The Spiral Staircase (1946)

(On Cable TV, September 2022) Horror film historians are in for a treat (of sort) in The Spiral Staircase, considering how it was a relatively well-financed RKO studio production that happens to rely on slasher-like elements decades before the genre was codified. A blend of film noir cinematography and horror plotting, The Spiral Staircase goes for Gothic thrills, as it pits a mute girl against a killer preying on disabled victims inside a vast Vermont estate. Directed by Robert Siodmak (no stranger to horror), adapted from a gothic novel, it really goes for the elements of what we now know as slasher horror: multiple deaths, creepy surroundings, a mystery surrounding the killer, and so on in a mere 84 minutes. Some sub-tropes are unformed—there’s no “final girl” last stand, for instance, and that’s the kind of stuff that does make the film interesting to experience. Dorothy McGuire does well as the female lead, with plenty of thrills and chills along the way. The restrained nature of the film (considering its production during the heyday of the restrictive Production Code) largely means that the murdering is done stylistically rather than gorily, which may come as a relief and a further point of distinction for many viewers. It does make one imagine an alternate Hollywood history in which slashers would have taken a far different stylistic path…