The Spiral Staircase (1946) Do you remember that one dog in that Snoopy comic strip who used to sit on top
of his dog house and type a story that started "it was a dark and stormy
night?" I was always a Family Circus man so someone will have to tell me
whether that mutt ever got around to finishing that story. Besides, the only
dog in the funny pages I ever gave a squirt about was Marmaduke and that was
only because of the excellent "Doggone Funny" segment that ended each Sunday
strip with a little fun fact about some reader's dog (Callie, a mastiff from
Sandusky, Ohio not only is trained to use the toilet, but also remembers to put
the seat back down after finishing his business!). Anyway, if that dog (I
think his name was Linus or Pigpen or something like that) ever got beyond that
first phrase, this would have been the movie based on his story. At least it
would have been if his dark and stormy night involved a serial killer that was
bumping off women with various physical deformities (and what dark and stormy
night wouldn't involve that?)
The Spiral Staircase is based on a novel called Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White (she also wrote the novel that Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes was based on) and in the more than capable hands of director Robert Siodmak,
it's bathed in darkness and shadows and the black and white photography only
enhances the increasingly mounting terror that the mute servant girl feels as
the killer stalks her in the country mansion where she works. It shouldn't be
that surprising that the movie should have such a distinctive, almost noirish
look since Siodmak was behind the camera for the great film noir Phantom Lady as well as Burt Lancaster's Criss Cross (highlighted by an armored car robbery accomplished via a gas attack that
looked like it was ripped right out of a nightmare). Siodmak takes this
expressionistic aesthetic and grafts it onto a story that's basically a
primitive slasher movie.  To be truthful, I was reminded more of an Italian giallo film than a regular
old American slasher movie. On the surface there may be seem to be little
difference between the two genres, but there's a reason why when you're
watching Friday the 13th Part VII, you aren't thinking to yourself, "what a great giallo!" (other than the fact
that it wasn't made in Italy that is). My experience with gialli has been that
one of the major elements of them is that the identity is usually kept secret
until the end. In fact, they go to such great pains to keep you guessing that
sometimes things don't really make any sense and you seem to spend half the
movie wading through red herrings as much as through actual plot.
Additionally, the killers in these movies aren't superhuman monsters like in so
many of the American films. They're usually people that can pass unnoticed in
society, not guys in fantastic get ups that look more at home in a wrestling
ring than anywhere else. (Quick guidelines on proper attire: Giallo - black
gloves, hat, trench coat. Slasher - hockey mask, William Shatner mask, variety
of exotic weapons, janitor's coveralls, red and black sweaters.)
Beyond their differing fashion sense these two species of freaks differ in more
substantive areas. Perhaps owing to the twisted sexuality of their spiritual
inspiration, Psycho, or America's love of violence and its simultaneous fear of anything remotely
sexual, these slasher dudes, as has been exhaustively documented elsewhere, run
amok and wipe out the people who don't adhere to a strict policy of abstinence.
Of course, this obsession with scaring America's youth into signing pledges of
virginity (why they never got Jason Vorhees to do a PSA I'll never know),
necessarily limits where these films can go: Camps, parties, school functions,
and where ever else teens might congregate in each other's pants. Basically,
all that served to do is stunt the slasher genre's growth such that the only
recent successes in the field come from movies that pretend to knowingly wink
at such conventions all the while employing them themselves. The Italians don't seem so hung up on making sure that sex is seen as some
great evil that needs to be punished. Sure, you're going to have hot, naked
gals slashed, but not because of their loose morals, but just because every
chick in Italy is da bomb. Thus you have killers that go on their little
sprees for any number of reasons. There's the standard revenge for some wrong
done to them in the past. There's the good old fashioned cover up of some
other crime. Then you've got your guys that are just plain nuts. A lot of
these guys are out there trying to remedy their own perceived inadequacies by
doing in lots of babes. What triggers them or what they're trying to
accomplish with their killings is often the whole crux of the movie and is
usually revealed in the final moments of the film. Trying to figure who's
doing it and/or why is part and parcel of these movies as opposed to the
slasher movie where you're just waiting for the next victim to take a spear gun
up the butt. Let me nutshell it for you: a slasher movie will probably end with
the girl who won't put out driving a metal rod through some dork's mask. A
giallo might have Antonio Sabato, Sr. solving a string of murders involving a
bunch of half-moon key chains.  To bring this all back around to The Spiral Staircase and why it succeeded in being a creepy good time, instead of being as old and
creaky as the house it takes place in, it's because it employs a lot of things
that you'd find in the Italian variant of the body count film. Most obviously,
these are all adults we're dealing with. Hollywood hadn't yet ceded their
authority to the teenybopper audience yet, so we could set these things in
weird and unusual places - like 1906 New England in this case.
Even more than the fact that characters are all over the age of sixteen is that
you're left with the distinct impression that the killer could potentially be
any of the male characters. Is it the hunky new doctor in town that has a
thing for the mute servant girl? Is it George Brent, the professor who owns
the house with the spiral staircase? Was he finally driven over the edge after
appearing in not one, but two ridiculously silly Bette Davis vehicles (The Great Lie and The Old Maid)? Is it his half brother (he refers to him as a step brother, but they share
the same father), a slimy womanizer who just recently returned from Europe when
the murders started? Is it the scuzzy and crabby caretaker? Is it the old
doctor who doesn't like the competition from the hunky new doctor? Or could it
be the constable on whose watch this is all going down on? And just why is the
killer bumping off broads with handicaps of one variety or another? Obviously, this being 1946, you're not going to have the explicit violence and
gore that you would get later on in both slasher and giallo films, but that
doesn't mean that there isn't some rather jarring violence in it. Chalk it up
to Siodmak's talent that he's able to still make you cringe when some poor
bastard gets whacked. In one scene, darkness fills the center of the shot and
all you see are the victim's hands writhing in agony at each edge of the
shadow. Throw in the close up and zooming shots of the killer's eye as well as
a fairly disturbing moment where the servant girl looks into a mirror and
realizes she has no mouth and you can tell that you're not in for some pansy
murder melodrama. Likewise, once the identity of the killer is revealed, his
earlier comments take on a new light and seemingly innocent happenings earlier
in the evening turn out to have quite sinister motives.  While all the guys are milling around taking turns as the prime suspect, the
women in the cast are able to add more to the film than just be potential
victims. It goes without saying that Dorothy McGuire is quite effective as the
mute with a haunted past whose handicap ends up threatening her life. Even a
dream sequence where she thinks about what her wedding to the hunky new doctor
would be like isn't just filler like it might be in other films, as it drives
home just what a great problem being speechless can be.
Ethel Barrymore plays the bedridden mother of George Brent's half-brother and
she periodically says scary things to the mute girl about how she needs to
leave the house because it isn't safe and how she saw a murder years ago and
the victim was the mute girl! Punctuated with the big thunderstorm, people
coming and going in and out of the rain, doors being mysteriously left open,
and an oblivious bulldog named Carlton, and you've got the perfect atmosphere
to compliment both the story and the technique exhibited here. And I didn't
even mention that the Bride of Frankenstein's Monster herself, Elsa Lanchester
is along for the ride as the booze stealing cook. (Though she looks like she
had gone a to seed a bit.) The only complaint I had about this film is that at 86 minutes, it was just too
short. When the killer revealed himself to the mute, I was thinking that it
was just a false alarm because there was no way it could be concluded so soon.
We had just gotten all the red herrings revved up! Let them play out some
more. Let's see a few more people disappear in the basement or the attic or
wherever. It felt like it was missing part of the middle act and that just as
I was suspecting everyone and suspecting no one just like Inspector Cleoseau,
the party was over. Despite its fleeting presence, I wouldn't hesitate
recommending that you start your next dark and stormy night with a trip down The Spiral Staircase.
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