Guest in the House

Six years before entering film history in the title role of All About Eve – as duplicitous, back-stabbing ingenue Eve Harrington – Ann Baxter took a trial run in John Brahm's Guest in the House. Her character proves to be even more spiteful, that of a malingering but controlling waif in whose mouth a pat of butter would stay as hard and cold as her supposedly bum ticker.

Under the care of her young and smitten doctor, Ann arrives in the home of his extended family somewhere on the New England coast (high cliffs, crashing waves) for a recuperative summer. Once settled in the guest room, she takes to her bed and her phonograph on which she plays – shades again of All About Eve – `Liebestraum' over and over. She also sends her doting doctor packing, having set her snood for his older, married artist brother Ralph Bellamy. And then she calculatedly proceeds to tyrannize the entire household, sending away seriatim the domestic help (Margaret Hamilton and Percy Kilbride), Bellamy's live-in model, and, ultimately, Bellamy's wife (Ruth Warrick) and young daughter.

Of course, Baxter's illness afflicts not so much her heart as her mind. Along with her luggage she unpacks a lovingly tended collection of phobias (the one to birds proves pivotal) and a high-maintenance Borderline Personality Disorder. And, again of course, summer turns into a cold, forbidding fall before any member of the household picks up on the clues and holds her responsible for the dysfunction she has unleashed on the household. But at long last the worms begins to turn....

Guest in the House is really a parlor melodrama from a script by Ketti Frings, who would go on to write half a dozen or so noir screenplays. This one starts off slowly but once it gets underway it holds interest (it's a full two-hour movie, too). John Brahm, another emigre director from Europe who could be counted upon to produce craftsmanlike if not inspired work, stays in his element here, barely moving from the claustrophobic confines of the big old house and pulling out all the stops on the gothic organ: thunder and lightning, hurricane lamps, the sweeping beam of a lighthouse flooding the rooms then vanishing.

The cast acquits itself admirably as well. Though Bellamy's bumbling male seems a bit at odds with his supposedly artistic temperament, Ruth Warrick (the first Mrs. Charles Foster Kane) adroitly underplays, letting second-string players like Hamilton and Kilbride ham it up; another shrewd underplayer is Aline McMahon, as spinsterish Aunt Martha, who hides her light under a bushel until finally letting it flare. That leaves Baxter as the central character, onto whom we tumble early by virtue of having seen the way she works as Eve Harrington (an advantage they didn't have in 1944). Guest in the House strains our credulity a bit but stays a surprisingly effective and moody melodrama.

Many IMDb luminaries have written very good analyses of this movie and its relationship to Ms. Baxter's Oscar-Winning performance in All About Eve. And surely, at least in hindsight, Guest in the House is one of the vehicles that delivered Baxter to what many consider to be her masterwork. Since I am not an expert on Ms. Baxter or All About Eve, I do not wish to contribute either negatively or positively to that discussion. Instead, I will review Guest in the House (AKA Satan in Skirts) as an example of what it historically was - a disturbing, suspenseful and unusual film noir.

Baxter's character - Evelyn Heath - is, of course, the central element in this single-set piece. Ms Heath is a pretty young thing whose grace, beauty and charm thinly mask the truth. In fact, Ms. Heath is a manipulative, emotionally unbalanced sociopath. Unlike most noir film's the nature of the protagonist is revealed to the audience in the first few scenes as she enters the House Proctor with Fiancé Doctor Dan (Scott McKay) and immediately sets her sights on the older, married, artist and head of the household - Douglas (Ralph Bellamy). Evelyn allegedly has a heart condition and is engaged to Dan - a hard working doctor. Dan has set her up in the family home to rest and recuperate. So it's not hard to imagine why the rest of the family does not expect a thing, even after Evelyn encourages Dan to depart for the remainder of the summer and begins subtly sowing the seeds of suspicion and jealousy around her prey.

The Proctor family begins unraveling with the puritanical servants (nicely played by Margaret Hamilton and Percy Kilbride) and young Lee (Connie Laird) - who are the most vulnerable characters. As the accusations begin, each character falls under Evelyn's diabolical enchantment - with the exception of Aunt Martha (Alice MacMahon), Douglas's world-weary spinster of a sister.

If this all sounds atypical for noir - it should. John Brahm's parlor play A Guest in The House, is not a run-of-the-mill noir in most respects. The film is dark only in the figurative sense, most of the plot is transparent, the lines of good and evil are clearly defined, and there is neither a car nor a murder weapon anywhere in sight. Perhaps most remarkable is the fact that the entire film takes place in one set - a large house on the rocky coast of New England. But in intensity, fatalism and theme, A Guest in the House is entirely film noir. There are two significant noir ingredients which also appear, but I won't given them away so that I can avoid presenting a spoiler.

Journeyman Director John (or Hans) Brahm is probably best known to American audiences for having directed the well-regarded Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last". His long and modestly prolific career (35 years and somewhat fewer features) could be characterized as wandering or - more positively - diverse. He dabbled in religion (Our The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima), Psychological Horror (The Lodger), pulp action (Hotrods to Hell) and even Westerns (Face to Face), yet managed to bring a respectable quality to all of his efforts. That quality is present in A Guest in the House. And the director deserves some praise for pulling off a film which successfully challenges the experimental boundaries of what was, at the time of its production, a very popular genre.

The cast is superb and the casting is perfect. The film is well- directed, although at times the pace is a little difficult. And the story-line is interesting but disturbing enough to put off many if not most. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for its good, though not very memorable, score.

Despite my respect for this film, however, I can only modestly promote it. Most audiences will not have the patience to endure the entire film and will fail to recognize the transparency of the plot as an important departure from its genre. Keep this warning in mind if you decide to give it a go. The ending is well worth the wait and may not be what you expect.

This is "Shadow of a Doubt" meets "The Women." It's as if it had been produced by Val Lewton, particularly in the early, ambiguous scenes. And it does feature two of Orson Welles's players: Anne Baxter as the title character and Ruth Warrick as her hostess.

Warrick and husband Ralph Bellamy agree to give some country air to a troubled young woman. Bellamy is a painter. Marie McDonald is his model. Without giving too much away, Baxter reacts to her with the fiery prudishness of a Jack the Ripper. She's shocked; she's appalled.

That marvelous character actress Aline MacMahon is the family aunt. She gets third billing and plays a central role. And she is superb --often framed between other characters, looking out wisely. Her face could register pain and restfulness at the same time.

The film was beautifully shot by the great Lee Garmes. It's directed well by John Brahm.

At times, it grows overheated. But for the most part it is subtle and unnerving.

I saw GUEST IN THE HOUSE one late night and I was surprised by how good this forgotten film was. The story is classic story of a stranger entering the lives of a family or closely knit group living under one roof and how their lives are changed by the ways of this newcomer. TEOREMA is a modern example of such a story. In GITH, Evelyn is the new guest who nearly destroys the idyllic existence of a group's mundane lives, including a married couple and their precocious girl. Evelyn specifically has eyes on the husband, who happens to be the brother of her boyfriend, a man she doesn't really love but who helped when she had a nervous breakdown. Evelyn is, needless to say, neurotic with a capital N. She also has a bizarre phobia of birds. Eventually the people living in the house slowly realize what's going on and how Evelyn is manipulating everyone, which leads to a truly memorable and tragic ending.

Some have criticized GITH for the cast of characters being so blind to Evelyn's ways but for me it's the opposite. The film or script's slow methodical built-up was very mature and not over-the-top melodramatic as most films were in those days. I'm not saying the film is not melodramatic. It is but I enjoyed seeing the way everything slowly unraveled. During a big chunk of the film, Evelyn is not even present. In other words, the film is not just an "Evelyn the Neurotic Bitch" show but an ensemble cast, with Evelyn being the most memorable character.

What's really great about GUEST IN THE HOUSE is that it's filmed like a fevered dream: the low ceilings, the tight quarters of the house, the claustrophobic quality of the direction, the way Evelyn reads her diary, the atmospheric cinematography and music, all add to an entertaining quasi-Gothic film.

The actors are all excellent, including Anne Baxter, whom I usually do not like, and one of the reasons why I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this film. What's also striking about her role in GUEST IN THE HOUSE is that it's oddly identical to the Eve Harrington character Anne played 7 years later in ALL ABOUT EVE. In my opinion, Anne is much better here and creates a truly memorable character. In ALL ABOUT EVE, Anne was too robotic and monotonous, she lacked the passion and strive she displayed in GUEST OF THE HOUSE. As Evelyn, Anne shamelessly overacts and slithers about like a panther but always staying in character of a neurotic woman, which, thankfully, is never played to the point of being politically incorrect.

All in all, I highly recommend this hidden gem. Because the film is in public domain, finding a good DVD transfer is almost impossible. But even the terrible version I viewed didn't diminish its entertaining qualities.

A psychiatrist bring his fianceé -- a former patient -- back to his family house, and she proceeds with a plan of homewrecking. Anne Baxter, several years before ALL ABOUT EVE, is great as another manipulative, conniving and more than a little unstable femme fatale. There is a significantly longer version of this film, but getting the shorter one was probably for the best. The first two acts are a bit sluggish and repetitive, but things really ramp up for the finale. Brahm brings the same Gothic gloom as he did in his period noirs THE LODGER and HANGOVER SQUARE, as the residence gets more and more claustrophobic and ruled by shadows. There's some wonderful framing technique at play, often emphasizing Baxter's control over the household. Supporting performances are generally quite good, with especially good turns from Aline MacMahon and Marie McDonald (like Marilyn, a bombshell blonde with a knack for comedy, but a tragic life ending in a bottle of pills). The film could use some higher stakes and a little more zip, but it has some mighty fine elements.