The Innocents

Haunted House movies have seen better days. The trends in horror are ever shifting, but right now we're getting all these shoddy, handheld, "realistic" ghost movies which we're supposed to believe is found footage even though the people in them are clearly acting. Fifty years ago, however, we were getting some quality ghost movies, atmospheric, unsettling, with rich visuals, and loaded with depth and subtext. Movies like Robert Wise's The Haunting, one of my all-time favorites, and this movie, Jack Clayton's The Innocents, which I think just might give The Haunting a run for it's money.

The Innocents is a 1961 adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, with a screenplay by Truman Capote. It stars Deborah Kerr as a woman hired to look over a rich guy's country estate and in particular his niece and nephew. He's too busy living it up in London and enjoying his "bachelorhood" and can't be bothered. On the surface these children seem alright, but she begins to suspect something is amiss with them. When she uncovers some unsavory secrets of the history of the estate, she comes to believe that the children are possessed by two former tenants and the only way to save these children is to force them to confront the ghosts.

The movie sets itself apart at the very beginning, by opening with just a black screen with the little girl singing a haunting song (which recurs throughout the rest of the movie). We all know that little girls singing is instant creepiness. Then as the credits roll on the right, a pair of hands fade in on the left, looking as though they're furiously praying. As the credits end, the owner of the hands is revealed to be Deborah Kerr. Really artfully done.

The two children in the movie are great. They don't feel like kids acting like adults, they really do feel like adults acting like children. When they think nobody is watching they slip back into adult mode. The boy gets especially creepy when he gets the hots for Deborah Kerr.

The screenplay, direction, and cinematography are all top notch, too. The cinematography is by the great Freddie Francis, a guy whose career I find fascinating. I love that he did such beautiful camerawork as a cinematographer with films like The Innocents and Glory, and made fun, goofy horror films, like Tales from the Crypt and Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly as a director. There's some incredible cinematography in The Innocents, including a memorable montage of overlaying images.

There's a fascinating sexual subtext through the movie. They, of course, dance around it for the most part, but we learn that that the people that may be haunting this place may have performed sexual acts in front of these kids. We also are treated to a very unsettling kiss or two. I would, in fact, say that the mature subject matter in this 50-year-old movie and the 100-year-old story it's adapted from would hold up as shocking to many people even today. I couldn't help but wonder after watching The Innocents if Henry James was perhaps sexually abused as a child. I'm sure that has at least been theorized by others, I don't know much about the guy.

The Innocents is a classic ghost movie, certainly one of the best I've seen. It would be great to watch it as a double feature with The Haunting on a stormy October night (hey, like tonight!). I know that the themes and styles of horror are cyclical, and I know that ghost movies will pendulum back in the direction of films such as this sooner or later. We had a decent run of them 10 or 15 years ago. But while we're waiting for that, we'll always be able to fall back on the classics.