Halloween Movie Club: Things that Go Bump in the Night

All right, kiddies, gather ’round and Auntie Mnemo will tell you a ghost story just in time for Halloween. You have three black-and-white classics to choose from that will have you sleeping with the lights on for a week.

The first and earliest of our films is the 1944 classic, The Uninvited. This has Ray Milland in hero mode, as he and his sister try to puzzle out why something in the house they just bought seems to be trying to kill their new neighbor, with whom Milland has fallen in love. It has a terrific cast and, unlike the other two options, manages to have both a surprise plot twist and a happy ending.

The second one is the creepy classic The Innocents (1961), starring Deborah Kerr as a repressed nanny who may — or may not — be dealing with a case of ghostly possession in her unsettling new charges.

The third one is a film that I don’t mind saying is one of my all-time favorites: Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963). This is another film where it’s not quite clear whether the haunting is real or a figment of the main character’s imagination, until … well, you’ll have to choose the film to find out. Wise learned his craft at the knee of producer Val Lewton, and he pulls out all of Lewton’s tricks to make this a truly chilling movie.

This poll will only be open for a short time so I can have my essay posted by Saturday morning (i.e. a few days before Halloween), so make sure you vote prior to Wednesday night. Links to the trailers for each film are embedded in the poll, but if I may make a suggestion … make sure to watch them with the lights on.