Medo Que Domina

1945 Paramount production with a very impressive cast headed up by winsome, lovely and sadly tragic Gail Russell, here barely 21 if that.

Joel McCrea, Herbert Marshall and Norman Lloyd all on hand to add to Miss Russell's ethereal charms and give the film class.

A 'Dark Old House' mystery as most other reviewers have mentioned.

It kept me happily entertained during a snowy December day and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys the genre. Just don't expect the top notch original storytelling of a 'Gaslight' or 'Turn of the Screw' or 'Spiral Staircase' because this one is a shameless hybrid taking from the best.

Still, I give it a 7.

Unlike what some sites say, "The Unseen" has nothing to do with "The Uninvited," which also starred Gail Russell. I suspect Paramount was just trying to get more traction out of the success of that movie. The Unseen also stars Joel McCrea, Herbert Marshall, Isobel Elsom, and Norman Lloyd.

Russell plays Elizabeth, the new governess for the two young children of a widower (David Fielding). The film begins with a murder being committed outside their house, and the victim drops her watch. When Elizabeth arrives, the murder has made the front page of the paper, and people are nervous.

Odd things go on, mostly having to do with the young boy, Barnaby, who makes mysterious phone calls, seems to have more money than he should, and also unlocks the door for someone every night. Meanwhile the house next door has been boarded up for 12 years, adding to a tense and mysterious atmosphere.

This movie is disjointed, with zero character development and rather surprising things not questioned or pursued, almost as if parts of the script was missing.

It's hard to watch the beautiful Gail Russell and realize the downward turn her life was already taking. Lots of sad Hollywood stories, but I'd put hers, Susan Peter's, and Sharon Tate's on top. Unlike Tate and Peters, though, Russell never intended to be an actress. Her beauty didn't go unnoticed once her family arrived in California, and they desperately needed the money a contract would bring. She was too nervous and fragile, and by the age of 36, she was dead from acute alcoholism.

Russell is much stronger as an actress that she was in The Uninvited - it's also a more forceful kind of role. However, it's obvious she's grown from experience after doing several films. McCrea is rather stiff (it's just that kind of role). He probably had to take the role to fulfill his contract.

I saw a bad print so the end was like watching a black screen, but I had the goings-on figured out - too many years of watching this type of film.

This picture has been on TV but I hadn't seen it before. I disagree with some reviewers and I thought it was a first-rate mystery but which was marred by a confusing ending. There was a rush to explain motivations and circumstances, all of which left me further in the dark than before.

The cast was just fine and the tragic Gail Russell was lovely to look at, although lacking some depth as an actress. The dependable Herbert Marshall lends strong support and Joel McCrea is his usual stalwart self. There is a lot to like here until you get to the last 5 minutes; hasty contrivances and omitted rationale are always annoying. Shown at Capitolfest, Rome, NY, 8/19.

******* 7/10 - Website no longer prints my star rating.

This film was clearly based on a rather feeble story about an empty house, mysterious lights in the cellar, vicious murders committed by a shadow in an alley, and so on, and although Raymond Chandler was brought in as a screenwriter to try to give it some muscle, that effort failed. The direction by Lewis Allen is clearly hopeless. All the cast look ill at ease, as if they had no idea what the director expected of them, and they found the story unconvincing. Herbert Marshall is stiff, and we can see him thinking: 'I'm getting too old for this kind of thing,' and his body language suggests he is resenting the weak direction. It is tragic to see the soulful, velvety-eyed 21 year-old Gail Russell looking so sad and so lost in this film. As for Joel McCrea, not only was he miscast as the grumpy widower whom Russell is meant to fall for, he looks even more lost than Gail Russell does, and flounders around not knowing how to behave. Lewis Allen had the previous year directed the delightful OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY (1944), where Gail Russell played the young Cornelia Otis Skinner with charm and conviction. And it was only two years later that Russell made what was probably her finest film, ANGEL AND THE BADMAN (1947, see my review), which is one of the greatest classics of the screen and captures all of her magical charm. So what went wrong this time? How did the rapport between Russell and Allen collapse? Why does everyone look so uncomfortable? Russell died of alcoholism at the age of only 36 in 1961. By 1950, her drinking was already so serious that she was becoming unemployable. But surely she cannot have become an alcoholic already by the age of 21, in 1945, so that cannot be the cause of the malaise seen in this picture. We know that Russell received a lot of moral support from John Wayne in ANGEL AND THE BADMAN, so that would have pulled her through. In this earlier film, the lack of even the most rudimentary chemistry between her and Joel McCrea is palpable, and it must have thrown her into a depression that she could not relate to him at all, and he refused to relate to her. And, as already noted, Herbert Marshall was 'getting too old for this kind of thing' and probably did not have the energy to try to prop up Russell as he might have done when younger. The two children in this film do very well, and Phyllis Brooks is excellent as the venomous, scheming Maxine. Maybe it could have worked. But it didn't.

In an older London neighborhood beset with strange deaths and a spooky, abandoned house with boarded-up windows, Gail Russell arrives via Boston to accept job as governess to widower Joel McCrea's two precocious kids; quickly, she begins to realize McCrea's little boy is in-cahoots with the previous nanny and may be covering up a dangerous plot which ties in with the old house--and also with McCrea, whose mysterious comings and goings spell trouble. Over-plotted and yet ultimately slim-seeming co-feature from Paramount, stiffly directed and not very exciting. Heavy-lidded Russell, fresh off her triumph in "The Uninvited", was never an exceptional actress, but here she gives hint she may have become a very good one, and her terse exchanges with McCrea show a much more confident performer than in "The Uninvited". The screenplay, adapted from Ethel Lina White's novel "Her Heart in Her Throat", falls rather early into a disparaging rut, what with Russell continually reporting peculiar happenings to people who don't believe or listen to her, and that final clinch nearly comes out of nowhere. However, for fans of 1940s potboilers like the not-dissimilar "Gaslight", this provides minor enjoyment. ** from ****