Alfred Hitchcock directs Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten and Patricia Collinge in this thriller where a niece begins to suspect her glamorous visiting uncle might just be a serial killer. 

A great solid Hitch this, more interested in character than suspense but delivering more of both than its modern day descendants. Cotten’s rotten guest is given charm and, curiously, a lot of the foreboding imagery of Dracula (look at how he entombs himself from the light on his cross country journey, his almost psychic link with his favourite niece). Whenever cornered he is framed in German Expressionist shadows, and you see his little tricks to interact with people civilly slipping as he feels more and more threatened. The facade can’t last forever. Teresa Wright is equally as strong as the sleuthing relative. At first seduced by her worldly uncle, then repulsed, even a little culpable. And Hitch’s grisly sense of humour is a lot more open here. The dinner table hobby of plotting the perfect murder, the younger sister’s less guarded misanthropy. Any one member of this “average, American” family could be a Merry Widow Murderer.

8