With the story by Sir Osbert Sitwell and James Mason in a lead part, this movie should have been a lot better than it is. The picture, an English export, would have done more for the reputation of British films had it remained within the sterling bloc.

The subject is ghosts; the treatment is neither scary nor funny--merely heavy-handed. James Mason, as a retired businessman, and his wife, Barbara Mullen, bring their 40 years experience in the drapery business to battle with a frustrated young ghost who haunts their newly-bought country house. Local gossip whispers that an attractive girl was smothered to death there 40 years before by some avaricious caretakers who wanted her inheritance. Mason and Mullen are unimpressed until she begins to whistle in the speaking tubes and bother the help.

The wife has hired a young woman (Margaret Lockwood) as a companion, and the ghost, apparently seeing a psychic likeness, takes her over body and soul. Miss Lockwood heaves and sobs in demonic possession for most of the rest of the film, until she is saved for the world of sunlight and for that Nice Young Man by the intervention of another and even less convincing apparition.

There are a few scenes that come close to success--the servants gossipping in the kitchen, town characters at the pub. Among the characters, James Mason is kindly and venerable, Barbara Mullen patient and faithful, and Margaret Lockwood sufficiently distracted for her part. The whole cast acts far above the lines.

But the actor's efforts do not salvage much of the film. I cannot believe that this production is very true to Sitwell; it has no wit or lightness. In fact, the whole mediocre picture looks much too much like an American production for comfort. The disease may very likely be spreading.