Dame May Witty is a bad-tempered wheelchair-bound old woman. She's attended by her niece, Rosalind Russell, a sullen and repressed woman who keeps her eager suitor, Alan Marshal, at arm's length. He's a lawyer in the city, while Witty and Russell live in a woodland cottage. There are two women who serve as day maids. Nota bene: That's four women alone in an isolated house, with two of them gone by nightfall. Always a great set-up for a slasher movie.
Then Robert Montgomery shows up. He's more of a caricature than a character. He looks cocky. A cigarette dangles from his lips and he keeps his thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets. He wears this weird topper, a flat hat wider than his head, like a woolen dinner plate.
But, man, is he bewitching. He's always cheerful, as quick and perceptive about people as a particularly savvy shrink. He has an Irish accent. He's candid and forthright about himself and what he sees in others. He's loaded with this fey charm and it's easy for him to worm his way into the brutal old lady's graces so that, after some initial protests, she happily hires him as something between a personal attendant and a son.
It isn't as though Robert Montgomery didn't have problems, though. Chief among them are the facts, which emerge only point by point during the story, that he's a blatant liar and a sneaky murderer who totes the head of his latest victim around in a hatbox with him.
The play was written in 1934. A bit more than thirty years earlier Queen Victoria was on the throne. Victorian England was notorious for its repression of everything that could possibly be defined as "improper", meaning mostly sex and violence but also bad manners and a careless regard for class distinctions. Furniture legs were covered with little draperies. A chicken's "breasts and thighs" became "white and dark meat." It's the kind of atmosphere in which evil could pop unexpectedly, like a pierced carbuncle, an atmosphere that could produce Stevenson's "Doctor Jeykll and Mr. Hyde" or an Alfred Hitchcock.
The play's author, Emlyn Williams, was born in 1905 and some of these values are carried over into his plot. Montgomery's character, Danny, smilingly admits that he's always "acting", as if eyes were staring at him. Every once in a while, though he doesn't tell Russell or anyone else, the zit pops and he dismembers somebody.
Montgomery does a fine job with Danny. He always appears gawky. His movements are sudden and jerky, and his speech comes in bursts. Eventually, along with Russell, the viewer realizes that Danny is not merely acting but overacting. He races around singing and whistling and flattering the grouchy matron. He pushes her wheelchair too quickly. Everything he does is in fits and spasms.
Russell's part is pretty complicated. She has to begin as a buttoned-up spinster who resents the lower-class Danny, but then becomes interested in him, half repelled and half attracted sexually, so much so that she saves his bacon when the police begin to suspect him of a local murder.
Danny is the sort of guy who, if he didn't exist, would not be necessary to invent, but he does accomplish some good unwittingly. He opens up Rosalind Russell's passions and causes to her act out her desires.
The movie is a little slow. It's not the action-filled mystery with cheap effects that we've become used to. The pace picks up towards the end. And it's not without weakness. The cynical and tough old lady finds herself alone in the house at night and instantly turns into a quivering mass of Jello. There's been no indication that this transmogrification from brick wall into vulnerability was coming -- or was even possible.
But, that aside, it's a neatly drawn picture of aborted predation, of character and the evolution of character.
Then Robert Montgomery shows up. He's more of a caricature than a character. He looks cocky. A cigarette dangles from his lips and he keeps his thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets. He wears this weird topper, a flat hat wider than his head, like a woolen dinner plate.
But, man, is he bewitching. He's always cheerful, as quick and perceptive about people as a particularly savvy shrink. He has an Irish accent. He's candid and forthright about himself and what he sees in others. He's loaded with this fey charm and it's easy for him to worm his way into the brutal old lady's graces so that, after some initial protests, she happily hires him as something between a personal attendant and a son.
It isn't as though Robert Montgomery didn't have problems, though. Chief among them are the facts, which emerge only point by point during the story, that he's a blatant liar and a sneaky murderer who totes the head of his latest victim around in a hatbox with him.
The play was written in 1934. A bit more than thirty years earlier Queen Victoria was on the throne. Victorian England was notorious for its repression of everything that could possibly be defined as "improper", meaning mostly sex and violence but also bad manners and a careless regard for class distinctions. Furniture legs were covered with little draperies. A chicken's "breasts and thighs" became "white and dark meat." It's the kind of atmosphere in which evil could pop unexpectedly, like a pierced carbuncle, an atmosphere that could produce Stevenson's "Doctor Jeykll and Mr. Hyde" or an Alfred Hitchcock.
The play's author, Emlyn Williams, was born in 1905 and some of these values are carried over into his plot. Montgomery's character, Danny, smilingly admits that he's always "acting", as if eyes were staring at him. Every once in a while, though he doesn't tell Russell or anyone else, the zit pops and he dismembers somebody.
Montgomery does a fine job with Danny. He always appears gawky. His movements are sudden and jerky, and his speech comes in bursts. Eventually, along with Russell, the viewer realizes that Danny is not merely acting but overacting. He races around singing and whistling and flattering the grouchy matron. He pushes her wheelchair too quickly. Everything he does is in fits and spasms.
Russell's part is pretty complicated. She has to begin as a buttoned-up spinster who resents the lower-class Danny, but then becomes interested in him, half repelled and half attracted sexually, so much so that she saves his bacon when the police begin to suspect him of a local murder.
Danny is the sort of guy who, if he didn't exist, would not be necessary to invent, but he does accomplish some good unwittingly. He opens up Rosalind Russell's passions and causes to her act out her desires.
The movie is a little slow. It's not the action-filled mystery with cheap effects that we've become used to. The pace picks up towards the end. And it's not without weakness. The cynical and tough old lady finds herself alone in the house at night and instantly turns into a quivering mass of Jello. There's been no indication that this transmogrification from brick wall into vulnerability was coming -- or was even possible.
But, that aside, it's a neatly drawn picture of aborted predation, of character and the evolution of character.