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The Newton/Oakley Family
Young Charlie
Charlotte "Charlie" Newton
Played By: Teresa Wright
"See... that’s the way I feel about you."
A Naïve Everygirl who is suffering from severe Small Town Boredom which she believes her beloved and namesake Uncle Charlie will relieve. He does, but not in the way she expects.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Well, Charlie wanted excitement...
- Break the Cutie: Subverted, but only just barely.
- Coming of Age Story: Young Charlie's naivete is confronted by the darkness of humanity in the form of Uncle Charlie and she comes out a wiser, more sober, and mature young woman.
- Extremely Protective Child: Her parents are clueless, her siblings are too young, and they live in a small-town where everyone knows one another; that's why she has to take Uncle Charlie down without hurting the family reputation or breaking her mother's heart.
- Only Sane Man: She has clueless parents (a ditzy Stepford Smiler Mom and a simple-minded father who is oblivious to the fact his brother-in-law is bad news) and two younger siblings in grade school who even overlook Uncle Charlie's misogynistic and frightening rant while she calls him out for seeing widows as sub-human. The events of the movie, like finding out her uncle is a serial killer, has him meet his match in cleverness.
- Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Her introduction scene has her bewailing the boredom her family has sunken into and hopes her Uncle Charlie will change that. Boy, does he.
- Small Town Boredom: She has already graduated from high school and is bored out of her mind at home and on what to do with her life she receives the call too soon after her uncle arrives in town.
- Tranquil Fury: When Charlie tells Uncle Charlie she'll kill him herself if he doesn’t leave her family alone.
- Two First Names: Her surname "Newton" is also occasionally used as a first name.
- Waif-Fu: She survives her uncle's attempts to kill her, even in the climax where he is manhandling her, a petite teenage girl, but then she gets the upper hand and he meets his maker.
- Wangst: Young Charlie’s melodramatic speech about how her family is losing their souls to boredom is clearly meant to be seen as this.
Uncle Charlie
Charles "Charlie" Oakley
Played By: Joseph Cotten
"I brought you nightmares."
The younger brother of Young Charlie’s mother who comes for a surprise visit that seems to enliven the whole family. He is a wanted Serial Killer using his sister’s All-American family and their sleepy little town to hide from the authorities.
- Above Good and Evil: Uncle Charlie doesn’t seem to care for any moral concept except living off a late husband's wealth.
- Big Little Brother: He's stated to be Emma's younger brother, and yet during a scene where the two siblings hug each other, Charles was shown to be the taller one.
- Black Sheep: From what we gather from his discussions with his sister about their parents and seeing how stable his sister's marriage and children are, Uncle Charlie's issues are shared with no one in his family.
- The Bluebeard: Marries widowed older women to kill them and inherit their money out of an intensely misogynistic Social Darwinist mindset.
- Breaking Speech: Gives Young Charlie a brutal one when she begins to suspect him being The Merry Widow Killer.Uncle Charlie: You think you know something, don't you? You think you're the clever little girl who knows something. There's so much you don't know, so much. What do you know, really? You're just an ordinary little girl, living in an ordinary little town. You wake up every morning of your life and you know perfectly well that there's nothing in the world to trouble you. You go through your ordinary little day, and at night you sleep your untroubled ordinary little sleep, filled with peaceful stupid dreams. And I brought you nightmares. Or did I? Or was it a silly, inexpert little lie? You live in a dream. You're a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it? Wake up, Charlie. Use your wits. Learn something.
- Cain and Abel: He's easily the Cain to Emma's Abel, despite not actually spending too much time with his sister.
- Childhood Brain Damage: His sister recounts how at an early age Uncle Charlie was hit by a car and suffered severe head trauma that he only barely survived. It's left ambiguous whether this is the cause of his sociopathy.
- Cool Uncle: Everyone seems to find Uncle Charlie completely charming and wonderful company. Which is a common trait of sociopaths.
- Creepy Uncle: It's clear from the onset he actively encourages Young Charlie's crush on him, though how much of it is reciprocated or simply to fuel his own ego or just part of his sociopathic tricks to keep himself endeared to the family is left ambiguous.
- Chick Magnet: Every woman and girl is smitten with Uncle Charlie— including his niece.
- Evil Uncle: He was already this by virtue of being a Serial Killer but by the time he attempts to kill Young Charlie twice, he fully embodies this trope.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: He's charismatic and has the good looks to match and throw everybody off.
- Faux Affably Evil: Uncle Charlie just oozes charisma— that manages to just cover up his malignancy.
- He-Man Woman Hater: Zig-zagged. Uncle Charlie targets widows who he feels are lazily living "like pigs" off their dead husbands' money but he doesn't treat Young Charlie, his sister, or really any other woman who doesn't fit that criteria with any more or less hostility than the men he encounters.
- Lack of Empathy: Though he hides it behind charm and an friendly manner it's pretty clear early on that Uncle Charlie doesn't seem to feel any kind of warmth or sympathy for anyone.
- Misanthrope Supreme: Uncle Charlie seems to firmly believe the whole human race is as foul and heartless as he is.Uncle Charlie: Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you'd find swine? The world's a hell.
- Motive Rant: Gives one of the most horrifyingly heartless ones in cinema, made worse by him turning to stare directly into the camera towards the end of it.Uncle Charlie: Women keep busy in towns like this? In cities it's different. The cities are full of women — middle-aged widows, husbands dead. Husbands who've spent their lives making fortunes, working and working. Then they die and leave the money to their wives, their silly wives. What do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands... drinking the money, eating the money. Losing the money at bridge, playing all day and all night. Smelling of money. Proud of their jewelry but of nothing else... Horrible. Faded, fat, greedy women.Young Charlie: They're alive, they're human beings!!Uncle Charlie: (Aside Glance) ...Are they?
- The Sociopath: Probably one of the earliest, most accurate and chilling depictions in film history. Uncle Charlie could give HAL and Hannibal Lecter a run for their money in pure cold-bloodedness.
- The Social Darwinist: Uncle Charlie seems to be disgusted by average people and their humdrum lives, especially if they’re widows living off their late husbands' money.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Part of what makes Charlie so scary is that he looks just like an ordinary man and can easily pass for being just another relative of the Newtons.
- Token Evil Teammate: He's the only member of his family to be completely amoral and lethal, as his sister, brother-in-law, nieces and nephew are all well-adjusted people.
Emma Newton
Emma Newton nee Oakley
Played By: Patricia Collinge
Young Charlie's mother and Uncle Charlie's sister.
- Adults Are Useless: Somehow she never realizes how insane and dangerous her own brother is.
- Cain and Abel: The Abel to Charles' Cain.
- The Ditz: She's really quite the airhead. When the detective suggests that he take out her daughter for dinner so she can show him around town, she says with a big stupid grin, "Ann?" Ann is eleven. When he tells her he meant her older, adult daughter, she still insists he should take out Ann instead.
Joseph Newton
Joseph Newton
Played By: Henry Travers
Young Charlie's father.
- Bumbling Dad: He's is very good-natured and simple-minded, without a skeptical bone in his body. In other words, the kind of brother-in-law who'd be handy for a serial killer on the lam to hang out with.
