The Unseen (1945)

★ 4.6 1h 20m IMDb

Horror Thriller Mystery

David Fielding, who has recently lost his wife, moves into a new neighborhood under a cloud of suspicion. Many feel that his wife's death in a car crash was no accident. Elizabeth Howard, the governess he hires to look after his children, makes it her mission to find out the truth. When other murders seem to be following David to his new town, Elizabeth investigates with the help of David's son Barnaby.

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Cast

Joel McCrea as David Fielding Died 1990 · South Pasadena, California, USA Joel Albert McCrea (November 5, 1905 – October 20, 1990) was an American actor whose career spanned a wide variety of genres over almost five decades, including comedy, drama, romance, thrillers, adve...

Gail Russell as Elizabeth Howard Died 1961 · Chicago, Illinois, USA Gail Russell was an American screen and television actress who is probably best remembered for her role as Stella Meredith in the 1944 film The Uninvited..

Herbert Marshall as Dr. Charles Evans Died 1966 · London, England, UK Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall (23 May 1890 – 22 January 1966) was an English stage, screen and radio actor who, despite losing a leg during the First World War, starred in many popular and well-regar...

Phyllis Brooks as Maxine Died 1995 · Boise, Idaho, USA Phyllis Brooks was an American actress and model. Brooks was born Phyllis Seiler in Boise, Idaho on July 18, 1915. She began her career in films at age 20, and had been known as the "Ipana Toothpaste...

Isobel Elsom as Marian Tygarth Died 1981 · Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK Isobel Elsom (March 16, 1893 — January 12, 1981) was an English screen, stage, and television actress..

Norman Lloyd as Jasper Goodwin Died 2021 · Jersey City, New Jersey, USA Norman Nathan Lloyd (né Perlmutter; November 8, 1914 – May 11, 2021) was an American actor, producer and director with a career in entertainment spanning nearly a century. He worked in every major fac...

Director Lewis Allen

Cast Joel McCrea, Gail Russell, Herbert Marshall, Phyllis Brooks, Isobel Elsom, Norman Lloyd, Mikhail Rasumny, Elisabeth Risdon, Tom Tully, Nona Griffith

John Chard 5/10 Mar 03, 2020

Salem Alley Shenanigans.

The Unseen is directed by Lewis Allen and collectively written by Hagar Wilde, Ken Englund and Raymond Chandler. It's adapted from Ethel Lina White's novel "Her Heart in Her Throat". It stars Joel McCrea, Gail Russell, Herbert Marshall, Phyllis Brooks and Isobel Elsom. Music is by Ernst Toch and cinematography by John F. Seitz.

Elizabeth Howard (Russell) is hired as a governess for David Fielding's (McCrea) two children. With David being secretive and strange occurrences happening, she begins to unravel the mystery of the empty house next door.

Foolishly seen as a follow up to the far superior "The Uninvited (1944)", The Unseen is efficient without really rising to thrilling heights. Taken as a mood piece it scores favourably, lots of shadows, cobbled streets, darkened rooms and plenty of suspicious goings on, but as a mystery it falls flat. It gets off to a mixed start, with a grisly murder bogged down by a clumsy narration, from there we are on board with Russell's governess who gets more than she bargained for in her new employment. A number of characters drift in and out of proceedings, but the villain of the piece is evident from the get go, and it builds to a disappointingly flat finale.

A sort of weak companion piece to "Gaslight" (original and remake) and "The Innocents", it's not recommended with any great confidence. Those looking for better and similar tonal fare from Lewis Allen are advised to seek out the aforementioned "The Uninvited" and "So Evil My Love (1948)". 5/10

CinemaSerf 6/10 Sep 02, 2023

Wealthy widower "Fielding" (Joel McCrae) hires "Miss Howard" (a rather bland Gail Russell) to be the governess to this children - the rather obnoxious "Barnaby" (Richard Lyon) and the rather more benign "Ellen" (Nona Griffith). The young boy likes to wind her up, he has secret telephone conversations and those, coupled with stories about a mysteriously empty house next door, set the scene for a rather torrid time for the young woman who is gradually falling - "Jane Eyre" style - for her boss. He is friendly with a local doctor (Herbert Marshall) and she is befriended by "Marian" (Isobel Elsom) but can either of them help to assuage her incrementally increasing fears as she is certain that something terrible has happened - and may be about to happen again! McCrae doesn't actually feature so much here and when he does he isn't quite the character he needed to be to make this rather ordinary story deliver. The young Lyon is probably the stand-out actor - he really does manage to get under the finger nails, but otherwise it's all rather too easily guessable with performances that are very much join-the-dots. Eighty minutes felt quite long, and though it's not dreadful, it's just all a bit routine with shades of "Gaslight" (1944) to it.