THE TURN OF THE SCREW
US, 1974, 120 minutes, Colour.
Lynne Redgrave, Jasper Jacobs, Eva Griffiths.
Directed by Dan Curtis.
The Turn of the Screw is one of many remakes of horror and terror classics by prolific American writer, producer, director, Dan Curtis. (Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). Curtis has worked mainly in television, especially with the series House of Dark Shadows. However, he has made a number of interesting genre films on gangsters: The Legend of Machine Gun Kelly; westerns: The Last Days of the Dalton Gang; autobiographical reminiscence, When Every Day Was the Fourth of July; big budget miniseries, The Winds of War.
Curtis adapts the classics for the widest television audience. He presents them, with an atmosphere of terror or horror and shock, for audiences watching comfortably at home. There is a certain mildness as well as horror about his films. However, they are very competently made, often well-written and acted, with an original touch e.g. the pathos of his Frankenstein monster played by Bo Svenson.
This version of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw is much more faithful to the lines of the novel than the very interesting interpretation, The Innocents, where Deborah Kerr played the governess. This classic film of 1961, directed by Jack Clayton, uses a Freudian interpretation where by the audience is not sure what happens in reality and what happens in the mind of the governess, whether she is protective or destructive for the children she cares for. The question is also raised as to the reality and unreality of the ghosts and the reporting of their evil. These questions are also raised in this remake, although there is a tendency to go for realism. However, the essential ambiguity of Henry James' work is sustained. Lynne Redgrave is quite effective, though perhaps a bit too strong as the governess.
There was an interesting prequel to James' story written by playwright Michael Hastings, The Nightcomers. This dealt with the activities of Peter Quint and Miss Jessell, the evil governess and gardener, and their effect on their charges prior to the coming of the governess of The Turn of the Screw. Michael Winner directed the film version with Marlon Brando and Stephanie Beecham as Quint and Miss Jessell. The Turn of the Screw will continue to fascinate with its surface present ation of Victorian or post-Victorian ordered English life, the importance of an absent father-figure on wealthy children, children's innocence and evil and the subconscious effect of evil.
