UNCLE SILAS

Someone forgot to tell director Charles Frank that UNCLE SILAS, released in the US in 1947 as THE INHERITANCE, wasn’t a horror film.  The script, from a story by Sheridan Le Fanu, is full flown gothic melodrama.  Helpless young Victorian lass Jean Simmons finds herself at the mercy of her very—and I mean VERY—strange Uncle Silas, played by Derrick De Marney.

Typical gothic stuff, yes?  But Frank conspires with cinematographer Robert Krasker (yes, the man who shot THE THIRD MAN, ODD MAN OUT and BRIEF ENCOUNTER) to create a twisted masterpiece teeming with thinly veiled malevolence and the most memorable kettle of grotesques I’ve seen in quite some time.  Katina Paxinou alone is a force to reckon with here.  There are many wonderfully startling moments and staggering visuals, and I won’t ruin them.  Besides De Marney (known to most as the lead in Hitchcock’s YOUNG AND INNOCENT) and Paxinou, additional creepiness is provided by Manning Whiley (big time), John Laurie and Guy Rolfe as Sepulchre Hawkes(!).  Top it off with a fine, evocative score by the excellent Alan Rawsthorne.

Director Charles Frank is something of a mystery himself.  Belgian born with a tiny handful of credits there seems little information about him available.  I read somewhere that William K. Everson did confirm with several of his contemporaries that he was indeed real and not a psuedonym.

I discovered UNCLE SILAS on TCM quite by accident and, for my money, I think it’s both an unheralded masterpiece in any cinematic terms and a neglected horror film disguised as melodrama.  Others may disagree (as do varying opinions of what exactly defines horror), but I think most will enjoy it.  It ain’t the story that’s any great shakes here.  It’s how it’s told.
—Larry Blamire