It takes special kind of psycho to deliberately target disabled people for not being perfect; while regular movie maniacs tend to reserve their rage for healthy victims (often teenagers in the prime of their life), the killer in The Spiral Staircase has it in for those with physical impairments. Having already bumped off several handicapped people (the latest being a blind woman), the loony sets their sights on pretty mute Helen (Jacqueline Bisset), who has been unable to speak since a fire tragically claimed the lives of her husband and daughter.
A remake of the 1946 movie of the same name, this 1975 version is primarily set in a remote country house during a thunderstorm that frequently threatens to wipe out the power and plunge the film's raft of disparate characters into darkness: in addition to Helen, the building's occupants are Professor Sherman (Christopher Plummer), his sexy Southern secretary Blanche (Gayle Hunnicutt), the prof's mother (Mildred Dunnock) and younger brother Steven (John Phillip Law), Mrs Sherman's nurse (Elaine Stritch), handyman Oates (Ronald Radd) and his drunken wife (Sheila Brennan).
Despite the creepy local, the stormy setting, plenty of suspects, victims and red herrings, and the delightfully perverse notion of a killer targeting the most defenceless, The Spiral Staircase is actually about as thrilling as Professor Sherman's line of expertise: management skills (yawn!). Director Peter Collinson (The Italian Job) fails to generate any tension, boredom being the most likely emotion experienced by viewers as the thunder crashes, the rain pours, and no-one in the house gets killed for almost an entire hour. When the murders do begin, they are poorly staged and totally devoid of gore-definitely not worth the excruciatingly dull wait.
For a much more suspenseful film about a disabled woman being threatened by a homicidal maniac, watch Blind Terror, AKA See No Evil (1971), starring Mia Farrow, or even Eyes of a Stranger (1981) with Jennifer Jason Leigh ('nuff said!).
