Released December 8, 1944: GUEST IN THE HOUSE (reissued in 1949 as Satan in Skirts), starring Anne Baxter, Ralph Bellamy, and Ruth Warrick. Directed by John Brahm (The Lodger, Singapore, The Brasher Doubloon).
Anne Baxter arrives at the isolated seaside home of Ralph Bellamy and his wife (Ruth Warrick) to recuperate from a recent nervous breakdown. She’s brought there by Bellamy’s younger brother (Scott McKay), who is Baxter’s fiancé. Outwardly, Baxter is very attractive and friendly, but telltale signs of her psychosis make occasional appearances, such as speaking in an affected and overly-dramatic manner, not wanting her face touched, repeatedly playing a recording of Franz Liszt’s Liebestraume, and exhibiting a hysterical fear of birds. Later on, we also learn she once contemplated suicide. But in spite of her occasional quirky behavior, Bellamy’s family, that also includes his young daughter (Connie Laird), an aunt (Aline MacMahon), and maid and husband (Margaret Hamilton and Percy Kilbride), happily take her in. But things take a dark turn when Baxter starts obsessing over Bellamy after he casually shows her kindness, and in her mind, she begins to believe they belong together. So with unwavering determination, she schemes to win Bellamy’s affection and allegiance by breaking apart the family, then stepping in to fill the void in Bellamy’s heart. She does this by shrewdly using her frail health and feigned innocence as a smoke screen to obfuscate her nefarious intentions. Bellamy works as a commercial fashion artist, spending long hours in his home studio sketching an attractive model (Marie McDonald) as his subject. The relationship between them is very friendly, but purely platonic. In fact, McDonald lives in Bellamy’s home, and is treated like one of the family members. This arrangement provides Baxter with the ideal opportunity to advance her own interests by quietly planting a false rumor that Bellamy and McDonald are having an affair, then insidiously manipulating each family member into believing it. As the corrosive rumor begins to take hold, the effect on the family is devastating, much to Baxter’s delight. All that remains is for her to be there for Bellamy and offer comfort when he’s most vulnerable. In true dramatic fashion, the film’s climax is staged during a dark stormy night complete with thunder, lightning, and a power outage, creating some beautifully filmed scenes with low light and high drama. Guest in the House offers up a perverse and disturbing melodrama centered around a truly twisted individual, and while the film’s mood is generally light and doesn’t deliver any shocking thrills or surprises, it’s Anne Baxter’s pitch perfect performance as the disturbed, psychotic femme fatale that makes it worth watching. Her subtly peculiar affectations are unsettling and creepy, but not in an overt or threatening way. She uses ingratiating softness and a facade of vulnerability to manipulate the people around her, making her thoroughly disarming, dangerously subversive, and a delight to watch. We give Guest in the House 3.5 out 5 fedoras.
The Film Noir Report 