U.S based reviewer and cine-apocalypse contributor, Shawn Francis, takes a look at the U.K DVD release of the 1944 Ray Milland spookfest, The Uninvited, one film on my to buy list so, please, click the read more button and check out Shawn's review after the jump...
Written By Shawn Francis
For
fiction and celluloid, Ghost stories are tricky to pull off. Unlike
slashers, or torture porn, or any other
sub-genre of horror that
relies on visceral punches to deliver the goods, a good ghost story,
a true-blooded one, delivers its blows through the conveyance of
dread, and I mean that with a capital D. This is the main reason why
they never interested me in the least bit when I was a kid. I found
ghosts and the paranormal exciting only through books and TV specials
that talked about them in general terms and recounted people who had
encountered them in real life. Fictional movies about them I treated
like the plague, with the exception of THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE
(1973), which I saw only a smidge of one night, and it scared me
shitless.
It
wasn’t until I entered my thirties that my tastes in horror movies
evolved a bit. It was in the summer of 1999 when that lackluster
remake of THE HAUNTING was out that kick started my interest
in celluloid Ghost Stories. I seem to recall coming across the
original THE HAUNTING (1963) one night on TCM, and was
amazed that I had this weird desire to actually want to watch it. By
the time it was over I was a fan. The movie, though, I really wanted
to revisit was THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, and, by the grace of
God, it eventually aired on cable that summer as well. Only once, I
seem to recall, and I leapt at the chance to record it. Even then it
still manage to give me goose bumps.
I
don’t recall when I saw THE UNINVITED, but I get this
feeling it was also either that same summer, or the one before, and
when I saw that one, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked
it. But as we all know there’s a big difference between how ghost
stories were portrayed back in the “good ol’ days” and how they
are portrayed nowadays. The main thing I learned was that if the
movie had to hire an actor or actress to portray the spook, I was not
interested. What makes those three aforementioned movies potent, even
to this day, is making the phenomena the focus of the “horror,”
and it’s this that makes for a truly scary movie about ghosts.
Modern filmmakers these days have a tendency to use a ton of FX to
show their spooks wreaking havoc, when subtlety makes for more
effectual chills.
There
are only two movies I have come across in the last decade that seems
to understand this rule: the haunted submarine in BELOW (2002),
and, to a degree, Stephen King’s haunted abode of ROSE RED
(2002).
Back
to THE UNINVITED…Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey play brother
and sister, Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald, whom one day will on
vacation, discover a long abandoned mansion on the coast. Suddenly
they get to want to buy it and despite being told of its
“questionable” history they go ahead with the purchase and get
pulled into a supernatural mystery. A mystery that concerns the
family that lived there before and the tragic deaths of both the wife
and the woman the husband had an affair with.
Someone
haunts the house, moaning just before dawn every night, but why does
20-year-old Stella Meredith (Gail Russell) feel so drawn to the
place? And why does she want to throw herself off the cliff when she
visits?
To date this movie
has yet to be released on legit DVD here in the states, but Exposure
Cinema, in the UK, managed to get a hold of it and release a nice
looking DVD. Framed at 1:33.1 the transfer doesn’t look bad. Audio
is quite good, too, despite the expected “anomalies” you
generally get with old films. Extras include a Theatrical Trailer, a
Stills & Poster Gallery (2:32) and two radio adaptations, one
from 1944 (24:42) and one from 1949 (29:00); the last one includes a
short interview with Milland and director, Lewis Allen.
The
real treat here is the 23-page booklet Exposure Cinema created that
covers many facets of the movie. You get a forward by Allan Bryce,
three articles—The Haunted Shores: An Appreciation Of The
Uninvited By Claudette Pyne, Respectable Hauntings: Ghost Stories On
film By Clydefro Jones and Ray Milland: Biography By James
Oliver—Publicity Material & Artwork, and, finally, Cast,
Crew And Technical Information, all of it interspersed with even more
photos of the cast and stills from the film.
Until
Universal comes out with a US version, I recommend Exposure Cinema’s
version to any bootleg or TCM showing you might come across.
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