The Unseen *** (1945, Gail Russell, Joel McCrea, Herbert Marshall) – Classic Movie Review 2278

Director Lewis Allen’s fairly involving, creepy and surprising 1945 chiller is Paramount’s less gripping but still enjoyable follow-up to their previous year’s hit The Uninvited (1944). It reunites the director with star Gail Russell, who this time plays Elizabeth Howard, hired as a governess by the brooding and secretive widower David Fielding (Joel McCrea) to look after his children, the wilful boy Barnaby (Richard Lyon) and impressionable girl Ellen (Nona Griffith). The widower is cast in the Mr Rochester or Maxim DeWinter mould and of course Russell is soon falling for him.

It starts as an unseen killer strangles a woman, with young Barnaby witnessing this from his window next door at 10 Crescent Drive, and then retrieving the victim’s watch. David does not take the watch to police because he had once been suspected of murdering his wife.

A couple of murders in the older New England neighbourhood lead the governess to become convinced that the mysterious and uninhabited brownstone house next door holds a deadly secret. So she gives way to her curiosity to try to unlock the mystery of the house, boarded up since a murder took place a decade earlier. 

It also stars Herbert Marshall as the friendly local doctor, Dr Charles Evans, a neighbour Elizabeth confides in, while Phyllis Brooks is excellent as the venomous, scheming Maxine, the boy’s earlier governess. In the cast too are Isobel Elsom as Marian Tygarth, the widow who owns the shuttered-up house at 11 Crescent Drive and returns to put it up for sale, and Mikhail Rasumny, Elisabeth Risdon, Tom Tully and Norman Lloyd.

The screenplay is by Hagar Wilde and Raymond Chandler, based on the novel Midnight House (US title: Her Heart in Her Throat) by Welsh author Ethel Lina White, who also wrote The Wheel Spins which became The Lady Vanishes (1938) and the 1933 mystery novel Some Must Watch which became The Spiral Staircase (1945). All three movies ditched her titles. How unlucky is that!

Director Allen, whose previous hit was the similar The Uninvited (also starring Russell), fails to reproduce quite the same magic here but delivers an entertaining enough movie. And, though some of the performances fail to register fully and it is disappointing that the story just fades away in a let-down of an ending, there’s plenty of mystery, tension and atmosphere throughout. McCrea and Russell are excellent.

The remarkable Norman Lloyd celebrated his 100th birthday on November 8 2014.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2278

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