I've seen the two movie versions of this melodramatic play, from 1935 and 1951, and while it is definitely gloomy and unpleasant, there's something endearing about these old gaslight plays that somehow managed to make it onto film, and then in the case of this one, an early TV special starring Academy Award winners Faye Bainter and Joseph Schildkraut. It's a horrific story of taking advantage of the vulnerable, in this case a reclusive woman estranged from most of her family (with the exception of a niece), for the most part always on her own with the exception of a servant. She needs a needy man on the street, offers him a cup of tea, and that begins over six months of a nightmare that has her held captive by his crazed family. They are the most hideous kinds of people, using fear to keep her under their thumb, and the situation seems to be a dire one without resolution.
While these types of performances don't stand up today, they are fun in retrospect, but being done for live TV, it doesn't go without error. Early in the film, a TV camera is visibly seeing, and even Bainter in one scene isn't convincing as it appears that she's having an attack of some kind. These are the kind of villains that you hiss that no matter how good they are acting wise, and pray to see the hangman's noose at the end of the film. The role of the nasty Ers. Edwards it is perhaps even more despicable than Schildkraut. He's a far cry from the father of Anne Frank (for which she received an Oscar nominations) and the victim of French Injustice in "The Life of Emile Zola". For fans of "General Hospital" who accidentally catch this, they'll be shocked to see a very young Denise Alexander who has been playing Lesley Webber on and off for 50 years. Great as far as classic TV Anthology goes, but more of a curiosity that shows how early TV still had its growing pains.
While these types of performances don't stand up today, they are fun in retrospect, but being done for live TV, it doesn't go without error. Early in the film, a TV camera is visibly seeing, and even Bainter in one scene isn't convincing as it appears that she's having an attack of some kind. These are the kind of villains that you hiss that no matter how good they are acting wise, and pray to see the hangman's noose at the end of the film. The role of the nasty Ers. Edwards it is perhaps even more despicable than Schildkraut. He's a far cry from the father of Anne Frank (for which she received an Oscar nominations) and the victim of French Injustice in "The Life of Emile Zola". For fans of "General Hospital" who accidentally catch this, they'll be shocked to see a very young Denise Alexander who has been playing Lesley Webber on and off for 50 years. Great as far as classic TV Anthology goes, but more of a curiosity that shows how early TV still had its growing pains.
