An artist preparing for an exhibition moves in to an old house with the help of his girlfriend, but the jealous spirit of the previous owner wants him for herself.
The original of this story relies on sound to bring on the creeps, as the old house creaks and groans, until an eerie brushing of hair dominates the hero's senses. In this adaptation they decided to go with visual effects through a neat reversal, harking back to the artist who predeceased the writer in the Onions version but in a later period setting.
It doesn't work, with the complex psychology flattened into an aimless psychosis spooked up by third party confirmations of a mysterious presence - the friend who encounters the woman in the bedroom, the housekeeper listening at the keyhole to laughter.
What this adaptation misses is the hero's disintegration through his inability to cope with love. The simplicity of the girlfriend removes all give and take between the characters, and that lack of complexity forces the story into a literal minded insistence that something supernatural is afoot - so instead of the subtlety of the hair-brushing we get gay laughter, and the suggestions of a figure moving about the house give way to multiple portraits of the Fair One, and the tune that gives the story its title loses its real significance. To top it all, the character of the house itself doesn't come through, so the hero's ability to project his disturbed thoughts is limited.
No doubt it's a difficult story to adapt for the screen, since so much of the effect is created in the hero's own head, but the writers really didn't do themselves any favours by cutting out the pathos of a love that was never meant to be.
The original of this story relies on sound to bring on the creeps, as the old house creaks and groans, until an eerie brushing of hair dominates the hero's senses. In this adaptation they decided to go with visual effects through a neat reversal, harking back to the artist who predeceased the writer in the Onions version but in a later period setting.
It doesn't work, with the complex psychology flattened into an aimless psychosis spooked up by third party confirmations of a mysterious presence - the friend who encounters the woman in the bedroom, the housekeeper listening at the keyhole to laughter.
What this adaptation misses is the hero's disintegration through his inability to cope with love. The simplicity of the girlfriend removes all give and take between the characters, and that lack of complexity forces the story into a literal minded insistence that something supernatural is afoot - so instead of the subtlety of the hair-brushing we get gay laughter, and the suggestions of a figure moving about the house give way to multiple portraits of the Fair One, and the tune that gives the story its title loses its real significance. To top it all, the character of the house itself doesn't come through, so the hero's ability to project his disturbed thoughts is limited.
No doubt it's a difficult story to adapt for the screen, since so much of the effect is created in the hero's own head, but the writers really didn't do themselves any favours by cutting out the pathos of a love that was never meant to be.
