Cheap The Spiral Staircase (DVD) (Dorothy McGuire, George Brent) (Robert Siodmak) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Spiral Staircase

Disturbing Gothic noir
Robert Siodmak was a wonderful director of the film noir ,perhaps the result of his grounding in silent German Expressionist cinema and he brings that era's trademark use of unusual camera angles and skewed sets to bear on his direction of this splendid slice of turn of the centurt Gothic .
It is set in a small New England community where a serial killer is on the loose , his victims being women he deems to be in some way "imperfect " physically .They are either disfigured or have some impediment .
His particular target during the movie is a mute girl ,Helen , played brilliantly by the radiant Dorothy Maguire and it builds to a tense climax in a creepy old house with a thunderstorm raging outside .
The source material is utterly conventional but the insight and edginess of Siodmak's direction sets it apart from the run of the mill movie of its type and ensures we are dealing with a minor classic here .The direction is seen at its best in the brilliant opening sequence in which a crowd gathers for a show in the local theatre and the camers pans from the cosy community gathering for a night of escapism to a room above the theatre where a young disabled woman is undressing before falling victim to the killer .
Colourless performance by George Brent but the other peformances compensate .Above all however this a directors movie and the mastery of the genre displayed by Siodamk makes this a real treat .

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Near classic precursor to the modern serial killer thriller
Spiral Staircase (1946) Dir; Robert Siodmak Stars: Dorothy MacGuire, George Brent, Ethel Barrymore, Kent Smith, Rhonda Fleming

One of the most creepy and effective thrillers from the immediate post war era. The movie is in many respects a precursor to modern serial killer/stalker movies and used scare tactics that still remain in use more than 50 years later. The focus of the film is on a household at the turn of the century where a cranky old grandmother is bedridden and waiting to die, being looked after by a mute nurse who is the serial killers obvious next target as he clearly goes after victims with afflictions in his attempt to restore perfection and beauty to a tainted world. The director manages to conjure up an effective feeling of dread and claustrophobia - this is a long, long way from William Castle's amiable ghost frolic The House on Haunted Hill which played more like a farce than a thriller. The film is a little reminiscent of another classic serial killer outing made much later in England, Peeping Tom and was clearly way ahead of its time when it came out in 1946. The cast headed by Dorothy McGuire and George Brent but watch out especially for one of the screen's immortal icons, Elsa Lanchester who will forever be remembered as The Bride of Frankenstein. The Spiral Staircase is a superior thriller, may be a touch over wrought by today's standards, but effective, tense and fairly creepy. Perhaps, along with M, the great great granddaddy of the modern serial killer thriller. Far superior to the horrid remake that was dished up in 1975.

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Great dream of a Gothic thriller
This well-remembered Gothic thriller has been re-filmed three times--once for TV in 1961 with Elizabeth Montgomery, once in 1975 with Jacqueline Bisset, and once again for TV in 2000 with Nicolette Sheridan--but the originals never quite captured the qualities of the original, which features Doroithy McGuire's best performance as a terrorized mute serving girl in a 1906 New England mansion. The script itself isn't much, and relies on very hoary melodramatic conventions that even seemed old in its day, and the script has its share of howlers (the famous last line, in particular). What makes it memorable is McGuire's very affecting performance, Robert Siodmak's remarkably chilling direction, and most of all the great Warren mansion itself--one of the most beautifully elaborate sets ever constructed for a Gothic. At times your eyes have trouble taking the entirety of the house's richly inhuman decorations in, and the killer's ability to move in and around the house with ease seems perfectly logical. (Keep a watch out for the great early sequence with Dorothy McGuire watching herself in the mirror on the landiung of the house's other, main staircase--as the killer watches her watching herself.)