The House in Marsh Road

I enjoyed this unusual B movie, it's basically 75% domestic murder story, 25% supernatural thriller. Jean inherits a house, moves her drunken no good partner David in, and he meets someone else, a voluptuous blonde, Valerie Stockley. Valerie persuades David to kill his wife, but Jean is protected by a poltergheist, wonderfully named Patrick by the potty Irish maid Mrs O'Brien.

It's unusual to say the least, I can't think of many supernatural murder mysteries, but it works. Patricia Bainton appeared in some cracking films in the 50's and 60's, my favourite being The Third Alibi, and once again she's pretty good. Sandra Dorne is pretty fabulous it has to be said.

I'm struggling to believe it was made in 1960, it looks like it was should in the forties, production values are pretty poor, although the fire is pretty well done.

So why isn't it the House on Marsh Road instead of in? Don't know.

Patricia Dainton and Tony Wright are Jean and David Linton always down to their last British pound thanks to his drinking and not working. Suddenly Jean inherits a house from an aunt, along with 1000 pounds. Back in 1960, that was the equivalent of 21,000 pounds today.

You'd think Tony would be happy. He now has the solitude he needs to write the great British novel. However, all he does is complain. When he learns at the local pub that a real estate investor would buy the place for 6000 pounds, he wants to sell.

Jean won't hear of it. She loves the place, despite the alleged presence of Patrick, a poltergeist so-named by the maid (Anna Sharp-Bolster) who comes in to work. Patrick, she says, is there to protect the relatives of the previous owners.

Tony writes book reviews and does some work on his novel, but he can't type. He hires a sexy local woman, Valerie (Sandra Dorne) who is going through a divorce. She's not interested in him when she finds out the house is Jean's. Well, just supposing the house suddenly became his?

Good, atmospheric, short black and white film, with excellent performances and a great ending! Very entertaining.

Missing from David Pirie's filmography in 'A Heritage of Horror' (1973) despite Pirie praising director Montgomery Tully's oeuvre overall as seeming "to be impressively consistent both in style and content". This overlooked little gem anticipating 'The Night of the Eagle' resembles a Chabrol marital drama produced by Val Lewton, as a poltergeist intervenes in a serious marital spat between Tony Wright & Patricia Dainton; with Sandra Dorne as the peroxide blonde Other Woman.

Recommended.

Low budget British movie about a troubled married couple whose luck changes when the wife inherits a house along with a small fortune. Said house comes complete with a ghost - a poltergeist to be exact - known as Patrick! Tony Wright is good as the devious, drunken husband whilst Patricia Dainton looks gorgeous as his suffering wife. Relatively tame but engaging supernatural thriller that does manage a few sudden creepy moments, it is well acted, charming and at 70 minutes long is perfect in length. I really enjoyed this movie.

Patricia Dainton is married to Tony Wright, a writer.... when he isn't drinking up all the cash. She inherits a house from her late aunt, and loves it; he wants to be in London, especially when a local real estate man offers him an unlikely sum of money for it. She won't sell. She loves the memories, she loves owning something real, she's even fond of the house's resident poltergeist, at which Wright scoffs.He takes up with Sandra Dorne, and eventually the comes to him that if his wife is dead, he can sell the house and take his lover to London. So he tries a couple of ways to kill her.

Mostly it's a thriller,with Miss Dainton being the lovely, totally unobjectionable sort of blonde which, in my experience, can drive a man mad. Wright is a lazy cad, and Miss Dorne is.... well, she's easy. It's efficiently written and directed; Walter Harvey's shadowy cinematography is a big plus.