USA, 1946
Review:
JA Kerswell
Robert Siodmak’s classic, Whodunnit Horror Noir, pre-empts what would become a number of slasher movie and Giallo tropes. A mute housemaid becomes the latest focus of a serial killer who has murdered a series of women with a disability. It was a big hit on its release and influenced later maniac movies, including Bob Clark’s classic BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974) and the films of Dario Argento.
A series of murders of local women rock a small town in Vermont in 1906. The latest happens in a room upstairs at an inn, where a lame victim is strangled to death by someone hiding inside her closet. The murder occurs above a room screening a silent movie, and the woman’s corpse is soon discovered, and the police are called. Another young woman, Helen (Dorothy McGuire), was attending the screening, and she was told to hurry home before it got dark. The police have already deduced that the killer is targeting women with a disability—and because Helen is mute, they figure she is especially vulnerable.
During a thunderstorm, she arrives home and narrowly avoids the killer, who is waiting in the shadows in the yard outside. Helen is the personal maid of the house’s bed-ridden matriarch, Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore). Also at the house lives her professor step-son Albert (George Brent) and her wayward playboy son Steven (Gordon Oliver)—who has just returned from living in Paris. Mrs. Warren is dismissive of both of them and warns Helen that she is in danger and must leave the house immediately—although she doesn’t express why she thinks that way. Helen is conflicted but eventually agrees to go with her sweetheart, the local doctor, Dr. Parry (Kent Smith). However, when Parry sends word that he has been delayed, Helen comes to the creeping realisation that she is trapped in the sprawling house with the killer, and she cannot even scream for help …
As with any film of this vintage, you shouldn’t go in thinking that it will be a slasher movie as we know them today. However, the fun—quite apart from the film being an excellent thriller in its own right—is spotting the elements that would show up in later slasher movies. Many of these elements are visual. The close-up of the disembodied, manic eye of the killer staring from the darkness was repeated with great success in Bob Clark’s BLACK CHRISTMAS. Also, the scene where the killer lurks within a closet and watches his victim strongly suggests Clark was specifically referencing Siodmak’s film.
THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE also features an: “Oh, it’s you!” moment, where a victim-to-be recognises the killer without revealing their identity to the audience. A technique used in FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) and many subsequent slashers.
The killer’s black leather gloves, hat and raincoat prefigures the similar classic look of the killer in later Gialli films. Interestingly, the film features a shot where a victim isn’t aware of the killer’s presence because she is removing a piece of clothing over her head, which is strikingly similar to one in Dario Argento’s TENEBRAE (1982). Argento famously liked to use his black-gloved hands as a stand-in for the killer during filming—and, in this case, Robert Siodmak’s eye stands in for the killer. Although set in the past, near the turn of the century, and featuring quite literally in an old dark house, the reason for the killer’s psycho-sexual spree seems decidedly modern.
The film was an adaptation of the Ethel Lina White novel Some Must Watch from 1933. Incidentally, 50 years after this movie was released, Ethel Barrymore’s great-great-niece Drew would be battling Ghostface in SCREAM (1996). Talking of horror royalty, Elsa Lanchester—who gives a tremendous semi-comedic performance here as the house’s cook with a liking for brandy—is most famous for her role as the title character in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935).
The publicity for THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE emphasised its modern approach with the film’s poster screaming: “SO DARING … never before has anything like it been attempted. Packed with emotional excitement!” The critic in The Courier-Journal called it “tense and suspenseful” and “[a] … corking good thriller.”
The Windsor Star said the film was: “ … likely to scare the daylights out of most audiences.” Pre-empting a similar trick used in Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960), adverts placed in the press warned that no one would be seated in theatres in the last five minutes of the picture. “DON’T KILL THE THRILL!” It warned people who had seen it—and titillated those yet to have had the pleasure.
THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE has been remade three times, but none come close to the noir thrills of Robert Siodmak’s original.
BODY COUNT 3:
Female 2 / Male 1
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THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE trailer