Oh dear! This is one that will appeal only to the most ardent Matthews fan. What possessed anyone to contemplate another Wicked Housekeeper movie crossed with the Conditional Will in which a heroine inherits a fortune BUT ONLY if she stays for one month in The Old Dark House that comes complete with its own Mrs Danvers, here phoned in by Beatrix Lehman (presumably Gale Sondergaard and Judith Anderson were playing two of the witches in a Road Company Macbeth) is anyone's guess. The film suffers from terminal sloppiness; made and presumably set in the middle of the Second World War it makes virtually no reference to shortages and ordinary people think nothing of driving to and from the country at a time when a major celebrity, Ivor Novello, was imprisoned for doing the same thing and Jesse Matthews is portrayed as an ordinary working girl yet one who lives in a lavish, beautifully appointed flat; for no apparent reason the hero figure, ostensibly employed as a Turf Commissioner, takes it upon himself to 'protect' Matthews yet never reveals just how he knew that the butler, Grimes, was planning to shoot her (or where a butler would get a gun, for that matter) and when he himself is knocked out by Grimes and left trussed in a locked room by butler and housekeeper neither he nor Matthews mention this when, having been freed by Matthews who took an axe to the door unmolested by Lehman, they meet Lehman at breakfast. Okay, it was wartime and audiences weren't too choosy, but this really won't do.
Review of Candles at Nine
