Beware, My Lovely (1952)

"Beware, My Lovely" is a sold noir bordering on horror with proto-slasher elements. It does a fantastic job building suspense and empathy for its heroine, played by Ida Lupino, who also produced the film (through her company, The Filmakers) and took over directing when Harry Horner had to step away due to his wife's illness and passing. All of which should be interest to anyone curious about the history and evolution of horror, women directors, and this era of Hollywood. I'll touch on some of that later in this review, but first...

Uh...

Holy shit, this is a Christmas home invasion proto-slasher from 1952. That's more than twenty years before Black Christmas and significantly older than any other holiday film I've found employing similar tropes to tell the extended story of a woman trying to survive an encounter with a dangerously unstable man in a claustrophobic setting. Hell, it's two years older than the Vault of Horror story, "And All Through the House," which was adapted into segments in the Tales from the Crypt movie and the 1989 episode of the series.

Before horror fans get too excited, "Beware, My Lovely" isn't that kind of story. Or at least the movie isn't - the play it's based on (also written by Mel Dinelli) has an ending more in line with slashers than the movie's finale. This absolutely plays with ideas, story beats, and directing techniques you'd see in slashers, but when I called it a "proto-slasher" at the start, the "proto" part is important. This is an ancestor of Giallo and slasher cinema, not an early example.

I'm going to dive into this, but before I go any further I should credit Jason A. Ney, the film scholar who recorded a commentary track for the Kino Lorber release of this film, for more or less every historical detail related to The Filmakers, the movie's production, and Lupino's career. I rarely listen to tracks like this before writing a review, but "Beware, My Lovely" was so different than I expected, I wanted to see if there was anything in the commentary exploring its place in Christmas media. No such luck on that count, I'm afraid - aside from complications due to the movie being filmed in 100+ degree Hollywood summer conditions, I don't believe Ney mentioned the holidays. But the information he provided on Lupino and the film's history and production was fascinating - it's absolutely worth checking out his commentary if you have access to a copy of the blu-ray.

As always, anyone interested in watching the movie sans spoilers would be wise to stop reading now. How seriously you should take that warning is complicated. "Beware, My Lovely" is most interesting for its place in history (regardless of whether we're talking film history, slasher evolution, or Christmas media)... but it's also just plain good. Is it good enough to be compelling to a casual movie watcher in 2025? Eh... probably not, particularly if they're unfamiliar with stylistic elements of 1950s melodramas. Fans of noir will find this rewarding, but it's not an undisputed masterpiece like, say, Sunset Boulevard. 

The movie starts by introducing Howard (Robert Ryan) at his former job, where he discovers his employer's body in a closet. He's visibly surprised and horrified at what he sees and flees in terror, hopping a train to a new town.

There we meet Helen, a widow supporting herself by renting out a room. Her boarder is leaving town, and she hires Howard to do some work around the house. It soon becomes apparent something isn't right with Howard. He's obsessed with cleanliness, and he seems to become confused and forget things regularly. Helen realizes he's unwell and tries to talk with him, but as he reveals the details of his condition, she starts to understand he might be dangerous.

The condition he suffers from is anterograde amnesia, though the movie certainly doesn't use that term (or any term, for that matter). It's essentially the same condition explored in Memento half a century later (the commentary track questions whether it might have been an influence - I wondered the same thing myself). So add fans of Memento to the list who'd find something here worth exploring beyond the movie itself. The depiction here is less consistent than that in Memento - sometimes he'll remember earlier events while forgetting those over intervening periods of time. For it's worth, that's actually closer to the way I recall anterograde amnesia working based on a handful of books I read in cognitive science classes in college twenty-five years ago (so take that endorsement with a grain of salt).

In practice, this means Howard doesn't remember where he lives, nor does he remember things he's done. However, he seems to know that he's occasionally come to while looking down at someone hurt and been unsure if he was the one who hurt them. He also describes reading about murders in the newspaper, unsure if he might have committed the crime.

At this point, Helen understandably decides she needs to get Howard out of her house. But Howard, sensing that he's found someone kind, isn't in any hurry to leave. Finally, Helen tells him she'll look into the possibility of asking her current tenant to leave, which would open up a room for Howard. This is, of course, a lie - her only boarder is out of town for a few weeks, and she has permission to rent the room in his absence. While she's upstairs looking for Howard's coat, someone comes to inquire about the open room, and Howard discovers he's being lied to.

He reacts poorly, trapping Helen in her house. He pulls out the phone line to prevent her using it and threatens to hurt some kids to prevent her from alerting them to what's going on. The movie does a notably good job of showing us Helen's reasonable attempts to escape or call for help, as well as how Howard is able to prevent these from working.

Things escalate as he makes it clear he intends to assault her sexually. She fights back, eventually grabbing a pair of shears. Howard disarms her, and she collapses unconscious, at which point he has an episode. In his mind, he's standing over the body of a woman, unsure if she's alive or dead, with no memory of what happened. He flees from the room and collapses when he can't get the front door open, unaware the key is in his pocket.

When Helen wakes up, she finds Howards cleaning, having forgotten everything that occurred since he started working. She forces herself to play along. He's about to leave when some employees from the phone company show up to check on her line. She manages to speak to one alone and explains the situation, requesting they take Howard to the police. In the confusion of Howard getting his coat, he seems to disappear. The phone company employees drive around to look for him, while Helen locks herself inside for safety, unaware Howard is upstairs.

She discovers her mistake when he comes downstairs. She cowers in a chair beside the Christmas tree as we see Howard's reflection in multiple ornaments. But, in this version of the story at least, he doesn't remember much of anything and remains docile and polite. The phone employees return, and Howard departs with them, unaware they're bringing him to the police.

Note I said that's how this version ends. "Beware, My Lovely" is adapted from the play, "The Man," which in turn was adapted from a short story called, "To Find Help," all from the same writer. It was also adapted into multiple radio shows, the first of which (from an episode of the series Suspense) starred Frank Sinatra, a tangential connection to yet another Christmas movie genre. The play has a much darker ending, with Howard killing Helen and forgetting what he's done. I'm unsure how the short story ended, but I'm guessing it was more in line with that.

This also apparently changed a plot point where Howard kills Helen's dog early on, instead opting to have him chase the animal off and it returning to her in the final shot. I certainly don't mind them pulling some punches for the movie, regardless of whether the result would have been closer to our modern understanding of a slasher. I was, however, a little disappointed by how little Helen's actions seemed to determine her fate. She's clever and courageous as she fights for her life - after all that, it's a little disappointing that she's saved mostly through luck. Though, to be fair, she manages to play along and not lose her chance to escape alive.

The sequences where Helen is trying to get away while Howard is preventing her will feel familiar to anyone who's seen later suspense movies and slashers in particular. And the way the movie uses Ryan's physicality to make Howard seem like an unstoppable force would become a hallmark of the slasher genre a few decades later. It's also worth noting how much Helen feels like a precursor to a final girl, despite the absence of any prior victims (other than the woman at the beginning). Again, this isn't actually a slasher... but it feels like one in ways that are surprising.

Likewise, the movie plays with point-of-view throughout - both Helen's and Howard's - in ways that would be echoed in slashers in the decades to come. At the same time, this differs in a key respect: the movie is committed to empathy for both Helen and Howard, who is a sort of victim of his condition. That doesn't forgive the things he does, but the movie acknowledges his humanity even as it uses him as a symbol of fear. That obviously wouldn't be common in slashers of the '70s and '80s (though we certainly see it in '60s forerunners such as Peeping Tom and Psycho).

There's a key sequence at the end where we see Howard's image reflected in Christmas ornaments that illustrates this. In the commentary, Ney describes this in passing as reflecting Howard's different personalities, but I don't think this is entirely accurate. I think it would be more accurate to say we're seeing different aspects of Howard's personality which manifest depending on context. Moreover, his capacity for compassion, anger, fear, or violence is frighteningly normal. What makes Howard dangerous aren't these disparate aspects of his self, but rather the absence of a consistent narrative dictating which is presented. These modes of behavior are in us all - hell, we see then in Helen as she shifts between compassion, fear, and violence in her attempts to survive. The difference, of course, is her shifts are rational, while his - decoupled from any context other than the immediate - are terrifying in their seeming randomness. But the recognition that any of us are capable of such a range of emotional responses and violent actions is disturbing in its own right.

Of course the other side of all this is that this movie, like countless others of its time, ours, and every decade in between, demonizes mental illness in the process of telling its story. The decision to end this without further bloodshed slightly reduces this, but it's still worth noting this is, was, and will probably always be a problematic trend in genre.

At the same time, I appreciate how heavily this asks the audience to identify with its female character as someone we want to win, as opposed to someone we should want to see saved. Helen isn't helpless, foolish, or weak, and the movie regularly places us in her predicament, framing shots from her point-of-view and denying us the opportunity to laugh at her for not doing something obvious (whatever you think she should try, she tries). If more movies of this era had been made with women on both sides of the camera, it's likely this wouldn't be so rare.

It's the movie's Christmas connections I find the most interesting (though you probably guessed that). They're not particularly pronounced compared to most modern holiday set productions, but "Beware, My Lovely" takes care to establish the season and keep it front and center throughout. The first shot is of a Salvation Army band, and the Christmas tree in Helen's house features predominately through the film. In addition to the reflections in decorations, there's an incredible shot of Helen descending the stairs in her home after regaining consciousness that's eerily evocative of coming into a decorated room on Christmas morning, unsure what awaits.

As I said, the commentary didn't shed much light on why this choice was made, though Ney mentions the summer heat made for some uncomfortable days. That does highlight that it would have been a conscious choice to set this at Christmas. I haven't been able to locate specifics on the play this was directly adapted from or the original short story (Dinelli managed to monetize this across a number of mediums), but I was able to locate both the 1945 and 1949 episodes of the radio show, Suspense, neither of which indicated a time of year.

In the case of the movie, there are a handful of references in the script (such as kids coming by to drop off gifts), but nothing that couldn't have been easily changed. Clearly, they wanted to be able to play with imagery associated with Christmas and were willing to endure hot days under heavy coats to do so. This was clearly important to the filmmakers.

As far as why, I'm not entirely sure. The sequences I've mentioned are evocative, though perhaps not as striking as they'd have been in color. The most obvious possibility is for the contrast between fear and the holidays, though the movie doesn't really exploit this. What feels more tangible is the sense of strangeness, of feeling like your own home is transforming into something else. Perhaps they were also thinking about connections between the solstice and time, and the ways those mirror Howard's inability to form memories. In a sense, Howard exists outside of time, as his life lacks a coherent temporal narrative. And of course it's always possible the holidays are a reference of Christmas ghost stories. There's nothing supernatural here, but the movie has an eerie quality pushing further towards horror than the typical noir.

Regardless of why, the movie's existence makes me question the development of Christmas horror. Black Christmas remains notable (among other reasons) as the first true Christmas slasher (and one of the original slashers period). I can't say with any degree of certainty that this was an influence on that film, but the fact both are largely set in a single building in which a dangerous invader threatens female protagonists at Christmas is certainly noteworthy. Beyond that, it's simply fascinating as an early connection between the holidays and the developing horror genre, predating even The Night of the Hunter by a few years.

All of which, for me at least, has the effect of overshadowing the film, itself, which is a bit awkward, as "Beware, My Lovely" really is quite good as a movie. But fair or not, the movie's context as a forerunner of the slasher, an early holiday horror, and a production overseen by (and partially directed by) the first woman credited with directing in the genre, are more compelling than the movie itself.