The Innocents
“Sometimes one can’t help … imagining things.” Truman Capote helped to adapt Henry James’s ghost story The Turn of the Screw into 1961’s The Innocents, directed by Jack Clayton, which remains one of the most disturbing of all scary movies. To recall the rush of stomach-twisting fear provoked by this film, I just need one glimpse of the sweating face or shaking hands of Deborah Kerr. She plays a governess to two traumatised children in a remote house where life is so fragile that the petals fall from the roses, mysterious figures appear in the grounds and ominous screeching sounds crack the night. Freddie Francis’s shadowy, black-and-white cinematography, with all those flickering candles, sets a spooky tone, but it’s the soundtrack, using uncanny electronic noises by Daphne Oram, that really needles into your brain. Kerr’s Miss Giddens disintegrates rapidly, unable to trust her own horrifying visions, rapidly suspecting her youthful charges are possessed by evil spirits. “Oh, look, a lovely spider!” exclaims sweet little Flora. “And it’s eating a butterfly.” Pamela Hutchinson
