Our Mother's House

OUR MOTHER'S HOUSE is one weird psychological ride. Here we have a family living in a gloomy Victorian house with a reclusive, Bible-thumping invalid mother--surely fertile ground for insanity or incest or both. However, what we have is a painful portrait of adolescence in the older children and the horrors of navigating through an adult world. Left to their own devices after the mother's untimely death, the children do their best to survive, being molded by the mother's unstable religious ramblings. However, things take a turn for the worst when the absentee father arrives, shattering some illusions crucial to the little family's identity. . .

I've never seen anything like this film(the recent film THE CEMENT GARDEN comes to mind, but that film takes an entirely different direction with an incest theme), one in which children literally elevate their mother to the status of religious icon. This situation is simultaneously chilling and pathetic. This one is for people who enjoy character-driven psychological dramas.

This is a good little movie that heavily relies on its uneasy atmosphere. The movie is also greatly carried by its cast, both the adult as the children's.

The story is simple yet effective. The story perfectly sets up an uneasy atmosphere that is dark and sober. The story is unusual and original as well. The movie can perhaps be best described as a dark drama/thriller. The fact that the movie is both unusual and original is probably the reason why this movie unfortunately isn't any better known.

The character are perfectly portrayed in the movie and play a great role in the movie its story. The movie is especially carried by the children cast of the movie, who play the most significant and biggest role in the entire movie. The young characters are all both realistic as powerful. Every characters has its own strong personality and they are what make this movie always interesting and never boring to follow, even though the pace itself isn't always terribly high.

But the movie also has a good adult cast that unfortunately is perhaps a bit underused at times. Dirk Bogarde plays a great role in the movie but unfortunately his character is introduced at least 15 minutes too late in to the movie. Once his character is introduced in to the story the movie takes more form and becomes even more intriguing to follow. It was also great to see Yootha Joyce in the movie, who I only knew from the British comedy series "George and Mildred". She is a great actress and really gets to show her skills in this movie.

The movie handles some intriguing, original and uneasy themes and the movie handles all those themes on its own very special way. It makes the movie a both original as well as memorable movie to watch.

Definitely worth seeing, when you get the opportunity to.

8/10

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The reason few have heard of this film is because it is impossible to categorise. Made a few years after the same director made The Innocents and with much of the same sense of mystery and wonder but also the same fear of discovering just too much underneath. The swinging sixties seem a long way off in this almost Dickensian comic tragedy and much of the action seems to evoke the 50s and all those pre war skeletons tumbling out of creaking closets. Hints of incest and worse are probably the main reasons that this has all but disappeared but its a shame because all the children perform remarkably, as do Dirk Bogarde and Yootha Joyce. Immaculate direction, fine music and a wonderful script.

Very spooky and genuinely disturbing film, that completely avoids all the stereotypical "shock values" in favor of a purely psychological chiller that relies on its script and actors to get over instead. Of particular note are the children in this film, all of whom lack the pre-groomed and pre-prepared feel of some child actors and instead give a superbly realistic performance. Dirk Bogarde is surprisingly good in his role as a gold-digger, and his unforced interaction with the kids only adds more depth.

Another of this movies strong points is that it provokes thought more from insinuation than actions, leaving a lot open to the interpretation of the viewer. Different people will see different "things" when viewing this! Highly Recommended old classic that deserves a viewing.

Seriously, how stupefying can one motion picture be? That's what I kept wondering throughout "Our Mother's House", or at least during the largest part of it. This is a film like you seldomly encounter them, with a plot that is completely original and unseen, at atmosphere that is unsettling from start to finish, characters AND acting performances that are 100% pure and natural and - perhaps most important of all - a story that never at one point becomes predictable or soft. Although a lot less known, "Our Mother's House" might even be more powerful than Clayton's other acclaimed genre milestone "The Innocents". But simply labeling this film as a horror story wouldn't do it any justice. Even though disturbing and utterly bleak, this is more of a harrowing drama. The plot, adapted from a novel by Julian Gloag, is as simple as it is genius: seven siblings live with their bed-ridden mother in a big house and the oldest two, Elsa and Hubert, take care of all the daily chores. But when mother dies, the fear of becoming separated and ending up at an orphanage drives the children to keep mother's dead secret and even bury her body in the garden. Of course, there arise some difficulties, like how to cash in the monthly allowance money or how to get rid of the irritating governess Mrs. Quayle, but overall, they manage just fine. After all, they can always ask for mother's advice during their daily seances. But then their alleged father Charlie Hook shows up. Most of the children now seem to feel like they form a real family again, with Charlie to protect them, but the oldest daughter Elsa remains very skeptical and openly questions Charlie's honesty. Personally, I liked the film much better before Charlie (Dirk Bogarde) entered the scene, but admittedly his role is very difficult, courageous and challenging. "Our Mother's House" is fully of uncanny highlights, notably the so-called "Mother Time" gatherings in the garden shed and the suffering of poor little Gerty when she gets punished for talking to a stranger. The titular house is a wondrously grim setting and Clayton masterfully maintains a slow yet atmospheric pacing with beautiful photography and bone-chilling music. It's a tremendously underrated British cult-classic that deserves to be seen by wider audiences!

Sinister trivia detail: Annette Carell, the actress who briefly appears as Mother, really died in the same year when the film was released. In 1967, she committed suicide at the young age of 38.