31 Days of Feminist Horror Films: THE HAUNTING + THE INNOCENTS

An exceptionally taut, exquisitely shot adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s seminal horror novel The Haunting of Hill House, Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING is a tragic character study of one lonely woman’s fractured psyche. THE HAUNTING uses the power of suggestion — scares so subtle they make your skin crawl — to create a pervasive atmosphere of dread and unease that continues long after the credits roll.

Eleanor “Nell” Lance (Julie Harris) is still reeling from her invalid mother’s death after being her full-time caretaker for eleven years, and she does not have the adequate mental health tools to cope with the massive guilt she feels for not being there for her mother in her final moments. She lives a miserable, isolated existence as a spinster — she’s an inconvenience to her sister’s family, who treat her as a total burden. So when Nell is called to the mysterious Hill House by Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) to help investigate decades of supernatural activity there, she jumps at the chance for a fresh start, especially since she’s attracted to Markway and dreams of their imaginary future together. Nell is chosen by Markway after witnessing poltergeist activity as a child in the form of stone rain, though she struggles to accept the experience, opting instead to repress it.

“I’m going, I’m really going. I’m finally taking a step. I’m a new person…I have to get away from here, get away at once. This is my last chance,” she announces via voice-over which runs throughout the film as an interior monologue, providing us with a candid window into her most intimate thoughts. Full-time care-taking has taken a massive toll on Nell’s mental state, and she finds it extremely difficult to move past her mother’s death — Hill House provides the escape rope she’s desperately been searching for. “I’m more afraid of being alone or being left out then of things that go bump in the night,” Nell tells us, her strange affection for the house apparent from the start.

Soon after arriving at Hill House — a labyrinthian gothic mansion filled with swaying botanicals, frightening Catholic artifacts, and doors that slam shut on their own thanks to the house’s peculiar geometry — Nell is introduced to Theo (Claire Bloom), a sophisticated psychic who’s the diametric opposite of Nell. There’s a white swan/black swan dichotomy happening between Nell and Theo from the first moment they meet — Nell’s conservatively dressed and done up in tweeds and pussybow blouses, her long hair in a prim, hair-netted bun, while Theo opts for modern, all-black silhouettes including pants, a chic bob, and cat-eye liner. Theo has the effortless confidence that Nell so longs for, and Nell cannot help but be drawn to her raw sensuality.

The lesbian tension between the two “companions” is thick throughout the film, with Wise missing no opportunity to frame Nell and Theo like lovers, often in their prim Victorian nightgowns, cuddled together under covers as they shriek at the terrifying sounds coming from deep within Hill House. Nell changes her hair on Theo’s suggestion, indulges in the “wicked” practice of painting her toenails bright pink while drinking, and shares a bed with Theo as the supernatural happenings within the house become omnipresent.

Of course, Nell and Theo’s tender relationship grows strained as the horrors of Hill House become more and more sinister — Theo sarcastically tells Nell that she doesn’t think she killed her mother, while Nell informs Theo she’s one of “nature’s mistakes.” The animosity that develops between Nell and Theo, in addition to being a compelling addition to the narrative, also feels indicative of the time—the early 1960s were certainly not a time of LGBTQ acceptance, so of course, Nell and Theo’s relationship has to be a tempestuous one, full of catty remarks, thwarted affection, and competition for male affection. In one of the film’s scariest sequences, Nell becomes convinced that Theo is gripping her hand tightly while eerie laughter from a young girl terrifies them from behind the wall…but of course it isn’t Theo at all, it’s something much more insidious than an affectionate woman.

While Markway has enlisted the help of a third psychically-inclined investigator, Luke (Russ Tamblyn aka Dr. Jacoby!) as he investigates the mysteries of Hill House, the house’s ghosts focus their attention on Nell. She’s built up Hill House as her last, best hope at an exciting life, and as a result, is strangely compelled to remain at the mansion even when its spirits grow more and more malevolent — “It’s the only time anything’s ever happened to me,” she sheepishly announces in voice-over.

The film is highly sympathetic towards Nell as a fragile, mentally unstable woman who’s been so beaten down by life that she finds the attention from the ghosts of Hill House highly preferable to her alienated existence as a spinster — “There’s no place you can send me, I have to stay here. I’d be much happier, you can’t send me back to my sister,” she pleads to Markway. Nell is exceptionally hard on herself, self-describing as “stupid and wicked and untrustworthy and no good for anything at all”, thanks to the guilt she feels over her mother’s death, and her own non-starter of a life.

Hill House’s history — which includes the dark tale of a female caretaker who committed suicide thanks to guilt she felt over the death of the house’s matriarch, Abigial Crain, who’s own mother died too soon in an “accident” on the house’s grounds — is a mirror for Nell’s life, and it entices her to remain even as her fellow researchers are compelled to flee. Jackson and Wise both understand that women are often more supernaturally-inclined than men — this can be identified as anything from women’s intuition to the actual psychic powers Theo claims to possess. In another ghost story, perhaps one authored by a man, the supernatural happenings at Hill House may have been portrayed as all simply part of Nell’s disintegrating mental state. But THE HAUNTING gives credence to Nell’s claims by showing multiple, undeniable instances of paranormal activity in the house, as also witnessed by Theo, Markway, Luke, and eventually, Markway’s wife Grace (Lois Maxwell), an intense skeptic who is forced to accept that her husband’s work is valid when she’s personally attacked by the house’s spirits, and faces intense jealousy from Nell.

“I’m a tiny creature swallowed whole by a monster.” Nell predicts her own fate long before it happens, as her stay at Hill House eradicates any trace of sanity she had left, and the intense, somewhat comforting pull of the spirits of Hill House becomes more appealing than returning to her oppressive real life. On the suggestion of her fellow investigators, Nell reluctantly agrees to leave Hill House, but once she’s behind the wheel, an unseen force takes over, and she’s killed by crashing into the same tree that killed the first Mrs. Crain nearly 100 years earlier. While it may seem like a wholly tragic fate, Nell essentially gets her wish — to remain at Hill House: “Hill House has stood for 90 years and might stand for 90 more. Within, walls continue upright, bricks meet, floors are firm, and doors are sensibly shut. Silence lies steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House. And we who walk here walk alone.” Nell gets the freedom and solitude she dreamed of, and will now never be alone as she can now live on in eternity with the other female ghosts of Hill House.

Jackson was a trailblazing horror novelist, and THE HAUNTING’s complex themes about how we treat aging single gals, women dealing with same-sex attraction, and the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters feel incredibly prescient, especially considering the cultural climate at the time of the film’s release. Harris even struggled with her own mental health issues during film, and used her depressive moods and antagonistic relationship with Bloom to inform her character.

Wise, formerly an editor, makes incredible visual choices throughout the film to create the highly stylized horror atmosphere — an anamorphic 30mm wide-lens was used to create the bowed, bulging angles of the house’s hallways, windows, and door frames, and Wise uses a variety of radical editing choices, like jump cuts, to create incredibly effective scares. These choices make the classic ghost story narrative feel simultaneously modern for the time, and timeless — Wise understood that surprise and implicit horror could elicit the ideal audience reaction while keeping the budget of the film low. THE HAUNTING is absolutely an American classic — a thoroughly feminine take on suspicion, superstition, and sexuality.

THE HAUNTING is available from iTunes and other streaming services.

THE HAUNTING and THE INNOCENTS are two shining examples of classic films that explore timeless themes about what it means to be a woman struggling with guilt, repressed memories, and neglected sexual desire. Nell and Miss Giddens both struggle to balance their own mental health with the increasingly spooky happenings around them — and both are eventually undone by the power of supernatural forces. Both films feature heroines trapped in exquisitely designed haunted mansions, an enduring staple of gothic literature first created by novelists such as Mary Shelley and the Bronte sisters. THE HAUNTING and THE INNOCENTS both rely heavily on the unseen to create terror, and this gives each film a narrative that chills fifty years later.

One of Martin Scorsese’s favorite horror films, THE INNOCENTS relies on the power of suggestion and subtlety to create scares that are still deeply upsetting more than 50 years after its release. The divine Deborah Kerr stars as a governess, Miss Giddens, assigned to care for two young children, Flora (Pamela Franklin) and Miles (Martin Stevens) by their uncle, who cannot be bothered to care for them — he gives Miss Giddens total control over the kids. For a time, Miss Giddens enjoys an idyllic existence with Flora and the omniscient housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins), at their British country estate, but that all changes when Miles arrives home, kicked out of his boarding school with no explanation. Flora’s behavior begins to get more bizarre with the arrival of Miles, and he’s far too mature for his age — he flirts with Miss Giddens in a very adult fashion, and even kisses her on the lips for far longer than what an innocent, boyish peck might be.

Miss Giddens is also plagued by visions of a sinister man who appears in windows, and a sort of lady of the lake, swaying in the reeds near the estate’s pond. Mrs. Grose explains that these are in fact apparitions of Miss Jessel, the former governess, and Quint, a valet that Miss Jessel was having an abusive, publicly sexual affair with — the film never tells us just how much the children saw of these liaisons, or if they were possibly involved, which only adds to the unsettling vibe. Miss Giddens becomes obsessed with the idea that Miss Jessel and Quint have inhabited the children so that they continue their romantic relationship, and this possession is the cause of the children’s increasingly secretive, strange behavior. To give more away than that would spoil the surprises of the film, but it really speaks to the power of suggestion that the final moments of THE INNOCENTS are still totally chilling after fifty years of far more explicit horror films.

Adapted from the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw by Truman Capote and William Archibald, the theme of repressed sexuality is the film’s most pervasive narrative takeaway. Poor, undersexed Miss Giddens is forced to confront her semi-spinstery ways every time she’s confronted by overly mature come-ons from Miles, Flora’s eerie, romantic non-sequiturs, and descriptions of the brutality in Jessel and Quint’s relationship from Mrs. Grose. The exquisite imagery in the film — a beetle crawling from a stone totem’s mouth; white roses that dot the estate’s landscape; the slightest of changes to Miss Giddens prim hair and dress as her hold on sanity wavers — reflect her unraveling, as well as the strange sexual undercurrents happening at the estate.

It is of course also possible that Miss Giddens has been made a bit mad by her own unsatisfied sexual desires and has made the ghost story of Jessel and Quint up to deal with her own inability to comprehend their sexual relationship, but the film smartly creates far more questions than answers about what exactly has transpired. Kerr was forty at the time of filming, which was certainly “old maid” territory in the 1960s, and it’s a totally bold choice to have a gothic horror film led by two middle-aged women, with Mrs. Grose as the film’s sane center.

The proto-electronic synth score from Daphne Oram, a female pioneer in electronic music, gives the entire film an unsettling edge, as does the lush black and white cinematography by David Lynch regular, Freddie Francis. THE INNOCENTS is the kind of spooky that gets under your skin and stays there thanks to the film’s restraint, which perfectly echoes the untapped passions of its unmarried, middle-aged female lead.

THE INNOCENTS is available from Google Play and other streaming services.