The Uninvited (1944) on Netflix
NR19441h 39mFantasyHorrorMysteryRomance
Rick and Pamela Fitzgerald buy a lonely Cornwall cliff-top house and find it haunted. Stella Meredith, whose mother died there, is drawn to the house. A ghostly presence endangers her.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.2/1013,728 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes95%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1937, while vacationing on the Cornish coast, music critic and composer Rick Fitzgerald and his sister Pamela buy Windward House, a deserted seaside home, from Commander Beech for an unusually low price. They meet Beech's twenty-year-old granddaughter Stella Meredith, who lives nearby and is deeply attached to the house; her mother Mary died there in a fall from the cliff seventeen years earlier. Beech forbids Stella to see the Fitzgeralds or enter the house, but she disobeys him and Rick becomes infatuated with her. The siblings soon suspect the house is haunted: they feel an inexplicable chill in an artist's studio, Rick hears an unseen woman sobbing, the cat refuses to go upstairs, and their dog runs away for good.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Uninvited (1944)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Filming with Gail Russell was difficult: on May 3, Charles Brackett wrote that she cried on set with her mother, claiming a sore throat, though she was really crying because director Lewis Allen had made her wear a hat in a scene she did not want it in.
- The film's musical piece "Stella by Starlight" was later adapted into a popular song with music by Victor Young and lyrics by Ned Washington; it was recorded by Harry James and Frank Sinatra, covered by Charlie Parker in 1952, and then by Stan Getz and more than a dozen other artists over two years.
- In a letter about the film, Father Brendan Larson noted the contrast between the masculinity of Miss Holloway and the dainty femininity of Mary's portrait; Paramount said it did not intend to convey a lesbian message in the film.
- Director Lewis Allen called Gail Russell's performance "manufactured" and said she could only do about five or six lines before bursting into tears; Russell, who had not drunk alcohol before, began drinking it to calm herself at the suggestion of the head of make-up on set.
- Gail Russell was cast after Charles Brackett, Frank Partos and Lewis Allen were knocked over the head by her extraordinary beauty, though Allen said he was not particularly happy with the casting, "when she read for me, it was pretty bad".
- Charles Brackett asked Lewis Allen to direct The Uninvited, and the film became the first that Lewis Allen ever directed.
