'The Innocents (1961)' is classic horror in every sense, based upon a stage adaptation of 'The Turn Of The Screw', that manages to call into question the psychological health of the central character as her very reality spirals out of control. It's this ambiguity that allows the more overt supernatural elements to co-exist with the implied; maybe there's something constantly lurking just outside the frame, or maybe there isn't. This turns even something as innocuous as the laughter of children into something altogether more sinister. 7/10

The story is in "The Innocents" told from the governess' (Lynn Redgrave) viewpoint. She is given the job of looking after the niece and nephew of a man who has absolutely no interest in them--and he even tells the governess that! When she goes to this house in the country, she finds that the little girl is very sweet and all seems well. Soon the boy is expelled from school and the governess decides to keep him there and teach him herself. However, it's odd the school never explained WHY he was expelled and the teen never discusses it either. Still, everything seems pretty normal. But, over time, the governess begins seeing apparitions--ghosts of the old governess and master of the house. She learns that the pair are dead--and it CAN'T be them she keeps seeing. But, she also notices that the more the spirits appear, the more vile and bizarre the children's' behavior--particularly the boy. What eventually follows is a struggle between the governess and the ghosts for possession of the children. Who is to win? "The Innocents" is a based on the story by Henry James and has been filmed many times. I saw the Lynn Redgrave version from the 1970s as well as a 1990s version recently and decided to see the 1961 version today. As far as the story goes, well, they all are very, very close and all are terrific--and I assume that's true of other versions as well (and there are MANY). However, what sets this 1961 version apart is the creepy atmospheric mood created by amazing cinematography (interesting camera angles, composition and camera tricks), music and acting. I would say more but it's just a film you need to see for yourself.

Accepting a governess job, a woman arrives at a the large Victorian mansion where she starts to notice the odd behavior of her charges when no one else is present and finds that a deadly secret about the house is affecting her and forces her into a deadly battle to save herself.This here was pretty good when it wanted to be. The biggest one to like about the film here is that this one does the slow-burning payoff the right way which manages to make this one of the best stylistic choices in that field. It should start off with mysterious circumstances that seem reasonable after explanations, yet the longer it goes on the more mysterious they become and the harder to seem reasonable, and the craziness should be exponentially more intense and crazy than those before. This is what's going on here, from the hallucinations, dreams and the weird hide-and-seek game played in the beginning all leading up to grand payoffs later. The last half-hour of this is incredible, being quite fast-paced with a lot of fantastic and really chilling moments brought up because of the ongoing circumstances from before. All of the film's hauntings are creepy and quite chilling which give it a really great and obvious atmosphere which works quite well here in that the place where it occurs is fantastic. This is a marvelously creepy house, with a great layout that recalls the classic haunted houses of the past while still having a lot of it's own good points going for it in the large, Victorian home and then capturing the look and feel of that society. It's also not restricted to hauntings indoors, as there's some good stuff outside the house and in the adjacent grounds, including ponds in the backyard, the gardens around the house and more that provide some great moments all allowing for some strong pop-up shocks of figures standing around the children ominously for the biggest parts here. All of these really help this one as there isn't a whole lot wrong with this one. Most of the flaws here stem from the slow-build pace with a tendency to keep a lot of talking here with the occasional haunting scene to break it up. If lulled in the proper state, it can be easy to see how this one can be construed as a terribly-slow film with nothing happening in it. This is due to the fact that there's a lot of talking in here, with the general feeling that there's either something creepy happening or they're talking about it, leaving this one to give it a really two-sided view without really showing what they're talking about to further the scares. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot wrong with it.Today's Rating/PG: Mild Violence.

This is third time I've watched this film and I've never liked it on any of the viewings. The film is so forgettable that, even though I've seen it twice already, I couldn't remember a thing that happened so I decided to give it another go in case I had made the mistake of brushing it off in the past.Well, I could not wait for it to finish. The film looks great throughout, thanks to the directing and cinematography. But the characters are all dull and the storyline is so repetitive and uneventful that I got fidgety watching it, just dying for something to happen.It's quite obvious from the start that Deborah Kerr's character is a little nuts but she doesn't half make a melodrama out of it. She's such a weak, unstable, annoying woman that I found it near unbearable to watch. The kids I could not stand. And that's all the main characters! Dull, dull, dull. It was a pointless waiting game, holding out for the end so we can see what has been an obvious set up from the start - a repressed hysterical woman slowly loses control of herself.The characters were so pathetic and the film so uneventful that I could find nothing of interest other than aesthetically.