‘Skeleton Key’ unlocks memories of chills past

“The Skeleton Key,” which opens Friday, is a variation on a familiar movie theme: a female encountering ghosts in a dark, creepy house.

Kate Hudson plays a hospice worker who takes a job as a live-in caregiver to a stroke victim (John Hurt) and his wife (Gena Rowlands) at an isolated, creaky plantation house in Louisiana bayou country. Quicker than you can say “things that go bump in the night,” Hudson discovers a hidden door to a room filled with weird artifacts -- pickled body parts, for example -- involving a folk-magic practice called “hoodoo.” The room, she learns, belonged to a former maid and butler who were lynched and burned decades earlier.

Tales of ghosts and possession by evil spirits take many forms. Though there’s no hoodoo in 1944’s “The Uninvited,” there are ghosts and plenty of supernatural chills.

Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey play a brother and sister who buy a beautiful seaside house in England that has been abandoned for years, allegedly because it is haunted. Gail Russell, Paramount’s leading ingenue of the time, plays the granddaughter of the home’s original owner (Donald Crisp), whose mother tragically died in the house.

A gothic-horror classic that’s best watched with the lights on is 1961’s “The Innocents,” masterfully directed by Jack Clayton. Based on Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” -- Truman Capote was one of the screenwriters -- the thriller stars Deborah Kerr as a governess hired to take care of two young charges (Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin) at an austere mansion in the English countryside.

It isn’t long before the governess believes that the grounds and the house are haunted by the evil spirits of the former governess and a sinister valet. Not only does she see ghosts, she begins to believe that the spooky creations are trying to possess the children, who are becoming stranger with each passing day. She decides to take matters into her own hands to wrest control of the children’s souls.

As in those films and many others, there are possessive schemers afoot -- and a lot of thunder and lightning -- in “The Skeleton Key.” They may, or may not, be just who you think they are.

-- Susan King