I don't know what I was expecting, but this managed to surprise me. It's certainly not a harrowing watch (a la Dead of Night) - more of a cozy ghost story, with a built-in love story (two, actually), but at the same time, as Jami said, if you saw this when you were little it would have scared the crap out of you. Adding to the effect is the beautiful cinematography and effective acting (the only weak link to my mind was the rather over-the-top Miss Holloway).
I don't want to give away a couple of twists and turns, but the basic idea is that a brother and sister (they need not to be a couple because they're going to acquire their love interests in the course of the film) from London are holidaying in Cornwall (in May of 1937, we are informed) when they stumble across an abandoned house on top of a cliff
that the sister, Pamela Fitzgerald (a very feisty Myrna Loy-esque Ruth Hussey) falls in love with (they have to chase their dog in through a window through which he has followed a squirrel) and persuades the brother, Rick (Ray Milland, who we noticed is like the Venn diagram of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart), a music critic and aspiring songwriter, to pool their resources to buy. They find out that it is owned by a Commander Beech and that it has been vacant since the last occupants claimed it was haunted. They visit the Beech household and are greeted (at first warmly) by his granddaughter, the lovely Stella
(played by the tragic Gail Russell, whom I would have thought was English, but apparently was plucked by star-makers from Santa Monica High School), whose mood changes suddenly when she finds out they want to buy Windward House. She claims that it is actually not for sale and is trying to usher them out when the Commander comes home. He is a very cold fish but is willing to sell the house for £1,200, even though that is far below its value, because he wants money for his granddaughter, he says. Stella and the Commander are at loggerheads on this, we discover, because she lived there until she was 3 and her mother died falling off the cliff out front, and she feels pulled there. He, on the other hand, believes there are dark forces there that seek to do her harm and thus is glad to be rid of it. What he does not bargain on, however, is Rick falling for Stella, and Stella inveigling her way into the house. But this takes a while, and before this, we get this great creepy shot of her looking up at the house:
The next day. she runs into Rick in town (Biddlecombe or some such) and apologizes for her strange behavior before and he is charmed to the extent of inviting her for a sail. He claims to have a stomach like the Rock of Gibraltar, but it is she who ends up taking the tiller while he huddles in the boat trying not to vomit. Later that day he is to depart for London for three weeks, but he tells Stella she should visit Pamela, who is staying behind to decorate. When he arrives back he finds first that their beloved dog has run off, and second that Stella has not visited because when Pamela sent an invitation she got word back that she was too ill. That night Rick is woken by the sounds of a sobbing woman - at first he thinks it is their old Irish nanny (I assume, it's not explained) Elizabeth, but it's coming from downstairs, and Pamela informs him this is a regular occurrence, but will stop at dawn, as indeed it does. That day, Rick goes to the Beech household and finds out that it was the Commander who blocked Stella's invitation, and she's healthy as a horse. She finally confronts him and says that she's going, no matter what he says, and indeed that night comes to dinner. While there, Rick plays her a tune he's written, Stella by Starlight (now a Jazz standard) up in his workshop, which has a whole wall like a greenhouse because it used to be the artist's studio of Stella's father.
It is also a room that is prone to sudden chills (it withered some flowers the first time brother and sister went up there after buying it) and imposing a depressive mood on its occupant, despite which Rick uses it as his studio. Stella, however, senses that the presence is her mother and is not afraid, but during her visit she suddenly bolts out the door and runs for the cliff, and Rick is only able to stop her from meeting the same fate as her mother (hasn't anyone heard of fences?) by sprinting.
Anyway, the town doctor (who, it turns out, has found their dog and is very fond of it) soon gets involved and helps investigate what actually happened lo these 17 years ago. It turns out that there was a bit of a menage-a-trois, the third party being Carmel, a "no good" Spanish model who posed for the father. The mother had tolerated their affair until becoming pregnant, at which point they found her employment in Paris. But she returned, and was there the night of the fatal fall. Commander Beech becomes so worried by Stella's fascination with Windward that he brings in an old friend of the mother's (Miss Holloway), who now operates a sanitarium on Bodmin Moor. Stella is spirited off there after an unfortunate seance,
during which the spirit informs them that she is there to guard her against Carmel, but then Stella becomes possessed and starts speaking Spanish.
Anyway, things come to a head when the evidently crazy (and probably infatuated with Stella's mother - that's her in the painting) Miss Holloway
sends Stella to Windward when she hears that Rick and Pamela and the Doctor are coming to get her. Clearly she wants something bad to happen to Stella. There's also shenanigans with the notebook of the Doctor's predecessor, who believed that Miss Holloway killed Carmel, who caught pneumonia the night of the "accident". Anyway, it all comes to a showdown at Windward, as a very enfeebled Commander Beech also heads there to try to save Stella when he finds out what's going on, and we finally get to see the spectral image of the mother.
Will Stella survive? Or will she join her mother in the crashing waves at the foot of the cliff? Better watch it, hadn't you? It's top entertainment, I promise you. It would make an excellent double-bill with The Ghost and Mrs Muir. Dab on some Mimosa and cue them up.
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