- More a Gothic horror than a proper film noir, Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase features one of those great movie mansions that seems to have at least a dozen occupants and a hundred rooms. The house's owners are the esteemed Professor Warren (George Brent), his cad of a brother (Gordon Oliver), and the bedridden matron (Ethel Barrymore). Everybody else is hired help, ranging from Mrs. Warren's mute companion Helen (Dorothy McGuire) to the family secretary and shared brotherly love interest Blanche (Rhonda Fleming). My favorite characters are probably the sour nurse (Sara Allgood) and alcoholic housekeeper (Elsa Lanchester), both of whom are much more engaging than the film's nominal male lead, Dr. Parry (Kent Smith), who subjects Helen to one-sided conversations when he's not yelling at her to start talking. In my book, that makes him a pretty poor doctor and an even worse boyfriend.
- The film's suspense is arranged around a series of murders that target the disabled, and the film immediately introduces its most indelible image by zooming in on the murderer's leering eye. (The actual eye used was Siodmak's, filling in for the killer as any good director would.) In fact, the film's best scenes all involve an element of the surreal, as the murderer mentally deforms his potential victims or Helen experiences the waking nightmare of not being able to say "I do" at her wedding. Incidentally, Helen regains her voice at the film's end, just as everything else concludes in an overly abrupt manner. Still, Siodmak's skillful direction and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca's fun with dimly-lit staircases and cellers make this an eminently watchable film, particularly for fans of theremins and thunderclaps.
- Based on a novel by Ethel Lina White.
