Spellbound

This film must be watched bearing in mind the context. It's 1941 for crying out loud--it's not The Exorcist. Green vomit hadn't yet been invented, thank God. And, furthermore, this is a British film, which means it is even more restrained than an American film. But that's its strength. It is slow, yes, but deeply penetrating because of its pace.

If you get antsy watching actors seated in a room talking; if you crave special effects; if silence bores you, then you probably won't like it. I imagine that you probably would not enjoy classic Victorian novels, either. But I do, and this movie puts me in a similar frame of mind.

Great actors all. Everyone believes in their respective roles. Wonderful dark-room photography, reminiscent of Capra's midnight filming in Arsenic and Old Lace.

Well worth watching.

Derek Farr at the beginning of his film career didn't do himself any favours with a daft and tedious storyline about spiritualism and his dead fiancée. Farr walks around stricken with grief for most of the time, looking dejected and miserable! That also sums up the mood of the audience! The acting is sub standard and the dialogue is laughable! Films like this gave the British film industry a very bad name! American films were light years ahead in producing films that had energy, excitement and great acting! This film had none of these attributes! Give this film a big miss!

As a Psychic Medium and Channeller/Trance Medium myself, the spiritual side of this is pretty accurate without all the usual corny tropes. Sadly, it does descend into melodrama and silliness very quickly, and the ending is far too simple if something/some entity has actually taken hold of a physical body. The daft idea of not touching a spirit-person doesn't help either. Spirt is around us all the time, continuously interacting with us.

As usual with this type of horror/fantasy of the spiritual realms, I feel the subject was only partly understood by the writer.

It's a curio of the times and, bearing that in mind, is fairly enjoyable.

OMG! This film started off slow albeit with hope. Then it slowed down some more ~ then just fizzled out all together. Obviously the writers/directors/producers et al somehow saw fit to avoid every conceivable, reasonable plot and storyline to create any kind of 'film' whatsoever. How many lame questions were left unanswered? Then this feeble piece just kind of limped off into the credits. Did the movie ever actually end? ~ 'cause I certainly missed it. Having worked in H~Wood I cannot comprehend how this empty vessel of paste was ever even created let alone invested in and then sailed through all of the flashing RED LIGHTS + DANGER signs through to the big screen. I felt so ashamed having watched it {rather having endured the 1.5 hrs. Of suffering-} that I quickly erased all traces and then took a long hot bath {and washed my hair}. I am still in therapy dealing with the PTSD. LOL Enjoy ~

A terribly terribly posh film where the main characters speak in a very silly odd posh accent with has largely died out now, thank goodness.

Due to large number of recent deaths being on the horizon, WWII having just started, this may have been an attempt do discourage those who may have been tempted to get involved in spiritualism not to do so and thus avoid being ripped off.

As a warning of the dangers it was a bit of a soft approach, the leading male character should have been made to suffer a bit more mental anguish and not have had a happy ending.

Well worth watching even if the acting is very wooden most of the time.