The Spiral Staircase

Story

Credits appear over a woman descending a spiral staircase, disorienting music blaring during a thunderstorm. In turn-of-the-century America, amid horse-drawn carriages, we descend upon the Village Hotel. The desk clerk eyeballs a small room showing early motion pictures. A matronly woman accompanies the movie with a lively piano score. A man cranks the projector as we focus on a seated spectator, a young woman named Helen.

Somewhere else, a blonde woman observes a thunderstorm through her window and goes to her clothes closet as the piano score plays below her room. Inside the closet, we see a man’s partially obscured face and a staring eye peering from behind the clothes. The eye observes the woman dressing.

Meanwhile, back in the tiny theater, the movie ends as we hear a sound above. The desk clerk hurries upstairs, where a woman warns him that the racket is coming from room 9. The man knocks on the door, finally opening it to the sight of a woman sprawled on the floor. The windows in the room are wide open, the curtains blowing. The police constable (James Bell) announces to the assembled crowd that there has been another murder, and he dismisses the crowd. The constable orders the woman we focused on earlier, Helen (Dorothy Malone), to hurry if she is to go home before dark. The constable assumes this murder was performed by the same serial killer who performed two earlier ones.

As the storm kicks up, Helen runs to her home. Dr. Parry (Kent Smith) appears at the hotel, having heard about the latest murder and hoping to help. Another doctor informs Parry that the victim was strangled. Dr. Harvey ( Erville Alderson), the elder doctor of the community, advises the younger Dr. Parry in a rather cynical manner.

Later, Parry and Helen are riding together in a horse-and-buggy. The silent Helen is lectured by Parry about regaining her voice and becoming a nurse or a teacher. It seems Helen, without any living family, has given up on her dreams, and Dr. Parry encourages her to get help. Soon, a young boy stops Dr. Parry and says his father needs him, but the father actually called for Dr. Harvey. Parry finally relents. Helen exits the carriage to return to her place of work, while Parry goes to see the boy’s father.

As the carriage pulls further away, Helen walks amid the wooded brush but hears the sound of someone apparently following her. Thunder crashes as Helen picks up a branch as a weapon, and a rabbit scurries away. The wind suddenly rages. She sees a lighted, comforting home as the storm explodes. And the rain comes with great intensity as a rain-coated man emerges unseen from the heavy brush. Helen drops her house key in the muck as the man runs after her. Helen finds the key and runs because of the weather. The man stops and watches as she makes it to the house.

Arriving at Mrs. Warren’s home, still raining with wind blowing, Helen frightens Mrs. Oaks (Elsa Lanchester), the cook. Mrs. Oakes is terribly upset by the recent rash of murders. She recounts that the first victim had a scar, and the second was simple-minded. Soon, a banging appears at the front door, but it’s only a window shutter causing the racket. Helen is about to go upstairs and care for Mrs. Warren, but an unidentified man lurks, the same man with the staring eye. As he sees Helen, her mouth is blurred away. Nurse Baker (Sara Allgood) sits at the bedroom door. She complains that Mrs. Warren has only asked for her and won’t accept help from anyone else. The nurse compares Warren to an evil spirit. Helen feeds the fireplace as Mrs. Warren, in bed, watches. Warren complains about Helen being late. Mrs. Warren warns Helen to leave this place if she knows what’s good for her. When Nurse Baker enters the room, Mrs. Warren tells her that she is paid to sit in the hall, that Helen can do the rest.

The constable asks to see Professor Warren (George Brent), who tells him about another murder in this vicinity. The policeman advises the professor to keep all doors and windows locked tonight. The constable tells Warren that he is worried about Helen since all the murdered girls had something wrong with them, some sort of an affliction. In another room, Warren’s receptionist, Blanche (Rhonda Fleming), is kissed by her boyfriend, Steve Warren (Gordon Oliver). She orders Steve to go so they don’t get into trouble. But Professor Warren catches them kissing. The professor introduces Steve as his step-brother. As the constable leaves, a rugged man, Albert Oaks (Rhys Williams), enters among thunderclaps. The professor warns Helen to be particularly careful and remain inside the house.

Helen returns to Mrs. Warren’s room, stoking her fireplace. She demands that Helen pack and leave this place this evening. Then Mrs. Warren rants about someone trying to get into this house from the outside. She finally tells Helen to leave her alone if she won’t leave this house. Mrs. Warren finally reaches for a pistol, which Helen retrieves. Helen grows weaker, and Stephen revives her with ether. She awakens to say that Stephen causes trouble. Why did he return from Europe? Mrs. Warren wants to see Dr. Parry. Then Helen is beckoned to the front door to allow Dr. Parry inside. Upon meeting Mrs. Warren, the doctor tells her how much he liked her late husband. Mrs. Warren sits up in bed and tells Parry, "You must get Helen out of this house,” before passing out. But the ether to revive her is missing. Mr. Oakes has to drive several hours to buy ether from a nearby city.

Dr. Parry agrees that Helen should get away from Mrs. Warren and stay with him in his mother’s house for protection. Warren is becoming increasingly violent, and the doctor fears Helen is not safe. Parry wants to take Helen to Boston to see if her speech could be restored. He knows the story of young Helen returning from school, finding her home engulfed in flames, and both parents burned to death. Since that trauma occurred, Helen lost her voice. Steve Warren opposes the idea of giving Helen false hope.

Doctor Parry is soon called away to see a very sick patient, and Helen can pack while he’s away. As Parry exits, the rain pours while thunder and lightning crash. Helen, in frustration, dreams of marrying Parry and being unable to say “I do” during the ceremony. Blanche, meanwhile, avoids the advances of Stephen and asks to go to town with Helen. Mrs. Oakes declares that someone opened a window again. While Blanche is looking for clothes in the basement, she confronts someone she recognizes, but the camera focuses on the stalker with the penetrating eye. That figure approaches Blanche until she falls, obviously stabbed.

Checking on Mrs. Warren, Helen is told about a girl murdered here many years ago. Warren warns Helen not to wait for Dr. Parry, to leave this house immediately. But she warns her that if she doesn’t listen, she must hide beneath the bed. Professor Warren asks Helen to fetch Blanche, but she seems nowhere to be found. She finally ventures down to the cellar with a candle in hand. Descending the spiral staircase to get below, she comes across her body lying on the floor. Heavy winds whip up, and a sweating Stephen appears unexpectedly. He tells Helen to forget everything she has seen here. Dropping her candle, Helen flees from the dark cellar, locking Stephen in a small room. Upstairs, Helen desperately tries to revive a drunken Mrs. Oakes. She fails, running to another room and throughout the house. She frantically tries to call the home where Dr. Parry is located. banging the receiver against the metal part of the phone. Finding Professor Warren, she scribbles that Blanche was murdered and Stephen is locked in a room in the cellar.

Warren helps her up the stairs and says he was glad her telephone call could not get through. He says he saw her earlier without a mouth. “And there’s no room in the whole world for imperfection!” Warren quietly slips on black leather gloves, saying, " The only person who could help you is locked in the cellar.” After a ton of psycho-talk, Professor Warren chases Helen up the stairs. Helen runs into the bedroom of the now-sleeping Mrs. Warren. The constable knocks on the front door as Helen flees. He briefly conveys that Dr. Parry won’t be able to pick up Helen tonight because his patient remains very ill. Helen tries to open a window to attract the constable, but cannot. She finally knocks on the window pane in another room and attracts the constable. She finally throws a lamp through the glass, but the constable still rides away.

Now Warren is free to pursue Helen. The thunder and rain pound. Warren turns down the lights, slowly pursuing the mute girl. Helen slyly rushes down the spiral staircase. Mrs. Watten looms out on the staircase with a pistol, and she shoots her son several times as Helen audibly screams. Mrs. Warren asks Helen to bring Stephen back to her. They soon both come running up the staircase to find Professor Warren dead on the stairs. Mrs. Warren then collapses on the staircase and shortly dies. This time, Helen uses the phone to contact Parry in a shaky voice as the credits roll.

Critique

Unlike most “B” productions reviewed here, The Spiral Staircase is a mainstream, big-studio production and is probably the lesser for it. Instead of featuring quirky film noir-style photography, The Spiral Staircase is conventional in almost every way. Thunder, lightning, and rain are used in most sequences, creating a scary presence throughout the movie. I almost expected it to receive key billing in the cast’s credits.

Director Robert Siodmak, who directed Son of Dracula, Criss Cross, and The Phantom Lady, instilled The Spiral Staircase with that sense of dread throughout. More a mystery thriller than a typical film noir, it features most of the day's standard tropes: red herrings, dark, shadowy cellars; a sick, bedridden matron of the household bearing secrets, a very vulnerable young girl, and a series of related murders in a small community.

The mood created by Siodmak is ongoing and building, but somehow the movie seems constructed by the dots. It suffers from familiarity.

When the killer is finally revealed, there is no major surprise. The killer’s identity is suspected, and no major revelation is gained here. We suspect that another trauma will restore Helen’s voice. Helen should be wearing a sign throughout the movie: Please save me! Rivalry between the two doctors is hinted at, but not developed. The character Stephen appears to exist solely as a major suspect. The constable, James Best, was the villain in Val Lewton’s The Leopard Man, so he is also suspected to be the main villain here.

Several sequences do quite nicely at evoking mood. Such as the sequence where Helen runs through the rain and muck to arrive safely at Mrs. Warren’s home. By dropping her key, she is so absorbed in finding it that she fails to notice the man pursuing her. But the movie audience does, and when we know more than a character in the movie, it prompts calls to watch out and tends to get the audience more excited.

And if you thought I was kidding about billing the thunderstorm as a regular cast member, the Killer’s eye is credited to director Robert Siodmak, further distancing us from the actual George Brent since the close-up, staring eye was that of the director (much in the same way director Dario Argento was the gloved hands of the murderer in his movies). And this even progresses further. The killer’s shadow was credited to one George Holmes. Remarkably, George Brent wasn’t the staring eye or the killer’s shadow. He merely portrayed the civilized Professor Warren.

The distinguished Ethel Barrymore played the bedridden Mrs. Warren, the mother who shoots her son dead. Barrymore was perhaps the most singular actor in the production, playing the part of a woman who warns Helen to leave the house, initially sensing that Stephen Warren was the killer, then that her other son, Professor Warren, was. And props must go to Dorothy McGuire, who delivered a richly textured performance as the mute Helen.

The comic relief provided by Elsa Lanchester as Mrs. Oakes and Sara Allgood as Nurse Barker lifted the film in moments when we needed relief from all the horror and suspense. In the great tradition of director John Ford, who realized that audiences needed relief from the tension of his pictures, Robert Siomak added humorous sequences to provide them with some relief.

The Spiral Staircase was much too traditional and polite, adding a mediocre killer in an old, dark house. It featured many stars who performed admirably, but the story and execution were never more than decent, and for many, that is quite enough. But several variables within the theme were needed for this film to ever rise to greatness. As of now, this film serves to entertain the masses in conventional ways. It does not attempt to be innovative or quirky; it presents something old in traditional ways. The movie provides solid entertainment but nothing more.

THE KILLER'S EYE IS ACTUATTY THE DIRECTOR'S EYE.

HELEN (DOROTHY McGUIRE) AND PROFESSOR WARREN (GEORGE BRENT).

garysvehla509@gmail.com

DO YOU LIKE DARK CINEMA LIKE WE DO?

Submit an article or a critique of an article; Tell us how to improve the website!