The Uninvited

The Unseen

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Close up of Gail Russell

Either a hopeless genre mishmash or a brilliant psychological thriller gone a bit wrong – probably both – 1945’s The Unseen was sold as a follow-up of sorts to the spooky thriller from the previous year, The Uninvited. In fact they have little to do with each other beyond the same director (Lewis Allen), one actor (Gail Russell) and that negative “Un” modifier. Russell had an “Introducing” credit in The Uninvited but she’s really the star here, though first-billed Joel McCrea would probably have disagreed. She plays a nanny brought in to tame the two children of widower David Fielding (McCrea) after their original nanny, Maxine, is mysteriously suddenly let go. There’s an aspect … Read more

The Uninvited

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Roderick holds Stella in his arms while Pamela looks on

Cosy supernatural horror? There is such a thing and here it is in the shape of 1944’s The Uninvited, a strange mix of the jaunty and the spooky, a dialled-down take on the sort of comic horror that Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard had piloted to box-office glory in The Cat and the Canary and The Ghost Breakers. Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey play a brother and sister who happen upon a vast and lovely house on a cliff edge in Cornwall while down from London on holiday. Falling instantly in love with it, they seek out its owner, the starchy Commander Beech, who lets them have it for a song. What’s wrong … Read more