Horror Daily Double: The Innocents, Diabolique

Truman Capote was in the middle of drafting his book In Cold Blood when director Jack Clayton called him up and convinced him to take a three-week hiatus to rewrite the script for his new film The Innocents, a psychological horror film about a governess who joins a household and comes to believe that the children she’s caring for are possessed by the spirits of two dead former servants. Starring Deborah Kerr as the anxious governess, the film also features another familiar face, that of the young Martin Stephens, playing the tempestuous Miles, who’d first shown up in viewers’ nightmares when he featured in the original Village of the Damned. At the time Clayton was making this movie, Hammer horror films were dominating the gothic landscape. He’d already been hailed one of the bright visionaries of the British New Wave and brought his experimental sensibilities with him to Capote’s script. That meant selective, creative lighting (often sourced from candles) and cinematography to elicit the feeling of fear more from ambiance than from actual scares. Rife with subtext about sexual repression and a whole lot of Freudian concepts, this film uses a close point of view with the protagonist to keep audiences guessing whether or not the possessions are real.