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Secret Beyond the Door [VHS]

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This lesser known old dark house thriller from Lang, comes highly recommended. It's not about a haunted house actually, but I'd still call it spooky. I first saw it only a few years ago, but it's already become a fave of mine in this particular category. -Sort of, anyway; the beginning is a bit slow and too romantic, and manages to look completely un-interesting to a Horror fan, but the wait is worth it. While on vacation in South America Bennett falls for stranger Redgrave, and promptly moves in with him. -He's strange indeed; with all the secret rooms in the big house, and two other just as strange occupants. I'll say no more; now go check it out. If you enjoyed the British "Dead Of Night" for instance, Lang's long corridors and the eerie atmosphere here should be a sure pleaser.

Secret Beyond the Door is told by the main character (Joan Bennett), a new bride of a man she met on vacation (Michael Redgrave). She finds that her new husband has kept many things from her, most notably that he was previously married to a woman, now deceased, with whom he had a son. She feels lost and out of the loop in the home the two share with his sister and secretary. Soon, instead of feeling disoriented, she feels terrified for her life, and with good reason.

Fritz Lang directed this film and there are many characteristic elements. First, the initial foreshadowing by use of symbolism is evident both in Lang's silent films and in his film noir talkies. There are several other elements of film noir in this film like narration, flashback, and realistic, imperfect characters.

Joan Bennett is beautiful, like a slightly more plain version of Hedy Lamarr. She is relatable enough to like which makes the viewer more interested in the film.

Michael Redgrave plays the husband, a moody man almost to the point of being bi-polar. He runs a gamut of emotions throughout the film.

The great thing about this film is constantly not knowing what will happen. Although one can guess, other things arise that constantly surprise including a twist near the end. The music is agonizingly tense in moments or extreme danger which keeps one engaged and aching to find out what happens.

Psychiatry, plus a suggestion of the Bluebeard legend, plus a lot of Gothic glooms, was the essence of Fritz Lang's thriller...

The situation is the familiar one of the girl who falls in love and marries a millionaire about whom she knows little, and finds that the home to which he takes her is one of those gloomy mansions which seem to have been built for the mysterious shadows they throw...

She meets there three people whose existence she had not suspected: her husband's sister, who has been running things and wants to carry on (does anyone remember Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers in 'Rebecca'?); his secretary, who had hoped to marry him, and always wears a scarf round her face to hide scars from a fire; and his rather hostile son, who had no more been mentioned than the fact of a previous marriage...

The moody husband (with a death fixation...) has a 'collection' of reconstructions of rooms in which murders have been committed... We visit them all except one: this is kept hurtfully locked...

Is this the room of the first wife, and did her husband murder her? Well, although he too has a guilt complex, he did not kill her. Not loving her, he wished her dead - and blames himself... To get this across, Lang stages an imaginary trial, with the husband as both accuser and accused... We end up, many shadows later, with Redgrave and Bennett having a showdown in the locked room...

Universal Pictures presents "SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR" (1948) --- (Dolby digitally remastered) --- Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe Hollywood crime dramas that set their protagonists in a world perceived as inherently corrupt and unsympathetic...Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression...the term film noir (French for "black film"), first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most of the American filmmakers and actors while they were creating the classic film noirs..the canon of film noir was defined in retrospect by film historians and critics; many of those involved in the making of film noir later professed to be unaware at the time of having created a distinctive type of film ... featuring top performances from the '40s and '50s with outstanding drama and screenplays, along with a wonderful cast and supporting actors to bring it all together ... another winner from the vaults of almost forgotten Hollywood gems ...

Under Fritz Lang (Director/Producer), Walter Wanger (Executive Producer), Rufus King (Screenwriter), Silvia Richards (Screenwriter), Miklós Rózsa (Original Score), Stanley Cortez (Cinematographer), Arthur Hilton (Editor), Max Parker (Production Designer) , John P. Austin (Set Decorations) - - - - the cast includes Joan Bennett (Celia Lamphere), Michael Redgrave (Mark Lamphere), Anne Revere (Caroline Lamphere), Barbara O'Neil (Miss Robey), Natalie Schafer (Edith Potter), Anabel Shaw (Intellectual Sub-Deb), Rosa Rey (Paquita), James Seay (Bob Dwight), Mark Dennis (David), Paul Cavanagh (Rick Barrett) - - - - - released on January 1, 1948, the story line is a Freudian version of the Bluebeard tale, a young, trust-funded New Yorker goes to Mexico on vacation before marrying an old friend whom she considers a safe choice for a husband ... however, there she finds her dream man - a handsome, mysterious stranger who spots her in a crowd. In a matter of days they marry, honeymoon and move to his mansion, to which he has added a wing full of rooms where famous murders took place. She discovers many secrets about the house and her husband, but what she really wants to know is what is in the room her husband always keeps locked.

BIOS:
1. Joan Bennett (aka: Joan Geraldine Bennett)
Date of birth: 27 February 1910 - Palisades, New Jersey
Date of death: 7 December 1990 - Scarsdale, New York

Special foonote, in the early 1940s Bennett appeared in four films directed by Fritz Lang. Three of them (Man Hunt (1941), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street) established her as a film noir femme fatale. She also worked with noted directors Jean Renoir in The Woman on the Beach. and Max Ophüls in The Reckless Moment. She also played the wife of Spencer Tracy and mother of Elizabeth Taylor in Father of the Bride (1950) and its sequel, Father's Little Dividend (1951), She continued to work steadily in theatre and television and was a cast member of the television series Dark Shadows for its entire five year run, from 1966 until 1971, receiving an Emmy Award nomination for her performance therein. Bennett also appeared in a few more films, most notably Dario Argento's Suspiria.

2. Fritz Lang (Director/Producer) (aka: Friedrich Christian Anton Lang)
Date of birth: 5 December 1890 - Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]
Date of death: 2 August 1976 - Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California,

Specal footnote, although some consider Director Fritz Lang's work to be simple melodrama, he produced a coherent oeuvre that helped to establish the characteristics of film noir, with its recurring themes of psychological conflict, paranoia, fate and moral ambiguity. His work influenced filmmakers as disparate as Jacques Rivette and William Friedkin ... in 1931, between Metropolis and Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, Lang directed what many film scholars consider to be his masterpiece: M, a disturbing story of a child murderer (Peter Lorre in his first starring role) who is hunted down and brought to trial by Berlin's criminal underworld. M remains a powerful work; it was remade in 1951 by Joseph Losey, but this version had little impact on audiences, and has become harder to see than the original film, upon his arrival in Hollywood, Lang joined the MGM studio and directed the impressive crime drama Fury, Lang became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939. Lang made twenty-one features in the next twenty-one years, working in a variety of genres at every major studio in Hollywood, occasionally producing his films as an independent. These films, often compared unfavourably by contemporary critics to Lang's earlier works, have since been reevaluated as being integral to the emergence and evolution of American genre cinema, film noir in particular. During this period, his visual style simplified (owing in part to the constraints of the Hollywood studio system) and his worldview became increasingly pessimistic, culminating in the cold, geometric style of his last American films, While the City Sleeps (1956) and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1957) ... (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Hats off and thanks to Les Adams (collector/guideslines for character identification), Chuck Anderson (Webmaster: The Old Corral/B-Westerns.Com), Boyd Magers (Western Clippings), Bobby J. Copeland (author of "Trail Talk"), Rhonda Lemons (Empire Publishing Inc), Bob Nareau (author of "The Real Bob Steele") and Trevor Scott (Down Under Com) as they have rekindled my interest once again for Film Noir, B-Westerns and Serials --- looking forward to more high quality releases from the vintage serial era of the '20s, '30s & '40s and B-Westerns ... order your copy now from Amazon where there are plenty of copies available on VHS, stay tuned once again for top notch action mixed with deadly adventure --- if you enjoyed this title, why not check out VCI Entertainment where they are experts in releasing B-Westerns and Serials --- all my heroes have been cowboys!

Total Time: 99 mins on VHS ~ Lions Gate Video ~ (7/26/1990)

The powerful talent of Fritz Lang was indomitable. The relentless energy he put around every one of his films denotes the admirable capacity to weave a story.

This is far from being the most relevant issue in his extensive career but there's an admirable performance of both of them. Joan Bennet and Michael Redgrave.

She, alone and closed inside an emotive bubble searching for someone; he hides a secret. The progressive tension will lead you to discover what's beyond that closed door.

Don't miss it.