The Movies Of Elsa Lanchester

All movies starring Elsa Lanchester and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Private Life Of Henry VIII (1933)

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

Come To The Stable (1949)

Mystery Street (1950)

Witness For The Prosecution (1957)

Mary Poppins (1964)

Murder By Death (1976)

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Movie Review: The Private Life Of Henry VIII (1933)

A costume drama-comedy, The Private Life Of Henry VIII is dominated by an over-the-top Charles Laughton performance, and otherwise enjoys a few laughs in amongst the flying chicken bones.

It's the 1500s in England, and King Henry VIII (Laughton) impatiently awaits the beheading of his second wife Anne Boleyn (Merle Oberon) then immediately marries Jane Seymour (Wendy Barrie). She conceives a son but dies at childbirth. Henry is crestfallen, but under pressure to increase the number of of male heirs he agrees to another marriage.

Although he is attracted to Catherine Howard (Binnie Barnes), a member of his court, the King reluctantly accepts an arranged union with Anne of Cleaves (Elsa Lanchester) from the German royal family. However once Henry sets eyes on Anne he finds her unattractive, triggering more marital troubles.

A British production directed by Alexander Korda, The Private Life Of Henry VIII features the husband-and-wife team of Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester having some on-screen fun. With the historical context and seismic changes triggered by Henry's actions either completely ignored or reduced to monologue fragments, the film is less concerned with history and more focused on caricaturish portrayals.

And so Laughton creates the enduring cinematic image of Henry VIII as a boorish, unsophisticated, uncouth, lusty man driven by impulses, lording over his court with frequent bellowing and disgusting table manners. Almost defining what it means to chew the scenery, literally in some cases, Laughton casts a huge shadow over everything and everyone else, most of his various wives reduced to snippets of screen time.

First wife Catherine of Aragon never makes it to the screen, while Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour come and go in a flash. Elsa Lanchester enjoys chemistry with her husband and plays Anne of Cleaves purely for laughs, matching Laughton for pantomime buffoonery. Catherine Howard is portrayed as ambitious but always in love with courtier Thomas Culpeper (a wasted Robert Donat) in an example of two people reduced to elementary descriptions.

Korda directs with flair and brisk pacing, moving the action quickly between the many royal chambers. The set designs are reasonably impressive, and enjoyment is found in the gaggle of animated court servants, attendants and staff gossiping behind the King's back as they go about their daily business. 

As a child-like introduction to a complex monarch, The Private Life Of Henry VIII is good for a few clucks.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Spiral Staircase (1946)

A woman-under-threat suspense thriller, The Spiral Staircase boasts impressive visuals and a gloomy milieu.

It's 1906, and a serial killer is terrorizing a small rural New England town. All the victims are women with physical disabilities. Helen (Dorothy McGuire) is mute, and is attending a movie when the killer strikes again, murdering a woman with a limp. With a thunder-and-lightning storm erupting and nighttime approaching, Helen feels threatened that she could be the next victim. The kindly Doctor Parry (Kent Smith) helps her scramble home to the mansion of the bedridden Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore), where Helen is a housekeeper. 

The staff members include the groundskeeper-and-cook couple Mr. and Mrs. Oates (Rhys Williams and Elsa Lanchester) and Nurse Barker (Sara Allgood). Professor Albert Warren (George Brent) is the man of the house, and his stepbrother Steven (Gordon Oliver) is in town for a visit. Steven is romancing Albert's secretary Blanche (Rhonda Fleming), who also lives at the Warren estate. A constable arrives to warn Albert that the killer is in the area, setting up Helen for a long and terrifying night.

A seminal chapter in the suspense-bordering-on-horror genre, The Spiral Staircase helped define the language of violent slasher whodunnits. By 1946 standards the scenes of murder are disturbing if not shocking, director Robert Siodmak somehow getting away with showing flailing limbs as life seeps out of victims.

Other stylistic punctuation marks provide further jolts. A close-up focus on the killer's eye transitions to point-of-view shots, and in one case the killer sees a victim's disability in a clever bit of superimposed mind-of-the-murderer terror. Siodmak makes excellent use of deep shadows and candlelight to heighten the drama in the spooky Warren mansion, the wine cellar - at the bottom of the titular spiral staircase - providing many opportunities for misadventures in the dark. And the thunder, lightning and pouring rain emphasize the siege mentality.

The Mel Dinelli script establishes the killer-is-in-the-house premise early, with Mrs. Warren urging Helen at the start of the evening to pack up and leave, because only bad things can happen if she stays at the estate. The Spiral Staircase then unfolds with some theatrical constraints, all the scenes confined to a few rooms and the pool of candidate murderers limited to the sparse members of the cast.

But a couple of performances rise above the limitations of the material. Dorothy McGuire as the mute Helen builds enormous empathy, conveying emotion without over-acting as Helen struggles against both her affliction and the threat of an unknown murderer. And Ethel Barrymore takes over gargoyle duties as the elderly matron confined to her bed, drifting in and out of consciousness and yet seemingly aware of everything that has happened and is about to happen. Her frequent forebodings add a surreal current of dread.

In a compact 84 minutes and over just one night, The Spiral Staircase packs in psychological trauma, multiple murders, inter-family conflict and a touch of romance, and helps construct the twisty foundations for many thrillers to come.

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