In today’s episode, it is early horror with an unexpected feminist twist in 1946’s The Spiral Staircase, directed by Robert Siodmak. Set in 1906, the film follows Helen (Dorothy McGuire), a woman with traumatic mutism, who cares for Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore), the difficult and bedridden lady of the manor. When a serial killer begins killing off women with so-called afflictions, Helen is warned that she may be next. Adapted from Ethel Lina White’s novel Some Must Watch (1933), the film takes up themes such as disability and masculinity while simultaneously challenging the notion that the modern slasher film began with Hitchcock’s Psycho(1960). We’re breaking it all down today with spoilers, so stay tuned.
Essential reading:
Anne Golden, “Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase: Horror Genre Hybridity, Vertical Alterity, and the Avant-Garde,” Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema: Traces of a Lost Decade, edited by Mario Degiglio-Bellemare, Charlie Ellbé, and Kristopher Woofter (Lexington Books, 2014), chapter 5.
