The Three Weird Sisters

'The Three Weird Sisters' was the feature film debut of director Daniel Birt, adapted by Louise Birt and Dylan Thomas from the novel 'The Case of the Three Weird Sisters' (1943) by Charlotte Armstrong. A barnstorming piece of Grand Guignol set in South Wales which meets 'The Old Dark House' going one way and 'The Addams Family' the other; it was a typically bold offering from Louis H. Jackson's ill-fated British National Pictures, which went into receivership the same year this film was released.

Madness runs in some families, in the Morgan-Vaughan's it practically gallops. The attitude to physical disability displayed here would be considered well beyond the pale today, with the three sisters described as "blind, deaf and warped". Nancy Price (who is here blind, and four years later played a wise deaf woman in 'Mandy'), Mary Clare and Mary Merrall are a blast as the unholy three; especially Clare as deaf Maude, who unnervingly is the only one who's always smiling. The rest of the cast all pitch in enthusiastically, the one outsider to the valleys being the lovely but agitated-looking Nova Pilbeam in one of her last films.

When a name as celebrated as Thomas's is associated with a project it's always tempting to attribute all its qualities to him, but both the crazy mood and the ripe, fruity dialogue certainly seem to have his finger prints all over them. You won't forget this in a hurry...!

This film, whose screenplay was written by poet Dylan Thomas, concerns a lawyer and his young secretary who travel to the Welsh ancestral home of their client to alter his will. Seems the man is the youngest child and only male heir of a once pround family who controlled the local coal mine. The home is presided over by the man's three older sisters, each with a distinctive affliction: one is blind, one is virtually deaf, the other has painful arthritis that has molded her hands into claws. A series of bizarre events begin to occur, particularly to the man and the lawyer's secretary, that ultimately ends in a cataclysmic finale!

What we have here is an old set of standards giving way to a new mindset and, to quote the poet himself, the old ways(or sisters)"do not go gentle into that good night"! These three women drift phantom-like through their gloomy mansion, exhibiting the kind of arcane Victorian propriety and claustrophobic narrowness only an isolated life in a wealthy, rarefied setting can bring. Their brother left the house and community to go to school and work, so he doesn't share their outlook. His reappearance, along with that of the free-thinking secretary, challenges the women's way of thinking. The sense of decay shown by the three sisters is heightened by the fact that the mine which has supported them is almost exhausted and, in fact, threatens the town above it by dent of the fact that the tunnels and caverns are dangerously near to collapse. A great sense of gloom and gothic atmosphere prevades the interior shots in the house. Interesting.

A film worth watching and owning. Three elderly sisters try to manipulate their wealthy brother into underwriting the repair bill for both their house (mansion) and their Welsh village both damaged after a mine collapse. Set in Wales it has the Welsh imprimatur of Dylan Thomas as script co-writer.

It was directors Daniel Birt's first outing as a director and actress Nova Pilbream, the put upon secretary's, swan-song though she did a little stage work after the films completion. (Her life story would make a fascinating up-to-date biography if anyone had the time and skill.)

The film, though not exactly horror is gothic, and is essentially about murder. It's sinister leanings see it falling into the sub-genre of psycho-biddy of hagsploitation a le Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The films three Morgan-Vaughan sisters are far more refined than their American counterparts; one reviewer described them, and the movie, as 'posh'. I guess compared to what was happening across the pond The Three Weird Sisters was 'posh'. Little in the way of histrionics, that deliberately cultivated BBC voice without which securing work in the UK was impossible and a gentler more controlled tone all contribute to an elegance absent from say What Ever Happened to Baby Jane.

The Sisters , released in 1948, pre-date the advent of the American psycho-biddy genre by a decade or two. Even so the defining trope, a formerly alluring older woman, three in this case, becomes mentally unstable and threatens those around her/them is immediately evident in the The Sisters.

This films real significance is it's place in cinematic history. It is never mentioned in scholarly discussions of the psycho-biddy genre and should be. It is no stretch at all see it stand comfortably alongside Lady in a Cage or Straight Jacket despite its British reserve.

This appears like a black comedy, but it is actually a masked tragedy. The male protagonist, the sickly David Davies, who instantly gets bedridden and stays so as soon as he gets into the weird old house of his three sisters, should have been played by Charles Laughton, as the character is very much in his line. The three sisters are extreme characters all three of them, one deaf, one blind and the third one oversensitive to anything, which is a weird company indeed. Their brother instantly believes they are going to kill him, and they would indeed be motivated.

The actual story is, that the derelict small mining town is hit by an earthquake demolishing many houses, and the three sisters as guardian angels and benefactors of the town promise to sponsor their restoration. The problem is they can't afford it, while their brother is a rich industrial baron, so they summon him to help them. He has no intention of doing so and thus leave his three sisters in an awkward position, which they can't accept.

He has a secretary, Nova Pilbeam, who is his ony support in the gradually more serious intrigues conducted against him, and she is always lovely to look at. The film peters out in a genetral derailing of the intrigue, and the end is not satisfactory. You would have wished the three weird sisters to go on undisturbed. The main asset and attraction of the film is that parts of the script were written by Dylan Thomas, which makes the dialogue at times extremely relishable.

When a mine collapses destroying the homes built on top of it, the three sisters of the the family that owned the mine promise to rebuild the homes. This doesn't sit well with their brother who now lives in the city and is the real source of money for the family. Returning home in order to straighten out the situation, he soon finds that all is not well in the old homestead, and his life is in grave danger.

A post war-Gothic tale with a great deal on its mind this is a movie that never really works. Graced with a script that was written in part by Dylan Thomas the dialog is often very literate in a way that real people never talk. The writing does provide for some very wicked exchanges between the characters but it never really comes to life. Some of the miners are just a bit too poetic about the tragedy that has befallen their small town.

Thematically the film is about the clash of the old and the stayed with the new and the modern. I mention this because the film seems much more interested in ideas than it is in any real action. We have the three sisters who never left home and want to rebuild things the way they were battling their brother and his secretary who have come from the outside and want live in the present and deal with the situation as it is. Its a battle that forms the basis, in one way or another, for almost every scene often to the detriment of the drama. Everything seems to be arranged to have some deep meaning from the aliments of the sisters to the crumbling nature of the manor house. I wasn't watching a movie so much as a dramatized argument for the modern; there aren't people on the screen rather they are ideas.

I applaud the filmmakers for wanting to make a movie that is more than a Gothic drama, but they went the wrong way and forgot the drama. Honestly this is a tough movie to get through, its 80 minutes long and feels like twice that in the lecture hall. As good as the basic plot line is the execution makes this a film I doubt I'll ever watch again.

Worth a shot if you don't mind seeing a literate drama that tries too hard and just misses being something special