Der unheimliche Gast

In 1937, the composer and music critic Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland) and his sister Pamela Fitzgerald (Ruth Hussey) are spending a holiday on the English coast. When their dog chases a squirrel, they need to break in an abandoned manor named Windward House and Pamela immediately falls in love with the real state and convinces her brother to invest his savings purchasing the house.

They seek out the owner, Commander Beech (Donald Crisp), who lives with his twenty year-old granddaughter Stella Meredith (Gail Russell) far from the house, and he accepts their offer and sells the house for a very low price. Soon Roderick and Pamela move to the Windward House and he and Stella falls in love with each other. Roderick and Pamela also discover that the house is haunted and in Roderick's studio they feel a chill and near dawn they overhear uncanny sobs of a woman. They investigate and learn that a tragedy happened in the manor: Stella's father had an affair with a Spanish model and her mother died falling of the rocky coast and the model died of pneumonia. They also discover that the house is haunted by two ghosts, one of them evil and the other one trying to protect Stella.

"The Uninvited" is a creepy ghost story, with a great performances and a good story. The mystery is predictable and is not difficult to guess who the evil ghost is, but the movie has many scenes that startle the viewer and is supported by a magnificent cinematography in black and white. In accordance with a documentary about "The Uninvited", Gail Russell was a shy actress and her personality helped her in her performance since she was really scared. The serenade "To Stella by Starlight", by Victor Young, is another plus of this movie. Further, "The Uninvited" is the first Hollywood movie to take ghosts seriously since until this date this theme was explored in comedies. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "O Solar das Almas Perdidas" ("The Manor of the Lost Souls")