GUEST IN THE HOUSE, a superior B movie as craft, made with assuredness and gusto, is one of those '40s melodramas oozing with the miasmas of the insanity, of mental shakiness, where everyone except the decomposing mind is exasperatingly nice and wholesome, which thing unavoidably makes the sane viewer to take the insane character's side.
That's no way to win people on the sanity's side. Throw an insane character into a peaceful family. The smart viewers, unable to like the quiet family or even to approve of its existence, will side with the scheming insane person.
The situation explored by movies like GUEST IN THE HOUSE has something of an experiment or of a reality—show: take a small world—a family—a sunny, placid one—and place a subversive pawn in it. These scripts bet on a handful of primeval fears—the fear of the stranger ('the guest'), the fear of the woman—the stranger, the (insane) woman (or man: see Grant, Cotten) are dangerous. Here, the healthy people like sports, they play tennis, while the insane woman likes music, she keeps a diary, she has an inner life—she's so unlike the others, she comes with her demons—the neurotic woman is the new witch. In a thriller made by Hitchcock in the '40s, Cotten had a part not unlike the one made by Mrs. Baxter here. The neurotics' place is not among healthy, bovine people.
What a small—mindedness: against strangers, against women, against neurotics . It teaches people to fear. It glamorizes imbecility. Such a world-view can't have my sympathy. I hate to be taught such lessons, I am humanist, I can't stand such a petty bourgeois fare. A large part of the American popular culture teaches distrust; and not only distrusting hitchhikers or vagabonds—but categories such as those mentioned—the neurotic, the woman, the stranger. It stultifies. It deepens neurotic fears, it transforms privacy into an illness. One almost comes to wish that Mrs. Baxter blows away this family of boring philistines. There are a few Hitchcock thrillers reverting this ingrate treatment and taking the situation towards a happy resolution (the Bergman& Peck thriller, the Novak& Stewart one ).
The script is the quite sophisticated treatment of a pretty sleazy theme: that of the feminine intruder into the life of a (quiet) family; the Shannon Tweed thriller SCORNED puts the same scheming broad into a dysfunctional, creaking family, where she'll seduce husband, wife and son, gratifying sexually everybody, while making some collateral victims too. Well, SCORNED took a sleazy view of the subject, GUEST IN THE HOUSE makes use of the '40—'50s preoccupation with mental illness. Anyway, the fear of the woman looms large in these stories.
The leisurely paced GUEST IN THE HOUSE, with its fears of the feminine and the insanity, the menace of the strangers and the misfits, has nonetheless a fine level of suspense to go with a somewhat loose storyline. The girl in the lead wasn't, I believe, a very good choice for the role—she's merely a plump, a bit perverse face (at least if compared to the perfidious Cotten and Shannon Tweed); the script reminds a bit, as basic situation only, of that Hitchcock thriller that she and Cotten were in, there she was the victim, here she has taken over Cotten's part—the mischievous intruder. Anyway, her role doesn't seem very well written.
Now all these aside, GUEST IN THE HOUSE, with its psycho—Gothic, has what it takes to be a classic of the '40s perfidy/ sickness thrillers; the directing is very able, much better than the script, the cast is average (Anne Baxter, Ralph Bellamy), so I would recommend it as a lesser classic that deserves a following, and deserves to be a cult—movie. The imperfections don't exclude being a classic, a cult—movie and having a following.
So, what did you think about this movie? What did it make you think?
That's no way to win people on the sanity's side. Throw an insane character into a peaceful family. The smart viewers, unable to like the quiet family or even to approve of its existence, will side with the scheming insane person.
The situation explored by movies like GUEST IN THE HOUSE has something of an experiment or of a reality—show: take a small world—a family—a sunny, placid one—and place a subversive pawn in it. These scripts bet on a handful of primeval fears—the fear of the stranger ('the guest'), the fear of the woman—the stranger, the (insane) woman (or man: see Grant, Cotten) are dangerous. Here, the healthy people like sports, they play tennis, while the insane woman likes music, she keeps a diary, she has an inner life—she's so unlike the others, she comes with her demons—the neurotic woman is the new witch. In a thriller made by Hitchcock in the '40s, Cotten had a part not unlike the one made by Mrs. Baxter here. The neurotics' place is not among healthy, bovine people.
What a small—mindedness: against strangers, against women, against neurotics . It teaches people to fear. It glamorizes imbecility. Such a world-view can't have my sympathy. I hate to be taught such lessons, I am humanist, I can't stand such a petty bourgeois fare. A large part of the American popular culture teaches distrust; and not only distrusting hitchhikers or vagabonds—but categories such as those mentioned—the neurotic, the woman, the stranger. It stultifies. It deepens neurotic fears, it transforms privacy into an illness. One almost comes to wish that Mrs. Baxter blows away this family of boring philistines. There are a few Hitchcock thrillers reverting this ingrate treatment and taking the situation towards a happy resolution (the Bergman& Peck thriller, the Novak& Stewart one ).
The script is the quite sophisticated treatment of a pretty sleazy theme: that of the feminine intruder into the life of a (quiet) family; the Shannon Tweed thriller SCORNED puts the same scheming broad into a dysfunctional, creaking family, where she'll seduce husband, wife and son, gratifying sexually everybody, while making some collateral victims too. Well, SCORNED took a sleazy view of the subject, GUEST IN THE HOUSE makes use of the '40—'50s preoccupation with mental illness. Anyway, the fear of the woman looms large in these stories.
The leisurely paced GUEST IN THE HOUSE, with its fears of the feminine and the insanity, the menace of the strangers and the misfits, has nonetheless a fine level of suspense to go with a somewhat loose storyline. The girl in the lead wasn't, I believe, a very good choice for the role—she's merely a plump, a bit perverse face (at least if compared to the perfidious Cotten and Shannon Tweed); the script reminds a bit, as basic situation only, of that Hitchcock thriller that she and Cotten were in, there she was the victim, here she has taken over Cotten's part—the mischievous intruder. Anyway, her role doesn't seem very well written.
Now all these aside, GUEST IN THE HOUSE, with its psycho—Gothic, has what it takes to be a classic of the '40s perfidy/ sickness thrillers; the directing is very able, much better than the script, the cast is average (Anne Baxter, Ralph Bellamy), so I would recommend it as a lesser classic that deserves a following, and deserves to be a cult—movie. The imperfections don't exclude being a classic, a cult—movie and having a following.
So, what did you think about this movie? What did it make you think?