The House in Marsh Road

So why isn't it the House on Marsh Road instead of in? Don't know.

Patricia Dainton and Tony Wright are Jean and David Linton always down to their last British pound thanks to his drinking and not working. Suddenly Jean inherits a house from an aunt, along with 1000 pounds. Back in 1960, that was the equivalent of 21,000 pounds today.

You'd think Tony would be happy. He now has the solitude he needs to write the great British novel. However, all he does is complain. When he learns at the local pub that a real estate investor would buy the place for 6000 pounds, he wants to sell.

Jean won't hear of it. She loves the place, despite the alleged presence of Patrick, a poltergeist so-named by the maid (Anna Sharp-Bolster) who comes in to work. Patrick, she says, is there to protect the relatives of the previous owners.

Tony writes book reviews and does some work on his novel, but he can't type. He hires a sexy local woman, Valerie (Sandra Dorne) who is going through a divorce. She's not interested in him when she finds out the house is Jean's. Well, just supposing the house suddenly became his?

Good, atmospheric, short black and white film, with excellent performances and a great ending! Very entertaining.

It seems unusual for a story with a poltergeist character to be set in the modern era (1960) but the story is convincing and the narrative is helped by the effective and restrained performances of the main characters. The music seems strangely reminiscent of Bernard Hermann's Vertigo score in places; in others of that used in the One Step Beyond TV series; surely a coincidence since the latter was produced at around the same time as this film.

Patricia Dainton is married to Tony Wright, a writer.... when he isn't drinking up all the cash. She inherits a house from her late aunt, and loves it; he wants to be in London, especially when a local real estate man offers him an unlikely sum of money for it. She won't sell. She loves the memories, she loves owning something real, she's even fond of the house's resident poltergeist, at which Wright scoffs.He takes up with Sandra Dorne, and eventually the comes to him that if his wife is dead, he can sell the house and take his lover to London. So he tries a couple of ways to kill her.

Mostly it's a thriller,with Miss Dainton being the lovely, totally unobjectionable sort of blonde which, in my experience, can drive a man mad. Wright is a lazy cad, and Miss Dorne is.... well, she's easy. It's efficiently written and directed; Walter Harvey's shadowy cinematography is a big plus.

The House in Marsh Road is directed by Montgomery Tully and adapted to screenplay by Maurice J. Wilson from the novel written by Laurence Meynell. It stars Tony Wright, Patricia Dainton, Sandra Dorne, Derek Aylward, Sam Kydd, Llewellyn Rees and Anita Sharp-Bolster. Music is by John Veale and cinematography by James Harvey.

When Jean Linton (Dainton) inherits a house in the country she hopes her hard drinking novelist husband David (Wright) will settle down and make something of himself and their marriage. However, when sultry Valerie Stockley (Dorne) arrives on the scene it's not long before David's head is turned and he begins to plot the murder of his wife. Jean is in trouble, but she has an ally, the resident poltergeist of Four Winds House...

Simplicity of plot and economical of running time and technical attributes, The House in Marsh Road should not be sought out by any "horror" fan craving poltergeist terror. This is a quaint and fun chiller for the most part, even with an air of jauntiness for the first half, in fact very much like The Uninvited (1944) in how the presence of a ghost is not seen as something to be outright feared. Then the mood for the latter stages of the play notably shifts into darker territory, here the dastardly David starts to put his plans in motion, something which signals time for the poltergeist to take a hand in proceedings. Which leads to a very good and genuinely edgy denouement at pics finale.

It never lacks for atmosphere or period flavours, or indeed for competency of performances and direction, where although it never breaks out into the upper echelons of other classic British chillers, it's still something of a "B" chiller worthy of inspection by those who don't need to be jolted out their seats. As for "Patrick the Poltergeist", he's rightly kept off screen, or is he? One scene appears to show him? Either that or a prop guy is guilty of standing in the shot? See if you can spot the moment and judge for yourself. It's just another fun part of a movie that provides gentle chills and honest entertainment. 7/10

I enjoyed this unusual B movie, it's basically 75% domestic murder story, 25% supernatural thriller. Jean inherits a house, moves her drunken no good partner David in, and he meets someone else, a voluptuous blonde, Valerie Stockley. Valerie persuades David to kill his wife, but Jean is protected by a poltergheist, wonderfully named Patrick by the potty Irish maid Mrs O'Brien.

It's unusual to say the least, I can't think of many supernatural murder mysteries, but it works. Patricia Bainton appeared in some cracking films in the 50's and 60's, my favourite being The Third Alibi, and once again she's pretty good. Sandra Dorne is pretty fabulous it has to be said.

I'm struggling to believe it was made in 1960, it looks like it was should in the forties, production values are pretty poor, although the fire is pretty well done.