The Uninvited (1944)

Martin Scorsese and Guillermo Del Toro count this among their favorite horrors. In earlier days, it stood out as one of the first non-comedy ghost stories in Hollywood. It's also remembered for the debut of much-covered jazz standard "Stella by Starlight," which, oddly enough, isn't remotely scary. I don't know which if any of these details first drew my attention to the film, but I wanted at least one oldie for the month.

While vacationing on the Cornwall coast, Rick (Ray Milland) and Pamela (Ruth Hussey) stumble on a disused yet charming cliffside mansion and decide to move in from their London flat. Commander Beech (Donald Crisp) gives them a good deal on it, explaining that it is not only out of the way but often considered creepy, if only by virtue of having enigmatic old-house personality and his daughter Mary's tragic death 17 years ago, which had prompted him to move out. Beech's 20-year-old granddaughter, Stella (Gail Russell), is too sentimental about her childhood home to let it go altogether, so she appeals to Rick's heart, and he lets her visit. Only after they enter the one unpleasant room do they start to see why previous tenants bailed. Something there overwhelms the senses if not the will, and that something doesn't entirely restrict itself to that room thereafter. What were the exact circumstances of Mary's death, anyway?

The Big Clock (1948)

Rarely has a Netflix jacket description been so misleading. It says that this story concerns a man, George Stroud (Ray Milland), framed for murder by his boss, Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton). In truth, Janoth wishes to frame the one witness to his whereabouts at the time of the murder, believing said witness not to be Stroud. He even orders Stroud, in charge of investigative journalism, to dig up as much as he can about the mysterious fugitive. With self-protective deceptions on both sides, no character fully comprehends the situation until near the end of the 95 minutes.

Unsurprisingly, such intrigue and complexity, which can be confusing and amusing in turn, come from a novel that debuted a couple years earlier. Kenneth Fearing (appropriate name for a thriller novelist) wrote it partly to express his anger at his own overbearing boss at TIME, hence the otherwise curious obsession with clocks at a news magazine corporation. Funnily enough, contemporary reviews in TIME praised both the book and the movie.