The Turn of the Screw (1992)

Director:

Rusty Lemorande

Writers:

Henry James (novel)
Rusty Lemorande (writer)

Release Date:

8 June 1994 (France)

Genre:

Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

...but when they were bad. They were evil.

Plot:

A young woman is hired by a wealthy but sinister man to tutor his two children at the family's isolated estate...

Plot Keywords:

Children | Evil | Knife | Victorian Era | Governess

Cast

Patsy Kensit	...	Jenny
Stéphane Audran	...	Mrs. Grose
Julian Sands	...	Mr. Cooper
Marianne Faithfull	...	Narrator
Olivier Debray	...	Quint
Bryony Brind	...	Miss Jessel
Thomas Krygier	...	Jenny's Father / Vicar
Doreen Mantle	...	Doreen
Peter Whitman	...	Peter
Mickey Monroe	...	Secretary
Anna Bolt	...	Anna
Laura Cox	...	Laura
Sara Newman	...	Sarah (as Sara Mansfield)
Albert Sasson	...	Psychiatrist
Tony O'Leary	...	Geoffrey

Also Known As:

Le tour d'écrou (France)

Runtime:

95 min

Country:

France | UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Australia:M | UK:18 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, UK

Company:

Cinémax

Movie Connections:

Version of "Otra vuelta de tuerca" (1981)

A peculiar if intriguing attempt at adapting Henry James' Novella

This 1992 adaptation of "The Turn of the Screw" is a strange experience indeed. Taking the Henry James Psychological ghost story masterpiece as a starting point, writer/director Rusty Lemorande makes a film that is ultimately a failure, but a very intriguing failure nonetheless. The director takes the central premise of the well known story about a governess coming to doubt the innocence of the children under her care and realizing slowly that they may be haunted by the ghosts of her malevolent and sick predecessors, and produces a film that is much more modern (and by modern I mean graphic) which turns the story into a much more perverted psycho-sexual story about child abuse, the occult and of course repression (all themes that were addressed in Henry James' novella but in a much more subdued manner). But despite achieving moments of true dread and an overall ominous and doom-laden atmosphere (aided tremendously by the beautifully Gothic locations and the occasionally brilliant cinematography), the director errs by making the story lose all the subtlety that was imbued in the original novella and instead relying too much on graphic sex scenes and overt violence (although these only appear in dream sequences which are somewhat brief) and ultimately as many filmmakers do when adapting a classic story, reading too much into the story in terms of sexual repression and perversion. Although James' novella mainly dealt with issues of sanity, perspective and depravity, the main strength of the story was the ambiguity that James imbued the story with, something which made the story much more frightening and disturbing even a century after it was published. But director Lemorande throws all subtlety out the window by using ear-shattering musical cues, gratuitous blood and sex and by portraying the apparitions as some sort of demonic beings, which are all things that do not correspond with the original tone or intention of the original story. But in the end the film has its merits as Lemorands succeeds in creating some moments of visual ingenuity as well as the aforementioned atmosphere which is truly haunting and unnerving, things which many other adaptations of the same story failed to achieve.