterpiece, a film where every shadow whispers and every ray of light feels like a benediction. Roger Ebert has referred to it as an expressionistic oddity, telling its chilling story through visual fantasy,” and Mitchum’s performance as uncannily right for the role, with his long face, his gravel voice, and the silky tones of a snake-oil salesman.

Laughton, better known as an actor of thunderous presence, approached this project with the reverence of a convert. He called Davis Grubb’s source novel “a nightmarish Mother Goose story,” and that’s exactly what he set out to make: a tale where lambs wander the meadow, shadowed by a circling hawk, and the world is at once magical and menacing. He poured his soul into every frame, drawing on his love of a time when silent cinema and German Expressionism reigned, and collaborating with cinematographer Stanley Cortez to create a visual language that feels both ancient and startlingly modern.

Laughton’s vision was a literal baptism by fire. He approached the film with reverence for visual storytelling, studying silent classics like The Birth of a Nation to “restore the power of silent films to talkies.” He battled the Production Code over the depiction of a murderous preacher and reshaped James Agee’s overlong script into a taut, poetic blueprint. His direction was intimate and experimental: he kept composer Walter Schumann on set, let cameras roll continuously like silent reels, and encouraged improvisation. For Laughton, this was less a film than an incantation—a chance to conjure “the feeling that this is a Christmas party wrapped up in a beautiful package” (Cortez, ASC). His sole directorial effort became his legacy: a dark, devotional work about the war between light and shadow.

Cortez’s camera using Tri-X film is a chiaroscuro dreamscape, turning Depression-era West Virginia into an expressionist shadowy fable, where silhouettes stretch across bedroom walls and the river glows with luminous, phosphorescent, and inky blacks amidst the moonlight. The film’s look is pure storybook—if your childhood storybooks were illustrated by nightmares and illuminated by the soft glow of redemption. Crafting silhouettes as sermons, Powell’s hulking shadow against walls, fingers splayed like claws, and water as both grave and womb: Willa’s corpse serene in a submerged car; the children’s boat drifting past skeletal trees, scored by Walter Schumann’s lullaby of dread. The forced perspectives: miniature sets for Powell’s horseback pursuit, dwarfed by an artificial moon. Laughton and Cortez painted with light like Caravaggio—every frame a chapel of contrasts.

The Preacher’s Obsession: Love, Hate, and Holy Terror:

At the film’s heart slithers Robert Mitchum’s Reverend Harry Powell, who is at the core of the “light” that is hunted by the gathering wolves of darkness – a wolf in preacher’s clothing. With “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed on his knuckles—a sermon prop for his biblical tales of Cain and Abel—Powell weaponizes scripture to mask his greed. Mitchum’s performance is a symphony of menace: velvet-voiced charm transformed into reptilian coldness. His obsession isn’t just the $10,000 hidden by executed thief Ben Harper; it’s the corruption of purity itself. He marries Ben’s widow, Willa (Shelley Winters), not for companionship but to hunt the secret only her children, the sacrificial lambs -John and Pearl, hold. The tattoos become a visual mantra: “H-A-T-E” clawing at “L-O-V-E,” a duality mirrored in every frame.

The story itself unfolds with the inevitability of folklore. Ben Harper (Peter Graves), a desperate father, hides stolen cash in his daughter Pearl’s doll before being arrested and hanged. His last words to his son John are a warning, that haunts like a curse, and a prayer all at once: “Then swear you won’t never tell where the money’s hid, not even your Ma.”

Enter Robert Mitchum as Reverend Harry Powell, jailed with Ben, who learns of the money. Released, he rides into town like a plague—a locomotive’s smoke echoing his menace. He’s a false prophet who drifts into town on a cloud of scripture and snake oil. Mitchum’s performance is a thing of terrible beauty—he’s all velvet menace and sly charm, with existential, contrary forces tattooed on his knuckles, fingers dancing as he delivers his sermon. He is the wolf in the pulpit, a preacher whose obsession is not just with the hidden money, but with the very souls of the children he hunts.

Powell woos and weds Willa Harper, played by Shelley Winters, who paints Willa with the sacrificial fragility of a trembling sparrow. Willa Harper casts a long and sorrowful shadow over the lives of her children in Night of the Hunter.

Her vulnerability and desperate longing for stability make her susceptible to the predatory charm of Harry Powell, and in opening the door to him, she unwittingly ushers in a force of destruction that upends the sanctuary she tries to maintain for John and Pearl. Winters’ performance is layered with emotional complexity—she embodies a woman so starved for affection and guidance that she confuses Powell’s manipulative piety for salvation, surrendering her own instincts and, by extension, her children’s safety.

And her own safety – her murder—a throat slit in moonlit silhouette, her body dumped in a river—is a still life of martyrdom, seaweed tangling in her hair like a crown of thorns. Winters turns Willa into a moth drawn to Powell’s flame, her sexual longing sublimated into religious fervor as he denies her even the comfort of a wedding bed. Their marriage is a mausoleum; the bridal suite becomes a shrine of denial. Her sexual frustration darkens into religious mania after Powell denies her intimacy, transforming her bedroom into a coffin-like chapel, with Willa praying for forgiveness as Powell’s shadow looms over her.

When she overhears him threaten Pearl, her fate is sealed. In one of cinema’s most unforgettable tableaux, after he slits her throat in their bed -her bloodless face framed like a saint in a shrine, Willa’s body floats underwater, hair streaming like river grass, her face serene as a martyr’s beneath the surface—death rendered as a tragic benediction. Willa’s lifeless body is perhaps one of the most startling, terrifying images in cinematic history.

John and Pearl, now orphaned in all but name, become the film’s true protagonists. Their flight down the river is a passage through a landscape of nightmare and wonder: barn owls blink from rafters, frogs croak in the reeds, and the world seems both vast and intimate, as if the children are drifting through the pages of a haunted picture book. Cortez’s cinematography turns the river into a ribbon of silver, the children’s small boat, like a cradle adrift between darkness and dawn. The journey is scored by Walter Schumann’s lullaby, a melody that is equal parts comfort and warning.

Pearl, cradling her doll stuffed with stolen cash, the children’s river escape becomes an odyssey through a dreamlike American Gothic. John’s watchful eyes hold the weight of lost innocence; Pearl’s doll is a totem of childhood co-opted by sin. As they flee in their skiff, with Powell’s silhouette howling from the shore, their journey—past ghostly barns and kind strangers—feels like a passage through limbo.

Their pursuer, Powell, is never far behind. His silhouette—horse and rider—stalks the horizon, a living shadow that seems to grow with every mile—a true boogeyman in pursuit. But in actuality, the chase is less a pursuit and more like a ritual, a testing of faith and will. It’s only when the children reach the sanctuary of Rachel Cooper, played by the legendary Lillian Gish, that the spell is broken.

Gish, silent-cinema royalty, embodies divine strength. Her Rachel is the film’s moral center—a Mother Goose with a shotgun gathering lost children beneath her wing and facing down Powell’s evil with hymns and unflinching resolve.
—She wields a shotgun and scripture with equal grit. She is Powell’s antithesis: light to his shadow, singing hymns not to seduce but as sanctuary. “I’m a strong tree with branches for many birds. I’m good for something in this world, and I know it, too.”

This line beautifully captures Rachel’s role as the steadfast protector and nurturer of lost and vulnerable children, standing in stark contrast to the darkness that stalks them. In the film’s crescendo, Powell lurks outside Rachel’s home. Their showdown is a battle of songs—Powell’s “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” answered by Rachel’s own hymn, the house divided by music and conviction.

The climax comes in Rachel’s barn, where Powell is cornered, finally revealed, and arrested, his power broken not by violence but by the steadfastness of love and the resilience of innocence. The stolen money spills from Pearl’s doll, raining cash- a mockery of his quest and all the preacher’s greed and blasphemy. In the film’s closing moments, as Christmas dawns and Rachel gathers her “little lambs” around her, the story circles back to its beginning—a tale of endurance, of abiding through the night until the light returns.

When The Night of the Hunter was released, critics and audiences didn’t know what to make of it. The New York Times’ original review of The Night of the Hunter, written by Bosley Crowther, described the film as “a weird and intriguing endeavor,” later calling it “audacious” and a difficult thesis.” In more recent years, The New York Times has called The Night of the Hunter“haunting and highly personal… clearly the work of a master.”

It was a box-office disappointment, leaving Laughton so wounded he never directed again. But time has vindicated his vision. The film is now considered one of the greatest American movies ever made—and I would agree – a work of art that fuses horror, noir, and fairytale into something wholly original. Mitchum’s preacher, with his tattooed hands and velvet croon, is an icon of cinematic evil; Gish’s Rachel is his perfect foil, a reminder that goodness, though battered, endures.

Its DNA threads through the Coens’ Fargo, Scorsese’s chiaroscuro, and del Toro’s Gothic romances. Laughton, who never directed again, crafted a sermon on the fragility of goodness—a film where evil wears a revivalist’s smile, and salvation floats on a river under a sky “full of stars meant for everyone.” In the end, it is less a thriller than a psalm: a testament to the children who outrun the wolf, and the light that outlives the dark.

Laughton once said he wanted to make a film “full of the poetry of dread,” and that’s exactly what he achieved. The Night of the Hunter is a hymn sung in shadow, a story where love and hate wrestle in the dark, and where, against all odds, the children abide. Rachel reflected on the resilience of children, specifically John and Pearl, but also all the vulnerable, innocent souls she cares for. After the harrowing ordeal they’ve survived, she looks at the children gathered around her and says: “They abide, and they endure.”

#107 down, 43 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

Postcards from Shadowland no. 16 Halloween edition –

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) Directed by Jack Arnold adapted by Richard Matheson and starring Grant Williams
Five Million Years to Earth (1967) Directed by Roy Ward Baker, written by Nigel Kneale starring Barbara Shelley and Andrew Keir
The Manster (1959) Directed by George P. Breakston starring Peter Dyneley, Jane Hylton and Tetsu Nakamura
The Twilight People (1972) Directed by Eddie Romero
Bluebeard (1972) Directed by Edward Dmytryk. Starring Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, Virna Lisi, Natalie Delon, Agostina Belli, Karen Schubert, Sybil Danning, Joey Heatherton and Marilù Tolo
The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) Directed by Robert Florey with a screenplay by Curt Siodmak. Starring Robert Alda, Peter Lorre, Andrea King and J. Carrol Naish
Carnival of Souls (1962) Directed by Herk Harvey starring Candace Hilligoss
The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) Directed by Robert Florey Starring Robert Alda, Peter Lorre, Andrea King and J. Carrol Naish
Bedlam (1946) Directed by Mark Robson Starring Boris Karloff, Anna Lee, Ian Wolfe,Billy House, Richard Fraser, Glen Vernon and Elizabeth Russell. Produced by Val Lewton
Dracula (1931) Directed by Tod Browning adapted from the novel by Bram Stoker-Starring Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Frances Dade and Edward Van Sloane
Blood and Roses (1960) Directed by Roger Vadim. Adapted from the novel by Sheridan Le Fanu- Starring Mel Ferrer, Elsa Martinelli, Annette Stroyberg
Black Sunday (1960) La maschera del demonio-Directed by Mario Bava Starring Barbara Steele, John Richardson and Andrea Checci
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) Directed by William Dieterle Starring Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara and Cedric Hardwicke adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo
War of the Colossal Beast (1958) Directed by Bert I. Gordon Starring Sally Fraser and Roger Pace
It Conquered the World (1956) Directed by Roger Corman- Starring Beverly Garland, Peter Graves Lee Van Cleef and The Cucumber Monster
Curse of the Faceless Man (1958) Directed by Edward L. Cahn–Starring Richard Anderson, Elaine Edwards, Adele Mara and Luis Van Rooten
The Old Dark House 1932 directed by James Whale-Gloria Stuart and Boris Karloff
Dead of Night (1945) Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, and Robert Hamer.–Starring Michael Redgrave, Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Googie Withers, Mary Merrall, Sally Ann Howes, Frederick Valk, Anthony Baird
Die! Die! My Darling! (1965) directed by Silvio Narizzano with a screenplay by Richard Matheson adapted from a novel by Anne Blaisdell–Starring Tallulah Bankhead, Stephanie Powers, Peter Vaughan, Donald Sutherland and Yootha Joyce
The Tenant (1976) Directed by Roman Polanski–Starring Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Jo Van Fleet, Bernard Fresson, Lila Kedrova, Claude Dauphin and Shelley Winters
House of Horrors (1946) Directed by Jean Yarborough starring “The Creeper” Rondo Hatton, Martin Kosleck and Virginia Gray
Spirits of the Dead (Italy/France 1968) aka Histoires extraordinaires
Segment: “William Wilson” Directed by Louis Malle
Shown from left: Brigitte Bardot, Alain Delon
Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) Directed by Freddie Francis–Screenplay by Milton Subotsky–Starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Neil McCallum, Ursula Howells, Peter Madden, Katy Wild, Alan Freeman, Ann Bell, Phoebe Nichols, Bernard Lee, Jeremy Kemp
Doctor X (1932) Directed by Michael Curtiz-Starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Lee Tracy, Preston Foster, John Wray, Harry Beresford
Frankenstein (1910) Produced by Thomas Edison Directed by J. Searle Dawley
Horror Hotel aka The City of the Dead (1960) Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey Starring Christopher Lee, Patricia Jessel, Dennis Lotis, Tom Naylor and Betta St. John. From a story by Milton Subotsky
House of Frankenstein (1944) Directed by Erle C. Kenton from a story by Curt Siodmak. Starring Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr. J.Carrol Naish, John Carradine, Anne Gwynne, Peter Coe, Lionel Atwill and George Zucco
Island of Lost Souls (1932) Directed by Erle C. Kenton Starring Charles Laughton, Bela Lugosi, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams and Kathleen Burke based on a story by H.G.Wells
Isle of the Dead (1945) directed by Mark Robson written by Ardel Wray-Starring Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer, Katherine Emery, Helene Thimig, Alan Napier, Jason Robards Sr.
Carl Theodor Dreyer Leaves from Satan’s Book (1921) starring Helge Nissen
Diabolique (1955) Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot adapted by Pierre Boileau Starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot and Paul Meurisse
The Wolf Man (1941) Directed by George Waggner Starring Lon Chaney Jr. Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Patric Knowles, Bela Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya, Evelyn Ankers and Fay Helm original screenplay by Curt Siodmak
Night Must Fall (1937)
Directed by Richard Thorpe
Shown from left: Robert Montgomery, Dame May Whitty
Phantom of the Opera (1925) Directed by Rupert Julian and Lon Chaney. Starring Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin story by Gaston Leroux
Strangler of the Swamp (1946) directed by Frank Wisbar-starring Rosemary La Planche, Robert Barrat with an original story by Leo J. McCarthy
Nosferatu (1922) directed by F.W.Murnau Starring Max Schreck
The Abominable Snowman (1957) Directed by Val Guest starring Forrest Tucker, Peter Cushing and Maureen Connell written by Nigel Kneale
The Bat Whispers (1930) Directed by Roland West-starring Chance Ward, Richard Tucker, Wilson Benge, DeWitt Jennings, Una Merkel Grace Hamptom, and Chester Morris
The Curse of the Cat People (1944) directed by Gunther von Fritsch- Starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, Ann Carter, and Elizabeth Russell. Screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen
Mighty Joe Young (1949) Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack
Young Frankenstein (1974) Directed by Mel Brooks Starring Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Teri Garr, Kenneth Mars and Liam Dunn.
The Devil Bat (1940) directed by Jean Yarborough Starring Bela Lugosi
The Fly (1958) directed by Kurt Neumann screenplay by James Clavell, Starring David Hedison, Patricia Owens and Vincent Price
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) directed by Tobe Hooper. Starring Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal, Allen Danziger and Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface
The Undead (1957) Directed by Roger Corman written by Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna Starring Pamela Duncan, Richard Garland, Allison Hayes, Val Dufour, Bruno VeSota, Mel Welles, Dorothy Neumann and Billy Barty
The Witches (1966) directed by Cyril Frankel Written by Nigel Kneale Starring Joan Fontaine, Kay Walsh and Alec McCowen
The Uninvited (1944) directed by Lewis Allen Starring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Gail Russell
THE NIGHT CALLER [BR 1965] aka BLOOD BEAST FROM OUTER SPACE MAURICE DENHAM, JOHN SAXON, JOHN CARSON Date: 1965
Poltergeist (1982) directed by Tobe Hooper written by Steven Spielberg. Starring JoBeth Williams, Beatrice Straight, Craig T. Nelson, Dominique Dunne Heather O’Rourke

MonsterGirl’s Halloween – 2015 special feature! the Heroines, Scream Queens & Sirens of 30s Horror Cinema!

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Horror cinema was at it’s spooky peak in the 1930s~ the era gave birth to some of the most iconic figures of the genre as well as highlighted some of the most beautiful & beloved heroines to ever light up the scream, oops I mean screen!!!!

We all love the corrupted, diabolical, fiendish and menacing men of the 30s who dominated the horror screen- the spectres of evil, the anti-heroes who put those heroines in harms way, women in peril, –Boris, & Bela, Chaney and March… From Frankenstein, to Dracula, from The Black Cat (1934), or wicked Wax Museums to that fella who kept changing his mind…Jekyll or was it Hyde? From the Mummy to that guy you could see right through, thank you Mr. Rains!

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Gloria Stuart The Invisible Man

Last year I featured Scream Queens of 40s Classic Horror! This Halloween – – I felt like paying homage to the lovely ladies of 30s Classic Horror, who squealed up a storm on those stormy dreadful nights, shadowed by sinister figures, besieged by beasts, and taunted with terror in those fabulous frisson-filled fright flicks… but lest not forget that after the screaming stops, those gals show some grand gumption! And… In an era when censorship & conservative framework tried to set the stage for these dark tales, quite often what smoldered underneath the finely veiled surface was a boiling pot of sensuality and provocative suggestion that I find more appealing than most contemporary forays into Modern horror- the lost art of the classical horror genre will always remain Queen… !

Let’s drink a toast to that notion!

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The Scream Queens, Sirens & Heroines of 1930s Classic Horror are here for you to run your eyes over! Let’s give ’em a really big hand, just not a hairy one okay? From A-Z

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Phantom in the Rue Morgue 1954.

ELIZABETH ALLAN

Elizabeth Allan

A British beauty with red hair who according to Gregory Mank in his Women in Horror Films, the 1930s, left England for Hollywood and an MGM contract. She is the consummate gutsy heroine, the anti-damsel Irena Borotyn In Tod Browning’s campy Mark of the Vampire (1935) co-starring with Bela Lugosi as Count Mora (His birthday is coming up on October 20th!) Lionel Atwill and the always cheeky Lionel Barrymore… Later in 1958, she would co-star with Boris Karloff in the ever-atmospheric The Haunted Strangler.

Mark of the Vampire is a moody graveyard chiller scripted by Bernard Schubert & Guy Endore (The Raven, Mad Love (1935) & The Devil Doll (1936) and the terrific noir thriller Tomorrow is Another Day (1951) with sexy Steve Cochran & one of my favs Ruth Roman!)

The film is Tod Browning’s retake of his silent Lon Chaney Sr. classic London After Midnight (1927).

The story goes like this: Sir Karell Borotin (Holmes Herbert) is murdered, left drained of his blood, and Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore) believes it’s the work of vampires. Lionel Atwill once again plays well as the inquiring but skeptical police Inspector Neumann.

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Irena (Elizabeth Allan) and Professor Zelen (Lionel Barrymore) hatch an intricate plot to trap the murderers!

Once Sir Karell’s daughter Irena ( our heroine Elizabeth Allan) is assailed, left with strange bite marks on her neck, the case becomes active again. Neumann consults Professor Zelin the leading expert on Vampires. This horror whodunit includes frightened locals who believe that Count Mora (Bela in iconic cape and saturnine mannerism) and his creepy daughter Luna  (Carroll Borland) who trails after him through crypt and foggy woods, are behind the strange going’s on. But is all that it seems?

Mark of the Vampire (1935)

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Elizabeth Allan (below center) and Carroll Borland as Luna in Tod Browning’s Mark of the Vampire (1935).
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Elizabeth Allan and Carroll Borland in Mark of the Vampire (1935).

The Phantom Fiend (1932)

Directed by the ever-interesting director Maurice Elvey (Mr. Wu 1919, The Sign of Four, 1923, The Clairvoyant 1935, The Man in the Mirror 1936, The Obsessed 1952) Elizabeth Allan stars as Daisy Bunting the beautiful but mesmerized by the strange yet sensual and seemingly tragic brooding figure- boarder Ivor Novello as Michel Angeloff in The Phantom Fiend! A remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s first film about Jack the Ripper… The Lodger (1927) starring Novello once again.

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Ivor Novello is the strange & disturbing Michel Angeloff. Elizabeth Allan is the daughter of the landlords who rent a room to this mysterious fellow who might just be a serial killer. Daisy Bunyon falls captivated by this tormented and intense young man…
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A.W. Baskcomb plays Daisy’s (Elizabeth Allan)father George Bunting and Jack Hawkins is Joe Martin the regular guy in love with Daisy.
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Michel Angeloff (Ivor Novello) to Daisy Bunting (Elizabeth Allan) “Stay away from me… don’t ever be alone with me…{…} -You trust me, no matter whatever I’ve done?”

The Mystery of Mr. X (1934)

There is a murderer loose in London who writes the police before he strikes with a sword cane, he signs his name X. It happens that his latest crime occurs on the same night that the Drayton Diamond is stolen. Robert Montgomery as charming as ever, is Nick Revel the jewel thief responsible for the diamond heist, but he’s not a crazed murderer. The co-incidence of the two crimes has put him in a fix as he’s now unable to unload the gem until the police solve the murders.

Elizabeth Allan is the lovely Jane Frensham, Sir Christopher Marche’s (Ralph Forbes) fiancé and Police Commissioner Sir Herbert Frensham’s daughter. Sir Christopher is arrested for the X murders, and Nick and Jane band together, fall madly in love, and try to figure out a way to help the police find the real killer!

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HEATHER ANGEL

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Heather Angel is a British actress who started out on stage at the Old Vic theatre but left for Hollywood and became known for the Bulldog Drummond series. While not appearing in lead roles, she did land parts in successful films such as Kitty Foyle, Pride and Prejudice (1940), Cry ‘Havoc’ (1943), and Lifeboat (1944). IMDb notes -Angel tested for the part of Melanie in Gone with the Wind (1939), the role was given to Olivia de Havilland.

Heather Angel possessed a sublime beauty and truly deserved to be a leading lady rather than relegated to supporting roles and guilty but pleasurable B movie status.

The L.A Times noted about her death in 1986 at age 77 “Fox and Universal ignored her classic training and used her in such low-budget features as “Charlie Chans Greatest Case and “Springtime for Henry.”

Her performances in Berkeley Square and The Mystery of Edwin Drood were critically acclaimed… More gruesome than the story-lines involving her roles in Edwin Drood, Hound of the Baskervilles or Lifeboat put together is the fact that she witnessed her husband, stage and film directer Robert B. Sinclair’s vicious stabbing murder by an intruder in their California home in 1970.

Heather Grace Angel was born in Oxford, England, on February 9, 1909.
Heather Angel in Berkeley Square (1933) Image courtesy Dr. Macro

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1932)

Heather Angel is Beryl Stapleton in this lost (found negatives and soundtracks were found and donated to the British Film Institute archives) adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes thriller Originally serialized in The Strand magazine between 1901 and 1902.

In this first filmed talkie of Doyle’s more horror-oriented story, it calls for the great detective to investigate the death of Sir Charles Baskerville and solve the strange killing that takes place on the moors, feared that there is a supernatural force, a monstrous dog like a fiend that is menacing the Baskerville family ripping the throats from its victims. The remaining heir Sir Henry is now threatened by the curse.

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Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935).

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Douglass Montgomery as Neville Landless and Heather Angel as Rosa Bud in the intensely superior rare gem The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935)

Mystery of Edwin Drood (played by David Manners) is a dark and nightmarish Gothic tale of mad obsession, drug addiction, and heartless murder! Heather Angel plays the beautiful and kindly young student at a Victorian finishing school, Rosa Bud engaged to John Jasper’s nephew Edwin Drood. The opium-chasing, choir master John Jasper (Claude Rains) becomes driven to mad fixation over Rosa, who is quite aware of his intense gaze, she becomes frightened and repulsed by him.

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The brooding & malevolent Rains frequents a bizarre opium den run by a menacing crone (Zeffie Tilbury), a creepy & outre moody whisper in the melody of this Gothic horror/suspense tale!

Angel and Hobson

Valerie Hobson plays twin sister Helena Landless, the hapless Neville’s sister. (We’ll get to one of my favorites, the exquisite Valerie Hobson in just a bit…) When Neville and Helena arrive at the school, both Edwin and he vies for Rosa’s affection. When Edwin vanishes, naturally Neville is the one suspected in his mysterious disappearance.

OLGA BACLANOVA

Olga Baclanova

Though I’ll always be distracted by Baclanova’s icy performance as the vicious Cleopatra in Tod Browning’s masterpiece Freaks which blew the doors off social morays and became a cultural profane cult film, Baclanova started out as a singer with the Moscow Art Theater. Appearing in several silent films, she eventually co-starred as Duchess Josiana with Conrad Veidt as the tragic Gwynplaine, in another off-beat artistic masterpiece based on the Victor Hugo story The Man Who Laughs (1928)

Freaks (1932)

Tod Browning produced & directed this eternally disturbing & joyful portrait of behind-the-scenes melodrama and at times the Gothic violence of carnival life… based on the story ‘Spurs’ by Tod Robbins. It’s also been known as Nature’s Mistress and The Monster Show.

It was essential for Browning to attain realism. He hired actual circus freaks to bring to life this quirky Grand Guignol, a beautifully grotesque & macabre tale of greed, betrayal, and loyalty.

Cleopatra (Baclanova) and Hercules (Henry Victor) plan to swindle the owner of the circus Hans, (Harry Earles starring with wife Frieda as Daisy) out of his ‘small’ fortune by poisoning him on their wedding night. The close family of side show performers exact poetic yet monstrous revenge! The film also features many memorable circus folks. Siamese conjoined twins Daisy & Violet Hilton, also saluted in American Horror Story (Sarah Paulson another incredible actress, doing a dual role) Schlitze the pinhead, and more!

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Anyone riveted to the television screen to watch Jessica Lange’s mind-blowing performance as Elsa Mars in American Horror Story’s: Freak Show (2014) will not only recognize her superb nod to Marlene Dietrich, but also much reverence paid toward Tod Browning’s classic and Baclanova’s cunning coldness.

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( BTW as much as I adore Frances McDormand, Lange should have walked away with the Emmy this year! I’ve rarely seen a performance that balances like a tightrope walker, the subtle choreography between gut-wrenching pathos & ruthless sinister vitriol. Her rendition of Bowie’s song Life on Mars…will be a Film Score Freak feature this Halloween season! No, I can’t wait… here’s a peak! it fits the mood of this post…)

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Baclanova and Earles

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“You Freaks!!!!”
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Gooba Gabba… I guess she isn’t one of us after all!

here she is as the evil Countess/duchess luring poor Gwynplain into her clutches The Man Who Laughs (1928).

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Flicker Alley and Universal Pictures Present Paul Leni’s The Man Who Laughs (1928) The Tortured Smile “Hear how they laugh at me. Nothing but a clown!”

Continue reading “MonsterGirl’s Halloween – 2015 special feature! the Heroines, Scream Queens & Sirens of 30s Horror Cinema!”

Dark Patroons & Hat Box Killers: 2015 The Great Villain Blogathon!

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IT’S HERE AGAIN… THAT TINGLING ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK BECAUSE THERE’S FOUL DEEDS AND MURDEROUS MACHINATIONS AFOOT…HOSTED BY SPEAKEASYSHADOWS & SATIN… AND SILVER SCREENINGS… THE GREAT VILLAIN BLOGATHON OF 2015!

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“Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.”
“• Stephen King, The Shining

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
“• Werner Herzog

“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: ‘Here are our monsters,’ without immediately turning the monsters into pets.”
“• Jacques Derrida

DRAGONWYCK  (1946)

Vincent Price – “I don’t play monsters. I play men besieged by fate and out for revenge…”

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Vincent Price is perhaps one of THE sexiest men in the film. Eventually, typecast, albeit an icon of the horror film industry… enough of us are aware of his range of talent and his sophisticated manner. If I were to have met him, I would have swooned… and that’s not a lie. He possessed a unique sensuality both tragic and dynamic that just drew you in.

Price could always play ONE of the most cultivated, enigmatic, and beguiling villains at any time…

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-Secret thoughts… That led to secret love… That led to rapture and terror!-

Gene Tierney as Miranda Wells:Nicholas – you do believe in God?”

Vincent Price as Nicholas Van Ryn: “I believe in myself, and I am answerable to myself! I will not live according to printed mottoes like the directions on a medicine bottle!”

The chemistry between Price and Tierney is authentic and captivating. When Miranda Wells feels humiliated by the gaggle of high-class snobbish debutantes because she’s from the wrong end of the river, not from the Hudson but the Connecticut River bottom, Nicholas tells her she’s better than all of them and asks her to dance. He seems so gentle and human, but he has a dark and villainous side!

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“You couldn’t help yourself any more than I” – Nicholas.

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“What makes you think you’re so much better than I am!”

DRAGONWYCK 1946 was Vincent Price’s 18th film. He had previously appeared in The House of the Seven Gables 1940 as Shelby Carpenter opposite Gene Tierney in Laura 1944 and Leave Her to Heaven 1945, right after he appeared as the cold-blooded Dr. Richard Cross in Shock 1946.

Produced by Ernst Lubitsch uncredited and overseen by one of my favs– Writer/Director Joseph L Mankiewicz. This Gothic & dark romance is based on the novel by Anya Seton, with cinematography by Arthur C. Miller (The Ox Bow Incident 1943, The Razor’s Edge 1946, Whirlpool 1949, The Prowler 1951), Art Direction by Lyle Wheeler and Russell Spencer, Set Direction by the great Thomas Little. The lighting alone is a mixture of noir chiaroscuro and offers dramatic shadings of the best classical elements of horror. The narrative speaks of familial secrets and twisted vengefulness, not unlike Lewis Allen’s spooky debut masterpiece, The Uninvited 1944.

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Added to the moodiness is the eerily haunting score by Alfred Newman with Orchestral arrangements by Edward B Powell. Edited by the keen eyes of Dorothy Spencer (Stagecoach 1939, The House Across the Bay 1940, Lifeboat 1944, The Ghost and Mrs.Muir, The Snake Pit 1948).

Costumes by Rene Hubert and Makeup by Ben Nye. The film bears shades of  Hitchcock/de Maurier’s Rebecca 1940 and Robert Stevenson’s/Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre 1943. Even a bit of de Maurier’s tautly suspenseful My Cousin Rachel 1952 directed by Henry Koster and starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton. The book is a hell of a good read if you enjoy Gothic melodrama.

Gene Tierney and Vincent Price reunite after having appeared in Otto Preminger’s memorable film noir masterpiece, Laura, in 1944.

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Otto Preminger brings together these two fine actors in his noir masterpiece Laura 1944.

Here-Gene Tierney plays Miranda Wells, and Walter Huston is her devoutly Christian working-class father-Ephram Wells.

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Walter Huston as Ephram Wells reading from his bible to Miranda.
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Miranda takes a drink of wine. Her father reproaches her-“I thought so, it’s got spirits in it. A little bit. Even a little bit of evil cannot be good Miranda”– Her stifling life with her religious father pushes her further into the arms of Nicholas Van Ryn.

This scene foreshadows the dangerous path Miranda is willing to wander through, as she starts to break free of her puritanical upbringing and reach for a life of being a free spirit. Believing that Nicholas represents that freedom. But there is a hint of evil that her father can sense.

Vincent Price once again manifests a passionate yet conflicted antagonist Nicholas Van Ryn with a magnetism you cannot escape, yet you may despise his cruelty and his self-indulgent murderous arrogance.

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“I must not feel like my life is finished as long as you are with me”-Nicholas
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“You must never be afraid when you’re with me, Miranda.”

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Glenn Langan is the handsome yet vanilla Dr Jeff Turner, Anne Revere adds a depth of nurture as Abigail Wells-Miranda’s mother who is weary of her daughter’s intentions to marry such a powerful man.

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Spring Byington is one of the maids-Magda. Connie Marshall is the young melancholy Katrina Van Ryn, Henry Morgan is Bleeker one of the farmers who challenges Van Ryn and fights back against the antiquated laws.

Vivienne Osborne plays wife Johanna Van Ryn. Jessica Tandy gives a marvelous performance as Miranda’s maid the feisty Peggy O’Malley. Trudy Marshall is Elizabeth Van Borden. Reinhold Schunzel is Count de Grenier, Jane Nigh is Tabitha. Ruth Ford is Cornelia Van Borden, David Ballard is Obadiah. Scott Elliot is Tom Wells and Boyd Irwin is Tompkins.

DRAGONWYCK 1946 is a Gothic suspense melodrama in the grand classical style. It even brushes against the edges of the classic horror film, not only because of the way it’s filmed, but there are certain disturbing elements to the story. The shadows and darkness that are part of the psychological climate work are almost reminiscent of a Val Lewton piece. There’s even a pale reference to that of a ghost story that is concealed, or I should say unrevealed, with the first Mrs.Van Ryn’s spirit playing the harpsichord, and the eerie phantom chords that add to the mystery and gloom that hang over the manor house.

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Katrine-“I don’t like it now. The singing’s getting louder now, I’m afraid, I’m afraid.”

Ghostly Dragonwyck

With swells of atmospheric tension and darkly embroidered romance, there are just the right tinges of shadows and danger. This lush and fervent tale combines tragic Gothic romantic melodrama with the legitimate themes of social class struggle wrapped within dark secrets and suspense.

As always, Price conveys tragic pathos even as the story’s villain. He is a man who manifests layers upon layers of feeling: brooding, charming, sensual, intellectual, menacing, passionate, conflicted, self-loathing, and egomaniacal all at once.

One of my favorite roles will always be his embodiment of Corman/Poe’s Roderick Usher in House of Usher 1960.

Vincent Price in House of Usher, 1960.

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The film also offers us the sublime acting skill and divine beauty of Gene Tierney as the heroine or damsel in peril, a simple farm girl living near Greenwich, Connecticut. She dreams of the finer things in life, swept up by the allure of a fairy tale existence, only to find out that her dream has become a nightmare.

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Once Miranda receives a letter inviting her to come and visit Dragonwyck, she is perhaps at once young and naive when she arrives at the austere place to be a companion to Van Ryn’s despondent daughter Katrine, a lonely sort of isolated child. First triangulated by Van Ryn’s over-indulgent wife, Johanna, after her death, the two begin a whirlwind romance that leads Miranda to marry the imposing Nicholas Van Ryn.

Almost in the style of a Universal monster movie, the central focus is the mysterious mansion, surrounded by volatile thunderstorms and restless villagers who want to take action against their oppressors. The film works as a period piece, seeming to possess an added heaviness due to the provincial settings and underpinnings of class unrest, which lends itself to the bleak mood.

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DRAGONWYCK’s villain or very human boogeyman is the inimitable and urbane Vincent Price, who holds sway over the locals as the patroon—lord of the land, as well as master of all he surveys and, of course, his new wife. Driven by his obsession with having a son, he is a brooding dark figure whose descent into drug-addicted madness comes to light like a demon who has escaped from a bottle.

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Nietzsche quote

Van Ryn is vain and contemptuous, scornful, condescending, and cruel. Eventually driven by his immense pride, love, and desire to murder his first wife, who is in the way of his ultimate legacy.

DRAGONWYCK is an interesting film that belies any one genre. As I’ve pointed out, beyond the dark melodramatic suspense elements, it’s every bit a horror film. It is also Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s directorial debut.

Ghost Story

It was set during the nineteenth century when parts of New York were still founded as feudal estates. It’s a fascinating portrayal of the history of the 19th-century Upstate New York Dutch colonies and their struggles between the rich and poor against the reigning yet dying tradition of aristocratic rule over the small family farms, which were overseen by Patroons. A Patroon owns the large land grants along the Hudson River. They are descendants of the original Dutch patrons, “and they’re terribly rich and elegant.” –Miranda.

Yet, as in the case of Nicholas, they can be brutal and self-opportunistic landlords who collect the rent from these hard-working, exploited, and poor farmers.

This is what first impresses Miranda about Nicholas, his power and station in life. Her sister Tibby tells her she’s not anxious to leave home.

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Miranda says, “That’s not fair, you know that I love you and Pa, all of you, and my home, it’s just that I try to be like everyone else, and want what I’m supposed to want. But then I start thinking about people I’ve never known and places I’ve never been. Maybe if the letter hadn’t come, I’d. Oh, I don’t know, I must be loony.”

Nicholas Van Ryn is a brooding and powerful aristocratic patroon who runs all matters with an iron hand. In the Nineteenth Century, the upstate New York counties were still dealing with a system run by these Patroons. There began a social uprising of the surrounding farmers who wanted more power over their land and a rule that would abolish the aristocracy that was a tribute to a dying past practice. Soon there would be an end to these ruling Estates.

As seen in Van Ryn’s maniacal demonstration of his being seated in an elaborate throne, he remains poised while collecting the farmer’s rent. Henry Morgan plays the tough and prideful farmer Klaus, who has brought nothing with him. “Not rent– nor tribute.”

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“I’m a free citizen, I take my hat off for no one.”

When Nicholas’s first wife cannot bear him a son as heir to carry on the Van Ryn name, the wealthy and wicked Nicholas Van Ryn secretly plans to poison her with the help of an Oleander plant. Setting his sights on the younger, more beautiful cousin Miranda.

Oleander

He then invites Miranda (Gene Tierney just naturally exudes a uniquely dreamy-eyed splendor) to come and visit Dragonwyck. She is an innocent girl fascinated by the urbane Nicholas but by the film’s climax, she becomes entrapped in the foreboding and bleak atmosphere of Dragonwyck, a place of secrets, sadness, and insanity.

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Nicholas-“The Breeze must feel wonderful indeed on a face as beautiful as yours, I imagine.”

Miranda is so taken with the idea of dancing the waltz and how fine a gentleman cousin Nicholas seems. Her father always reads passages from the Bible, and she hungers for adventure. Miranda craves the freedom to experience a better life.

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Vincent Price is incredibly handsome as Nicholas. Mysterious, his deep blue eyes crystallize through the stark black and white film. He has a strong jawline, and possesses vitality”¦ at first, he is so charming. Nicholas-“The Breeze must feel wonderful indeed on a face as beautiful as yours, I imagine.”

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The first meal at Dragonwyck is a grotesque scene in which his wife Johanna (Vivienne Osborne) shows herself to be a lugubrious sow, a glutton, and a spoiled child who now bores and disgusts her husband. He tells Miranda, “To my wife, promptness at meals is the greatest human virtue.” 

Nicholas is already starting to reveal his cutting tongue by commenting on how his wife overeats and is not refined—a hint of his cruel nature.

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“I think I’ll have the bonbons before going to bed.”
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Look at the detail of this frame. It’s almost the perfection of a Late 19th-century painting.

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Miranda meets the despondent Katrine, a hapless child.

At dinner, Johanna begins to nag him about bringing home the pastries from New York, the Napoleons, she appears to be a glutton, and though very pretty, a most unattractive portrayal of her character is given for the narrative’s purpose of Nicholas justifiably ridding himself of her so that he might pursue Miranda. In contrast to Johanna’s piggishness, Miranda is given a clear bowl of broth for her supper. The scene is set up so we feel a bit of sympathy toward Nicholas.

As Johanna shoves another bonbon into her mouth…

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Cinematographer Arthur C. Miller frames the shot as Johanna is placed in between Nicholas and Miranda. His wife Johanna appears like a fairy tale character–the over-exaggerated plump wife who gorges herself on sweets while Nicholas and Miranda talk of love and loss. Miranda is wildly curious. He is withdrawn and pensive.

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Nicholas plays the harpsichord. Miranda listens contentedly and then asks who the woman in the painting is. He tells her it’s his grandmother Aziel –“That’s a strange name” she looks like a frightened child.”

Miranda asks him to tell her more about his grandmother. Was it love at first sight?

Nicholas-“No Van Ryn does anything at first sight.” Miranda-“Oh, but she must have been happy to live here.” Miranda smiles, her face glowing. Nicholas adds, “As it turned out it didn’t matter, soon after her son was born she died. She brought this harpsichord with her from her home. She played it always.”

Johanna: “If you listen to the servants, they’ll have you believe she still does!” she laughs. But Nicholas quickly turns around to look at her. A dark shadow creeps along his brow, and his eyes raise.

Nicholas-“Fortunately, we don’t listen to either the servants or their superstitions.”

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Magda (Spring Byington) tells Miranda about Nicholas’ grandmother from New Orleans, the woman in the portrait. That his grandfather never loved her, he never wanted her at all. He wanted their son. he kept her from him… He forbade her to sing and play. He broke her heart. And drove her.” Magda stops short”. “She prayed for disaster to come to the Van Ryns and she swore that when it came she’d always be here to sing and play”¦ She killed herself in this room.”

Magda asks-“Miss Wells, why have you come here? Do you think Katrine is in need of a companion? Miranda answers her, “Well, that would be for her father and her mother to decide.”
Magda says, “Don’t you think she’s in need of a father and a mother”¦ that was a silly question wasn’t it?”

The meddling maid pierces Miranda’s innocence with her honesty like venom–causing a bit of shock on Miranda’s face that usually seems as tranquil as a quiet lake of sparkling water.

“You like it here?” Miranda answers–“Of course, I do.” Magda comments- “Course you do, you like being waited on, I could see tonight it was the first time. You like peaches out of season. You like the feel of silk sheets against your young body. Then one day, with all your heart, you’ll wish you’d never come to Dragonwyck.”

The handsome young Dr. Turner (Glenn Langan) comes to take care of Johanna, who has taken to her bed.

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He and Miranda sit and talk by the fire. He tries to imply that living at Dragonwyck has changed her, he tells her that the last time he met her he felt like they had so much in common. “Frankly right now I doubt you have any idea about the slightest thing to talk to me about.”

Johanna’s illness gets worse, of course, we know Nicholas has poisoned her. Lying in bed, she tells him that sometimes she thinks he hates her, but asks if they can go away together once she’s better. He says yes because he knows she’ll never get better. In fact, she will never leave that bed alive.

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Continue reading “Dark Patroons & Hat Box Killers: 2015 The Great Villain Blogathon!”

Recurring Iconography-The Cinematic Mirror

A Streetcar Named Desire
Vivien Leigh as Blanch Dubois in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire 1951
IsobelaCorona is Sara the witch-the witches mirror
Isobela Corona is Sara the witch-The Witches Mirror 1962
Repulsion- Catherine
Catherine Deneuve as the demented Carol in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion 1965
Bette Davis in Deception
Bette Davis as Christine Radcliffe in Irving Rapper’s Deception 1946
Robert Cummings in The Chase
Robert Cummings is Chuck Scott in Arthur Ripley’s The Chase 1946
citizen-kane-1941-orson-welles-
Citizen Kane-1941-Orson Welles
Corridor of Mirrors 2
Terence Young’s Corridor of Mirrors 1948 Edana Romney as Mifanwy Conway
Dead Ringer
Paul Henreid’s Dead Ringer 1964 starring Bette Davis & Bette Davis as twin sisters Margaret DeLorca / Edith Phillips
Decoy
Jack Bernhard’s film noir classic Decoy 1946 Herbert Rudley as Dr. Craig
fritz lang's M
Fritz Lang’s M (1931) starring Peter Lorre
Ida On Dangerous Ground
Ida Lupino is blind Mary Malden in Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground 1951
Jane Wyman Stage Fright
Jane Wyman is Eve Gill in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Stage Fright 1950
Jean Simmons and Dan O'Herlihey Home After Dark
Jean Simmons is Charlotte Bronn and Dan O’Herlihy as Arnold Bronn in Mervyn LeRoy’s psychological melodrama Home Before Dark 1958
jean-marais-Orpeus '50
Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus (Orphée)1950 starring Jean Marais
Kiss Before The Mirror '33 James Whale
The Kiss Before the Mirror 1933 directed by James Whale Gloria Stuart and Paul Lukas
Lady in the Lake
Robert Montgomery is Phillip Marlowe in Lady in the Lake 1947
Marilyn Don't Bother to Knock-mirror
Marilyn Monroe is the disturbed babysitter Nell Forbes in Roy Ward Baker’s Don’t Bother to Knock 1952
Psycho-Janet Leigh Marion Crane
Janet Leigh plays the ill fated Marion Crane in Hitchcock’s classic horror Psycho 1960
Renoir's The Rules of the Game 39
Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game 1939
She Wolf of London
June Lockhart is Phyllis Allenby in Jean Yarbrough’s She-Wolf of London 1946
sin in the suburbs
Joe Sarno’s Sin in the Suburbs 1946
Somewhere in the night Hodiak
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Somewhere in the Night 1946 starring John Hodiak as George Taylor and Nancy Guild (rhymes with Wild) as Christy Smith
Sunset Blvd
Gloria Swanson is the sensational Norma Desmond and William Holden is Joe Gillis in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. 1950
The Big Steal
Robert Mitchum is Lt. Duke Halliday and William Bendix as Capt. Vincent Blake in Don Siegel’s The Big Steal 1949
The Dark Mirror
Olivia de Havilland & Olivia de Havilland star as Terry and Ruth Collins in Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror 1946
The Lady from Shanghai
Rita Hayworth is Elsa Bannister in Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai 1947
The Queen of Spades mirror

Yvonne Mitchell is Lizaveta Ivanova in Thorold Dickinson’s The Queen of Spades 1949
Thomas Mitchell in The Dark Mirror
Thomas Mitchell is Lt Stevenson in Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror 1946
what ever happened to baby jane
Bette Davis is the outrageous Baby Jane Hudson in Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962

Here’s looking back at ya!-Your ever lovin’ monstergirl

A Trailer a day keeps the Boogeyman away!

RAGE IN HEAVEN 1941

Rage in Heaven movie poster

Psychological thriller directed by W.S. Van Dyke (The Thin Man series) with a screenplay by Christopher Isherwood and Robert Thoeren, based on the novel by James Hilton (Goodbye Mr Chips, Random Harvest)

Starring Robert Montgomery (who was marvelous as Danny the psychopath in Night Must Fall 1937) Here he plays Phillip Monrell a mentally disturbed man who is obsessed and paranoid about his friend Ward Andrews (George Sanders) being after his beautiful wife, the always lovely Ingrid Bergman as Stella. Phillip’s jealous obsession drives him into a murderous detachment from reality. Lucille Watson plays Philips mother, and Oskar Homolka  plays Dr. Rameau.

Montgomery and Bergman Rage in Heaven

George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman

Rage in Heaven

Rage in Heaven 1941

Robert Montgomery and George Sanders in Rage in Heaven

Robert Montgomery and George Sanders

Sanders and Bergman

Happy Trailers MonsterGirl