The Spiral Staircase * (1975, Jacqueline Bisset, Christopher Plummer, John Phillip Law) – Classic Movie Review 9623

Director Peter Collinson’s 1975 British horror mystery thriller The Spiral Staircase is a close but modernised and unhappy remake of the 1946 classic American chiller The Spiral Staircase based on Ethel Lina White’s mystery novel Some Must Watch.

Despite a promising, stalwart cast energetically going energetically through the motions, this proves another poor Seventies film from director Collinson.

This time Jacqueline Bisset plays Helen Mallory, the terrorised deaf-mute servant/ live-in companion in bedridden old lady Mrs Sherman (Mildred Dunnock)’s creepy household. Helen has been unable to speak since seeing her husband and daughter die in a fire, and unfortunately a serial killer is targeting disabled people.

However, in the Sixties Collinson made The Penthouse (1967), The Long Day’s Dying (1968), Up the Junction (1968) and The Italian Job (1969), the film he will be remembered for. He died of cancer on 16 December 1980 in Los Angeles, aged only 44.

Also in the cast are Christopher Plummer, Sam Wanamaker, Mildred Dunnock, Gayle Hunnicutt, Elaine Stritch, John Phillip Law, Sheila Brennan, John Ronane, Ronald Radd, Christopher Malcolm and Heather Lowe.

Chris Bryant and Allan Scott write the screenplay as Andrew Meredith, based on the 1933 mystery novel Some Must Watch by Welsh author Ethel Lina White and the 1946 screenplay by Mel Dinelli.

Ethel Lina White is also the author of The Wheel Spins, which became the Hitchcock movie The Lady Vanishes (1938), and her Heart in Her Throat which became The Unseen (1945).

Ms Bisset had an easy time learning her lines as her performance is nearly entirely mute.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9623

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