Movies
Copyright 2017 Robert Fuller Official Website
Release Date: July 1969
Producer: Robert Aldrich
Director: Lee H. Katzin
Screenplay: Theodore Apstein
Musical Score: Gerald Fried
Run time: 101 minutes
Based on the novel “The Forbidden Garden” by Ursula Curtiss, 1962
Cast:
Geraldine Page (Claire Marrable)
Ruth Gordon (Alice Dimmock)
Rosemary Forsyth (Harriet Vaughn)
Robert Fuller (Mike Darrah)
Mildred Dunnock (Miss Tinsley)
Julie Lawson (Joan Huntington)
“People don’t go around murdering each other!” Claire Marrable
Horror movies throughout decades of cinema have incorporated camp into their plots, but there is nothing quite like the guilty pleasure of watching venerable actresses claw their way across the screen in producer/director Robert Aldrich’s gothic “Psycho-
The Plot
A veiled widow, Claire Marrable, wafts into a funeral parlour, gazes smugly upon the body of her dead husband, and steals flowers from his bouquet. Later at a meeting with her lawyer, she is distraught to learn hubby dearest has left her penniless, with only a briefcase containing a stamp collection, some dead butterflies and a rusty dagger.
By dark of night, Mrs. Marrable lures her weary housekeeper out to a gigantic hole in her desert garden to plant a tree. When the woman bends over to pick up a dropped flashlight, Claire crushes her skull with a rock, sending her tumbling into her grave. Amid screeching violins and deranged laughter, credits roll.
Mrs. Marrable methodically plants the housekeeper, and the tree.
By radiant daylight, pretentious widow Marrable lives in a cozy Tucson bungalow owned by her nephew George and his wife Julia, who think dear Auntie is refined and rich because she sips liqueur, listens to French chanteuses and coaches her gardener Juan in the finer points of late-
Whispering Pines…
A taxi drops off plucky Mrs. Dimmock, who skitters past the ominous pines to an interrogation with her prospective employer. She survives Mrs. Marrable’s questions and hits all the markers -
In town, Harriet meets mysterious stranger Mike the mechanic, who charms her with his sexy banter. A strategic romance blooms, because unbeknownst to Harriet, he had also been lurking around the cottage she has rented beside Mrs. Marrable. Harriet and her young nephew Jim meet their hysterical neighbor when the dog that came with the cottage ends up in Mrs. Marrable’s yard. With blistering derision, Mrs. Marrable banishes the barking dog. “Chloe is a tramp…I have not taken loving and diligent care of my garden to have it wrecked by this vagrant bitch.” It seems Chloe was owned by Rose, formerly the widow’s companion, currently fertilizing her garden.
Meanwhile, a shocked Mrs. Dimmock accidentally discovers Edna Tinsley’s Bible -
By and by Claire learns her latest intended victim is not the tedious shrinking violet the others were. Mrs. Dimmock sasses back to her boss, telling her if she wants to live like some duchess she better learn to behave like one. Against Claire Marrable’s better instincts, she actually likes this mutinous one. For a moment, a flicker of regret that she will have to kill her replaces her outrage at losing control of pine number 6. In an awkward dinner Mrs. Dimmock boldly raises the spectre of murder – perhaps Mrs. Marrable’s own nephew is trying to kill her. Paranoid and shaken by her upstart housekeeper’s attempt at gaslighting, Mrs. Marrable calls Mrs. Dimmock’s reference – Mike Darrah, the mechanic. He laughingly warns of her Irish temper.
Mike is Alice Dimmock’s intensely worried nephew. In a heated exchange while Mrs. Marrable is out, Mike begs his aunt to stop playing detective. But Edna Tinsley was her former companion, and she must find the truth of what happened. Mike has been receiving her blank postcards and although he can’t buy his aunt’s suspicions that frail Mrs. Marrable is diabolical enough to kill all the help, he fears for her safety. Stubborn Alice promises to leave if he gets Edna’s bank information. Mike brings Julia to the house in a ruse to tell his aunt that yes, poor Edna’s account was in fact drained. Foolhardy and prideful, Alice refuses to go with him but agrees to meet him at the market the next morning. It’s game on. Audacious Alice taunts her with the prospect of her $46,000 in savings and Mrs. Marrable nearly chokes on her cocktail.
When Claire suddenly decides they will both go to a festival in town the next day, a panicked Alice claims she needs stockings and toothpaste. She calls nephew Mike and the phone rings at his empty office. He is with next-
Mrs. Marrable rifles Alice’s belongings and finds both stockings and toothpaste. Alice returns and her suspicious boss asks her to write a note to a gardener named “Al”. Comparing signatures with the letter Alice had written to Edna pushes Claire over the edge.
The Grand Reaper
Menacing Mrs. Marrable confronts her housekeeper, accusing her of being a fraud and of trying to destroy her. Alice demands to know how many she has killed. A brutal fight ensues between the biddies, but when Alice has the chance to kill the deranged woman with a statue, she can’t do it. Merciless Mrs. Marrable can. She beats Alice unconscious with the phone, loads her into the car and drives away…wearing Alice’s red wig. Brave Mrs. Dimmock rallies for a moment, and with her last breath claims she “told”. Claire plunges the car in to the lake and runs, a satisfied smile on her face as her feisty foe goes down.
Hush, Hush Sweet Harriet
The next day, Alice is declared dead in the water. A stricken Mike goes to town to find out the truth about crazy Ms. Marrable. Thinking Alice told her meddling neighbors of her killing spree, Claire invites Harriet and Jim over to keep her company. She puts sleeping pills in their eggnog, but before walking them home to their doom, she gives young Jim the briefcase with the stamp collection.
The sleeping pills do the trick and while Jim and Harriet drift off, Claire sets their house on fire and walks away, cackling.
The next day, Claire awakens to Chloe’s bark. She wanders outside to find her pines, and her housekeepers, unearthed. And staring at her incredulously, a line of accusers including her neighbors whom Mike had saved from the fire. With her posh life and her garden in ruins, the widow Mrs. Marrable faces one final indignity – her dead husband’s stamp collection is worth $100,000.
~
The Rest in Pieces…
This isn’t the first time actress Mildred Dunnock [Edna Tinsley] was gruesomely dispatched by a psycho. In one of cinema’s most cringeworthy murders, she was pushed down the stairs, in her wheelchair, by a giggling Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) in Henry Hathaway’s 1947 brilliant noir Kiss of Death.
Robert Fuller’s intensity and his ease with genre film is once more apparent in this dark thriller. Alas, we will never see the intimate love scene between lovely Harriet [Rosemary Forsyth, Shenandoah,1965] and Mike Darrah. According to Robert, the scene was rightly deleted from the final cut of the picture -
In her autobiography “My Side”, Ruth Gordon explained that Mrs. Dimmock’s pink scarf was originally photographed floating on the surface of her watery grave. When the film’s directors changed hands, her symbolic scarf was left on the cutting room floor -
Ruth Gordon and then-
Ruth Gordon wrote the screen play for The Actress, (1953) based on her stage play Years Ago. Robert appears in the beginning of the movie as one of the dancers.
Review by Belinda New 17th Jan 2017
