The Three Weird Sisters

THREE creepy dowagers cook up at least FOUR murder attempts in ONE weird film... It's the 1948 proto-psycho-biddy movie, THE THREE WEIRD SISTERS! And it's Welsh. 

I'm genuinely not sure at this point whether having Dylan Thomas co-write the script for your Old Dark House movie is a good idea. On the one hand, this is a more-than-usually clever piece, complete with lyrical turns of phrase and savage deconstructions of Welsh identity; on the other, it's peppered with scenes and conversations that feel like they belong in a different film, and begins a complex exploration of philanthropy and class responsibility that it can't possibly hope to resolve within its scant running-time. 

Let's take the basic scenario for starters: the elderly, Victorian-valued Morgan-Vaughan sisters - Gertrude, Maude and Isobel - preside over the mining town of Cwmglas, which has just suffered a disaster in the form of a pit collapse that's left an entire street in ruins. Gertrude and the gang want to take responsibility and offer financial aid - but their London-based brother, the obnoxious Owen (a step-sibling but, as a man, the one who's naturally in charge of the family fortunes), is having none of it. Intending to put his foot down once and for all, he decides to pay his sisters a visit, dragging along secretary Miss Prentiss for backup. But, before you can say 'mysterious stomach upset' and 'no more trains tonight', the city folk are trapped at the sisters' gloomy mansion until morning... 

You can probably see where this is going. It's no spoiler that the sinister spinsters are out to prune Owen from the family tree, diverting control of the finances to themselves. And, yes, they're puritanical, curmudgeonly and clearly the villains of the piece... but are they really? After all, they want the money to support the beleaguered townsfolk, while boorish Owen simply wants to keep it (and all control) to himself. 

Everyone's motives do eventually receive some further shading: Dylan Thomas apparently invests something of himself in Owen, who it turns out has had to work hard to escape the pressures of his old-fashioned, backward-looking clan, and at one point mounts a frankly astonishing condemnation of his home country ("Slag heaps and pit heads and vile black hills... How vile was my valley!"). And through those odd little diversions into local scenery, we see some of the damage wrought on 'the workers' and their lives by their land-owning masters, who've pushed the mines to literal breaking-point.

These are weighty themes and, to be honest, the film frequently drops them with a clang in favour of exploiting its more macabre possibilities, such as the string of murder attempts that make up most of its plot. The unwitting Owen comes under threat from poisoned sherry...

Plummeting clocks...

Mysteriously missing road signs...

And a build-up of lethal coke fumes...

...before eventually coming up with a counter-scheme that neatly removes him from the equation, but not without inadvertently(?) putting his secretary in the deadly trio's line of fire! It's here - in, admittedly, the more traditional woman-in-peril moments - that the film is at its most successful. Nova Pilbeam, as the capable and outspoken Miss Prentiss, genuinely shines, making it clear why Hitchcock chose to work with her on both The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Young and Innocent (1937). 

The Three Weird Sisters makes for a suspenseful and unpredictable experience, and even if, at the end of the ride, it seems content to just coast into the station, you can't say it hasn't been a bit of a wild one. The revered farce Kind Hearts and Coronets would come along a year later, turning murderous succession into an art form, but given the choice I think I'd rather spend a night with the malicious Morgan-Vaughans. 

RATING: 🕸🕸🕸