4.8 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2023
⏱️ 89 minutes
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There's a killer in the house! This week Mike is joined by critic and author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas to discuss two creepy thrillers from the 40s and 50s...THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1946) and DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954).
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Mike Muncer is a producer, podcaster and film journalist and can be found on TWITTER
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0:00.0 | Through the 1940s and 50s, filmmakers continue to adapt and evolve the popular tropes from |
0:28.7 | domestic set thrillers of the time, like Gaslight and the Cat and the Canary. But these films continue |
0:35.3 | to add darker and more sinister twists, which began to slowly establish the prowler in the |
0:42.9 | house format, stories about women being preyed upon in their homes by dangerous men. |
0:49.7 | In 1946, RKO produced a psychological thriller about a mute woman who is pursued by a serial killer |
1:01.6 | in a large house. The film, the spiral staircase, would go on to become hugely, historically important, |
1:12.7 | not just in the evolution of home invasion films, but also the slasher movie. |
1:19.5 | A few years later Alfred Hitchcock made a 3D adaptation of a play by Frederick Not about a woman |
1:29.8 | played by Grace Kelly, who is attacked in our home in the middle of the night by a mysterious |
1:35.5 | strangler. And while both films played on the idea of outsiders invading the home, both films |
1:43.0 | ultimately suggested that as with films like Gaslight, the real monster was inside the |
1:49.5 | house all along. Join me as we continue exploring the evolution of home invasion, |
2:04.7 | and we discuss Robert Syedmax, the spiral staircase, and Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. |
2:12.6 | Welcome back to the evolution of horror. My name is Mike Munter, and as ever, I am your host. |
2:22.8 | If you're tuning in for the first time, then welcome. In this podcast, we explore and dissect |
2:27.3 | the history and the evolution of the horror genre, one subgenre at a time. We are currently in the |
2:32.8 | middle of our ninth series exploring the evolution of home invasion movies, and this is part 5. |
2:40.0 | In this week's episode, as that intro suggested, we're going to be looking at two creepy thrillers |
2:45.1 | from the forties and fifties at the spiral staircase from 1946, and Dial M for Murder from 1954. |
2:53.8 | Both of these discussions will be spoilerific. Give them both a watch before you listen to our |
2:59.3 | discussion. So joining me to discuss these two classic thrillers, I've got a brand new guest. |
3:05.1 | Somebody I've been really excited to have on the podcast for a very long time. She is a writer |
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