Lewis Allen

The Uninvited

The Uninvited

A pair of siblings from London (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) purchase a surprisingly affordable, lonely cliff-top house in Cornwall, only to discover that it actually carries a ghostly price—and soon they’re caught up in a bizarre romantic triangle from beyond the grave. Rich in atmosphere, The Uninvited, directed by Lewis Allen, was groundbreaking for the seriousness with which it treated the haunted-house genre, and it remains an elegant and eerie experience, featuring a classic score by Victor Young. A tragic family past, a mysteriously locked room, cold chills, bumps in the night—this gothic Hollywood classic has it all.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1944
  • 99 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • English
  • Spine #677

Special Features

  • New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • New visual essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
  • Two radio adaptations, from 1944 and 1949, both starring Ray Milland
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme and a 1997 interview with director Lewis Allen

    New cover by Sam Weber

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • New visual essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
  • Two radio adaptations, from 1944 and 1949, both starring Ray Milland
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme and a 1997 interview with director Lewis Allen

    New cover by Sam Weber
The Uninvited
Cast
Ray Milland
Roderick Fitzgerald
Ruth Hussey
Pamela Fitzgerald
Donald Crisp
Commander Beech
Cornelia Otis Skinner
Miss Holloway
Dorothy Stickney
Miss Bird
Barbara Everest
Lizzie Flynn
Alan Napier
Dr. Scott
Gail Russell
Stella Meredith
Credits
Director
Lewis Allen
Associate producer
Charles Brackett
Screenplay
Dodie Smith
Screenplay
Frank Partos
Based on the novel by
Dorothy Macardle
Director of photography
Charles Lang Jr.
Music score
Victor Young
Edited by
Doane Harrison
Art direction
Hans Dreier
Art direction
Ernst Fegté
Process photography
Farciot Edouart, A.S.C.
Costumes
Edith Head
Makeup artist
Wally Westmore
Sound recording
Hugo Grenzbach
Sound recording
John Cope
Set decoration
Stephen Seymour

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Hans Dreier

Art Director

Hans Dreier

One of the most prolific film artists in Hollywood history, the German-born art director Hans Dreier worked on more than five hundred films from 1919 to 1951, amassing twenty-three Academy Award nominations and three Oscars. A student of engineering and architecture, Dreier began his career as an architect for the German government before being hired to design sets for UFA, the home of the German film industry, during the silent era. Like many of his moviemaking countrymen, Dreier eventually moved to Los Angeles, bringing with him all the expressionist tools of his trade—dramatically exaggerated spaces and chiaroscuro—and working closely with cinematographers like Victor Milner and such directors as Josef von Sternberg and Ernst Lubitsch to create vivid visual experiences. Dreier’s astonishingly vast and varied body of work extends from the intense, romantic shadows of early von Sternberg to the psychological grit of Anthony Mann’s American West, with many lighthearted pit stops in between, from Lubitsch's Ruritanian comic-musical landscapes to Preston Sturges’ just-off-center, whacked-out Americana.