FAQ

Turret was a brand of cigarette produced by Ogden's of Liverpool, a division of Imperial Tobacco Canada.

Roderick 'Rick' Fitzgerald (Ray Milland) and his sister Pamela (Ruth Hussey) buy a remote house on the cliffs of north Devonshire that they come to believe is haunted by the spirit of Mary Meredith, the mother of young Stella Meredith (Gail Russell), who lives nearby with her grandfather, Commander Beech (Donald Crisp). The Fitzgeralds try to unravel the history of the house, but the Commander is not forthcoming with any information nor will he allow Stella to visit there.

The Uninvited is based on a 1942 novel published in the U.K. as The Easy Freehold and in the U.S. as Uneasy Freehold by Irish writer Dorothy Macardle [1889 1958]. The novel was adapted for the screen by English playwright Dodie Smith and American screenwriter Frank Partos.

Although The Uninvited takes place near the fictional town of Biddlecombe, somewhere on the rocky Devonshire coast of western England, the movie was actually shot in several areas up and down the California coast and on a soundstage. Windward House was a combination of an actual coastline estate and miniatures, all melded together via optical printing. Incidentally, the house was named 'Cliff End' in the novel.

Rick and Pamela have a Cairn terrier named Bobbi and a cat named Whiskey. The cat actually belonged to the Fitzgeralds' long time housekeeper "Lizzie" Flynn (Barbara Everest)

According to the Internet Movie Car Database, it is a 1937 Ford Ten Tourer.

To keep Stella away from Winward House, Commander Beech sends for Mary's best friend Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner) to lock Stella away in the sanatorium she runs, The Mary Meredith Retreat in Bodmin Moor, Cornwall. When Rick and Pamela find out, they call Holloway to let her know that they're on the way. However, Holloway tells Stella that the Fitzgeralds are willing to look after her at Winward House and immediately puts Stella on the train back to Biddlecombe. When the Fitzgeralds arrive at the sanatorium and find that Stella is on her way back to Winward, they rush to return before the train gets there, leaving Holloway babbling about finally doing what Mary wanted all along. Stella reaches Winward first and finds that her grandfather, although very ill, has walked all the way to Winward Huse in order to warn her to get out. Suddenly, the ghost of Mary Meredith appears, causing Beech to suffer a fatal heart attack. As the Fitzgeralds, accompanied by Dr Scott (Alan Napier), drive up to the house, they hear Stella scream and see her running toward the cliff. The cliff breaks away under her feet and Stella starts to fall, but Rick and Dr Scott are able to pull her back up. They return to the house, and Stella wonders why her mother would try to kill her. Suddenly a door blows open, the scent of mimosa fills the room, and the pages of Dr Rudd's journal start turning. Dr Scott picks up the journal and starts reading aloud from it. They discover that Carmel had a child in Paris (where Stella was born), and Stella realizes that it is Carmel, not Mary, who is her real mother. Knowing that Stella now knows the truth, Carmel laughs and leaves the house, but Rick senses that Mary's evil spirit is still there. He sends Stella, Pamela, and Dr Scott up to the nursery then goes after Mary. When her ghost appears, he laughs, tells her that she has no power over them anymore, and tosses a candelabra at her. Defeated, Mary leaves the house. In the final scene, Stella, Pamela, and Dr Scott return. They notice Whiskey sitting on the stairs, a place he would never go before. As Pamela and Dr Scott stand together, Stella goes into Rick's arm and notices that he's trembling. 'I've had a narrow escape,' he replies. 'She might have been my mother-in-law.'

Prior to The Uninvited, movies about ghosts and hauntings were mostly comedies or the final outcome had a rational explanation such as in Topper (1937), The Cat and the Canary (1939), The Ghost Breakers (1940), The Ghost Train (1941), and I Married a Witch (1942). The Uninvited was one of the first (if not THE first) to portray a ghost haunting as a real supernatural event. Following The Uninvited came movies about 'real' ghosts such as The Canterville Ghost (1944), The Curse of the Cat People (1944) (a sequel to Val Lewton's Cat People (1942), Dead of Night (1945), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Portrait of Jennie (1948). More recent movies about hauntings that also come highly recommended are Diabolique (1955), House on Haunted Hill (1959), The Innocents (1961), Carnival of Souls (1962), The Haunting (1963), and The Changeling (1980). All of these movies share a focus on mood and atmosphere with a minimum of gimmicks and technology to tell their stories.