Dirk Bogarde (he appears in the film’s second half) is the nominal star of Jack Clayon’s underestimated horror tale of seven isolated juvenile actors, including Pamela Franklin, Phoebe Nicholls and Mark Lester.
Grade: B
The screenplay was written by Jeremy Brooks and Haya Harareet, based on Julian Gloag’s 1963 novel of the same name. (See below),
The Premise:
Seven Hook children, whose ages range from five to fourteen, live in dilapidated Victorian house in suburban London. The older children help to care for their invalid single mother, whose illness led her to convert to fundamentalist religion and refuse medical help. When their mother dies, the children fear that they might be split up and sent to orphanages, so they decide to conceal her death and carry on with their daily routine. They bury their mother in the back yard, where they communicate with her spirit.
The children make excuses for their mother’s absence to their neighbours and teachers, claiming that the doctor has sent her to the seaside for health, and dismissing their abrasive housekeeper, Mrs. Quayle.
But it’s only a matter lf time before the children’s idyllic world begins to crumble. Revelations made by a stranger named Charlie about their mother–that she led a dissolute lifeand that the children are the illegitimate offspring of her many adulterous liaisons–lead to violence.
The children briefly debate whether or not to bury Charlie in the garden and carry on as before, but they finally accept their situation. As the film ends, the children leave the house for the last time and walk off into the dark to turn themselves in to the authorities.
Julian Gloag’s novel was brought to Clayton’s attention by Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler. Clayton commissioned Jeremy Brooks to write the script, but he found Brooks’ adaptation too long and too literal, so he brought his wife, Israeli-born actress Haya Harareet, to tightened the structure an changed the ending to make it more thematically consistent and psychologically coherent.
Richard Burton was the first choice to play Charlie, but his fee was too high, so Bogarde was cast in the role. The juvenile cast was led by Pamela Franklin, who had worked with Clayton (as one of the possessed siblings) in The Innocents. Yootha Joyce had worked with him in cameo role in The Pumpkin Eater (1964). Mark Lester would become a star a few years later, as the lead of the musical movie, Oliver!
Our Mother’s House is the second in a loose trilogy in which Clayton explored themes of the occult and of children in isolated settings threatened by evil. He examined these subjects in The Innocents, his acclaimed adaptation of Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw,” and would return to it with his version of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983).
Critical Status
Clayton charts the full gamut of childhood emotion – carefree and playful, unforgivingly cruel – in what is one of the most underappreciated portraits of the vicissitudes of childhood.
Dirk Bogarde earned one of his six BAFTA Best Actor nominations for his performance.
Cast
Dirk Bogarde as Charlie Hook
The Children
Margaret Brooks as Elsa
Pamela Franklin as Diana
Louis Sheldon Williams as Hubert
John Gugolka as Dunstan
Mark Lester as Jiminee
Sarah Nicholls as Gerty
Gustav Henry as Willy
