Now then behind this door we have a double treat in the shape of two movies, one famous and one rather obscure, but both are important milestones in the history of Christmas horror. First up, we have a British movie from 1945, a film made by the legendary Ealing Studios, who are best remembered for their classic comedies. However Ealing also made one of the great classics of horror, this little movie called Dead of Night.
Released on the 9th of September 1945 in the UK, Dead of Night was a bit of a departure from the usual Ealing fare. To begin with this was a portmanteau or anthology film, and second this was a full-blooded fright flick. Made by a team-up of several directors - Basil Dearden, Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer and Charles Crichton - this movie begins with a Mr Walter Craig (played by Mervyn Johns) going to visit a country house where he informs the assembled party of guests that he has met them all before in a recurring dream. And to back up his claims, Craig appears to have an uncanny foreknowledge of events that are going to occur in the house. His fellow guests have a variety of reactions to this, but one by one, all reveal that in their past, each has had a strange experience of their own…
And so with this framing narrative in place, we then are treated to five different tales, three written just for the film but one based on a chiller by EF Benson and another based on a humorous ghostly yarn from HG Wells.
Dead of Night is a classic for good reason, with the stories being expertly paced to lead up to the most chilling of all, The Ventriloquist's Dummy starring Michael Redgrave. However it is the second tale which hides behind this particular advent door - an eerie tale starring a young Sally Ann Howes called The Christmas Party. This little chiller was penned by Angus MacPhail, a chap who not only wrote several famous Ealing movies but all worked with Hitchcock on classics such as Spellbound. Now in his tale for this movie , Howe’s character Sally recalls a strange experience she had at a Christmas party held in a big old manor house. The young guests have a game of hide and seek and Sally finds a door which leads to an old nursery where there is a sickly boy tucked up in an old fashioned bed, and… well if you want to know what happens, then you will have to see the movie!
But I can tell that the segment The Christmas Party is very much a cinematic addition to the centuries old tradition of telling eerie tales round the fire at Yuletide. To begin with, the framing device of the movie, with guests sharing strange tales around the fireplace in a country house, very much mimics this old tradition. Secondly this tale from Sally is itself set at Christmas time, and very much fits in with a long literary tradition of chilling tales in which folks go off to a country house for the festive period only to discover that such old places have what ghost story writer HR Wakefield memorably dubbed “Permanent Residents”. And if that wasn’t enough, this tale has an additional frisson in that it was inspired by an infamous Victorian murder - the case of Constance Kent from 1860. What more could you want from a Christmas horror tale?
But as well as serving up a true cinematic equivalent of a Christmas ghost story told around the fire, Dead of Night has been a hugely influential movie, and has a direct connection with another very important Christmas horror milestone lurking behind a future door.
But now onto our second, more obscure movie. The years after the Second World War were something of a lean time for cinematic horror, with a new genre, film noir, very much ruling roost. However a good many film noirs strayed from their usual crime and mystery tales into more macabre and strange territory. And one such movie is a little seen film from 1952 called Beware My Lovely, starring Ida Lupino.
Now this movie has its genesis in a short story by Mel Dinelli called The Man, which was adapted for radio twice in the 1940s on the famous show Suspense. Firstly in 1945 it was adapted as To Find Help, starring Agnes Moorhead and a young Frank Sinatra! And it was performed again in 1949 this time starring Ethel Barrymore (sister of Lionel Barrymore from The Devil-Doll) and Gene Kelly! Then in 1950 writer Mel Dinelli adapted the tale into a Broadway stage show, called again just “The Man”, which resulted in RKO snapping up the rights for a movie production, to star Ida Lupino and to be directed by Harry Horner.
Now the story is fairly straight-forward, after a brief but arresting opening scene which I won't spoil, we met Mrs Helen Gordon, a widow who makes ends meet by renting out rooms in the large house her deceased husband has left her. It is Christmas Eve and she is of course very busy, but then as luck would have it, there is a knock at the door, and it’s a fellow looking for work as a handyman. Being rushed off her feet, Helen hires him, however this fellow, a Mr Howard Wilton, played by Robert Ryan, is not the genial chap he first appears to be - he is in fact a volatile and highly dangerous psychopath.
And I will leave the plot summary there, for it would be a shame to spoil this excellent but sadly little seen movie. However I can tell what follows is a prime slice of festive frights which is the first example of what will be a very common trope in Christmas horror flicks - a psychopathic murderer coming to visit at Christmas!
However Ryan’s drifter is not just a hulking brute who kills because he is a stereotypical movie madman. Rather here we have a proper character, and Wilton’s insanity is surprisingly well scripted and thought out. He is mostly lucid, normal and affable even, but has certain triggers which plunge him into violent psychosis. All in all, it is a very ahead of its time portrayal of mental illness, and this realistic handling of Ryan’s insanity makes the movie far more unsettling than just having Ida Lupino being menaced by a 1950s version of Jason Voorhees.
The film also features a good many elements that we would later see become familiar staples in horror cinema, such the use of point of view shots, cat-and-mouse set pieces, and quick cuts and close-ups. The movie also very much writes the book on cinematic festive horror, being the textbook on how to inject dread, tension and terror into a cosy festive home. In particular, a shot of Christmas baubles reflecting the sinister action in the house has been borrowed by countless other festive fright flicks.
Sadly though Beware My Lovely remains somewhat under the radar, largely because the studio seemingly got cold feet. For the film was held back a year, and when it was finally released, it was put out quietly in September and somewhat under promoted. But nevertheless it is a highly important milestone in the history of Christmas horror and well worth tracking down.
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