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Writer/producer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) made his directorial debut with Dragonwyck, a gothic romance with a dash of horror/suspense. Gene Tierney plays a farm girl summoned by a distant relative to help raise his young daughter in a New York castle. The relative, played coolly by Vincent Price (before he became a horror icon) begins poisoning his wife so that he can be with Tierney’s character (yes, incest!). Once the wife is out of the picture, Price and Tierney have a son together, but when the boy’s health takes a downward turn, so does Price’s sanity. Things become dangerous and deadly as a physician (Glenn Langan) falls in love with Tierney and the two try to escape Price’s grip. You gotta love melodrama, man.

I loved Dragonwyck‘s set design, photography, music and the performances. This is one of Vincent Price’s better roles. Walter Huston is always fun to see in a movie, even though I dislike his overly-religious character in this outing. I enjoyed the fact that the movie openly thrust an atheist man and a godly woman together and let their differences boil to the surface. Of course, the atheist ends up being a bad guy, though.

Gothic romances are pretty predictable. If it weren’t for the aesthetics or performances, the last half of the movie might have been insufferably paint-by-numbers. Overall, a decent little matinee flick.

With Jessica Tandy, Harry Morgan, and Anne Revere.