Guest Review: The Uninvited

My guest reviewer today is Colleen from Col Reads. Here’s a bit about Colleen:

Colleen is a wife, mom, professor, foodie and booklover – a combination she has parlayed into a scandalous cookbook collection. When she’s not reading, cooking, watching old movies or schlepping her over-programmed daughters to any of their many activities, she loves Latin dancing – especially when the dancing can actually be arranged in Latin
America.

The Uninvited: A Ghost Story for a Family Fright Night

When Jenn asked for Fright Fest ideas, my mind went immediately back to one of the scariest – and most fun – nights I can remember from my childhood: the night my dad said I was old enough to stay up with him and watch The Uninvited. Staying up late on a school night only happened rarely, often for movies my dad considered classics, like Gunga Din, Arsenic and Old Lace, and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. But The Uninvited was an even bigger deal, because my mother had deemed it “too scary” when WPIX ran it before Halloween the previous year.

Now my dad said I was old enough for a ghost story. I was thrilled. But my mother wasn’t convinced. “If she can’t sleep tonight, it’s your problem, Mike.” And off she went to bed.

Dad and I made popcorn, turned out all the lights, and sank into the couch just as the black-and-white waves started to crash along the rocky cliffs of Cornwall. Then Ray Milland’s voice drew me into the story of Windward House, and a shiver ran down my spine:

“They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of Devonshire and Cornwall and Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here… and sea fog… and eerie stories…”

The Uninvited is an old-fashioned, eerie ghost story. The new owners of a seaside mansion realize it’s haunted, and that the beautiful young woman who was left motherless there many years ago seems to be at the center of the disturbances. A woman sobs in the dark. Flowers wither in cold, clammy rooms. Cats and dogs flee in terror. And the anxiety builds slowly as you watch. It seems to break for romance. Then it seems to break for the beautiful score, which gave the world the haunting “Stella by Starlight.” But it doesn’t break, really. The tension builds and builds until the true origins of the ghost story are revealed. I must have been like a guitar string by the end of the movie.

The Windward House ghost has a particular scent – the scent of mimosa. At the climax of the movie, as the pages of a diary turned jerkily on the screen, I could actually smell it – a sweet, flowery perfume drifting through my own house. The Windward ghost had come to get me! I screamed and jumped into my father’s lap, sobbing.

Then suddenly I heard my mother laugh. She put the perfume bottle down and came running to hug me!

Once I calmed down, my parents explained what had happened at the end of the movie, and we all had a good laugh. But as I recall, when I couldn’t sleep that night, it was my mother’s problem.

Kids love to be scared – in a controlled sort of way. I have shared The Uninvited with both of my daughters, as their first scary movie. And I heartily recommend that you do the same. Of course, whether or not you bring a bottle of perfume to the party along with the popcorn is completely up to you.

Colleen, thank you so much for this post!

So, what is your favorite horror or scary movie from your childhood?