House of the Seven Gables (1940)

Some months back, I mentioned the horror anthology Twice-Told Tales, based on three stories by mid-19th century American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. The last of the stories is an adaptation of Hawthorne's novel The House of the Seven Gables. There was a full-length movie version of The House of the Seven Gables made in 1940, which TCM also ran last October even though it's not quite a horror movie in the sense that the version in the anthology movie is. Not having seen it (and, I should add, I haven't read Hawthorne's original book either), I recorded it to be able to watch it and do a review.

The movie opens with the device of showing pages from a book to give us establishing information since, after all, the movie is based on a book. In 17th century Massachusetts, Jaffrey Pyncheon engaged in some subterfuge to get some land from a Matthew Maule, and as a result, the Pyncheon house is thought by everybody else in town to be cursed, even though the Pyncheon descendants still live there.

Fast forward 150 years. Another Jaffrey Pyncheon (George Sanders) is a lawyer in Boston, and rising in the legal world. But he's been summoned home by his father. Also living in the house is Jaffrey's brother Clifford (Vincent Price) and their cousin Hepzibah (Margaret Lindsay), who is in a relationship with Clifford, since cousin marriage isn't quite the taboo it might be today. Clifford is a musician, a profession that Jaffrey looks down on, and you suspect that the brothers have disliked each other for years.

Dad called Jaffrey home because he's planning on finally selling the house. Not that he wants to; it's more that Dad and Jaffrey have been borrowing against the house to make risky investments that haven't paid off, and now they finally have to pay off the debts, with selling the house being the only way to do so. Clifford doesn't care so much since he's planning on going to New York to pursue his career in songwriting. Jaffrey, on the other hand, is deeply unhappy, since he believes in the family legend that there's some sort of hidden fortune in the house.

Clifford and his father get into an argument over selling the house, and in the course of that argument Dad suffers a fatal heart attack. This gives Jaffrey an idea. He accuses Clifford of having done something to cause Dad's death, with the result that Clifford is put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to a harsh prison sentence; the house is never sold.

Hepzibah pines for her cousin, and works on getting the governor to commute Clifford's sentence. He returns home, but he's not out of the woods yet. All these years, Jaffrey has been continuing to make risky investments, and Clifford's presence throws a monkey wrench into those plans. So Jaffrey comes up with a dastardly scheme to get Clifford out of the way once and for all.

As I said at the beginning, I haven't read Nathaniel Hawthorne's original book, so I can't compare this movie to the book. Supposedly, there are substantial differences between the two, but I can only judge the movie on its own merits. In that regard, it's not a bad little movie. Vincent Price unsurprisingly gives a good performance, as does Sanders as the villain of the piece. The production, however, feels like Universal, where it was produced, could have given it a little more TLC. This is the sort of material that probably should have been more of a prestige picture, but as produced, it has more of the look and feel of a programmer. Not that it's bad by any means, however. It's definitely worth a watch.