Guest In The House (1944): Sex in the strangest places

Directed by John Brahm, Guest In The House, is about a psychopath who sets out to destroy a marriage.  A lesser film noir, but Anne Baxter is suitably creepy as a nut-job with a pathological and eventually fatal fear of birds. Ralph Bellamy a happily married man is in her sights.

What is interesting is firstly that Bellamy is essentially the same straight-up guy from His Girl Friday – a Howard Hawks’ film I loathe for raising calculation and wisecracks above honesty and decency – who is happily married to a charming woman, and secondly that Brahm makes it obvious they have a great sex life. In an early scene they are in their bedroom dancing and fooling around, and there is no doubt they would have happily consummated the frolick in bed, but for a piercing scream from the psycho down the hall. Decent guys don’t come last.  Breen was out to lunch or asleep when this pitch crossed his desk in the early 1940s.

An interesting curio.