“I tell you, she’s a fiend!”

In the overcrowded pantheon of British gothic horror writers, one name in particular remains criminally underrated. J Sheridan le Fanu’s tales are top-notch horror, beautifully written, intelligently played out and bloody scary. He was even writing about sexy vampires long before a certain beardy Irishman, yet as far as everyone is concerned, it was Bram Stoker who invented the vampire as we know it. Perhaps this lack of home-grown adoration stems from le Fanu’s distinctly Gallic surname. Perhaps it was because he never came up with a genre defining bogeyman like Stoker’s Count Dracula or Shelley’s monster.

But whatever the reason, le Fanu’s work deserves a wider audience. Luckily, there have been a few top-notch cinematic outings for his stories, not least of which was Hammer’s lurid The Vampire Lovers.

And long before that tale of teeth, tits and tennis courts steamed its steamy way into the nation’s cinemas, there was Uncle Silas – more of a gothic melodrama than out-and-out horror tale, but filmed in such a way that it holds more than a few genuine shocks and some deeply unsettling scenes.

Caroline (Jean “not the bloke with the tongue out of Kiss” Simmons) lives with her kindly but stern father in Knowl Manor. Papa’s brother, Silas, is the black sheep of the family, having “given himself up to a life of sin”. But it appears that Silas has packed in all that lark, for when Papa returns from his latest visit to Silas’s home he tells Caroline that he can finally take her to see her Uncle. However, Papa’s friend Doctor Brierley has his doubts about this sudden turn-around from the formerly evil Silas. “His eyes have not been opened like mine,” he mutters darkly (an unfortunate turn of phrase, considering the actor’s obvious glass eye).

Caroline’s father is hearing none of this Silas-bashing, though, firmly believing that his brother is now on the straight and narrow. He even engages the services of a governess recommended by Silas. This leads to the first of the many spooky gothic shocks peppered through the film, as a maid sees “something” through the window. Caroline goes to the glass to investigate, only to have a terrifying desiccated face loom up at her then vanish. It’s the governess (who’s actually reasonably normal-looking), but Caroline comments “she looked so strange – like an apparition!”

Has Caroline seen some kind of premonition projected onto the face of the governess? What do you think? As expected, it takes approximately five minutes for Caroline to suss that her new teacher is a bad ‘un, and her worst fears appear to be confirmed when, after being violently quizzed about her father’s will, she runs away across the moors, into the arms of a greasy spiv who appears to be in league with the governess.

Running back home, Caroline goes straight to her father, yelling: “I tell you she’s a fiend!”

Surprisingly, the governess then gets found out, and the penny finally drops with Papa that this is all part of a monstrous plot by his brother to get hold of his money. Before he can change his will, or warn Caroline, Papa suffers a heart attack and croaks.

Caroline is now the ward of her (still unseen) Uncle Silas, and the unsuspecting young lady travels to his bleak, ruined home (all strange angles and dark shadows) determined to make the best of her new situation. Silas, when he appears, is a sort of benevolent Jimmy Savile, and she takes a liking to him, even though she discovers that the greasy spiv who appeared to be plotting with the governess is his son, Dudley.

Caroline’s love of her Uncle is displayed when, having been spirited away for Christmas by her cousin Monica, she rushes back to his side on finding out that he is gravely ill. But on returning to her Uncle’s home she finds that someone has been attempting to forge her signature…

Caroline has been busy making friends wherever she goes, and has even picked up a suitor during her stay at Silas’s home in the heroic form of Lord Ilbury, who lives nearby. But Silas now begins to show his true colours – the man is obviously insane and quite horrible (remarkably so, it’s an astonishing performance). Announcing that he wants to go abroad for his health, he sends all the servants away, organises a series of forged letters from Caroline to send to her friends, and then makes everyone think she has travelled by ship from Dover when she is in fact locked in the disused wing of his house. The scales finally fall from her eyes (“Now I know it’s all a plot!”), but she’s trapped in a room where Silas has committed murder before, guarded by the Governess, with everyone who loves her thinking that she’s off touring the continent.

What’s a girl to do?

The film takes a while to get going, but once Caroline has arrived at her uncle’s house things take an agreeably weird, and wonderfully exciting, turn. There are some astonishing scenes of violence – Lord Ilbury gets to dish out a richly-deserved kicking to the oily Dudley about half way through the film (after Dudley has been soundly bested, but still won’t shut up, Ilbury picks up a whip and starts again), and after a couple of beating-to-deaths there is a carriage-top fight which ends with a character falling under the wheels and having his head squashed – on screen.

The film makers also manage to create some stylish moments which manage to raise a chill despite the creaky age of the film. There is an amazing moment when Caroline sets off for Dover, as the black carriage carrying her flies in an otherworldly way straight at the camera, the horses screaming and foaming at the mouth, the modern viewer has to remind themselves that this film was made before computer graphics made such images commonplace.

Uncle Silas is an oft-neglected gem, and worth 90 minutes of anyone’s time.