Night Watch (1973)

Night Watch has the distinction of being the only horror movie Elizabeth Taylor made. And this 1973 British production is a reasonably successful effort.

It follows the psychological horror formula that had become familiar in the early 60s, in movies like Hammer’s psycho-thrillers of that era. But Night Watch adds a few new twists of its own.

Elizabeth Taylor is Ellen Wheeler. She is married to investment consultant John Wheeler (Laurence Harvey) although she is apparently wealthy in her own right. The marriage seems happy enough. John works fairly long hours but Ellen has her friend Sarah Cooke (Billie Whitelaw) to keep her company. Ellen is somewhat disapproving of Sarah’s mysterious affair with a married man. on the whole these seem like reasonably normal upper middle-class people. Until one night, in the middle of a severe storm, Ellen sees something in the window of the deserted house next door.

Ellen is sure she saw a murdered man with his throat cut. It was jut a glimpse as the shutters briefly blew open before blowing closed again but Ellen is convinced that she did indeed see a murdered man. The police are called but a search of the deserted house reveals nothing unusual or sinister. John is inclined to think that Ellen let her imagination play tricks on her, and the police share his view.

Ellen lost her first husband Carl in a car accident some years earlier. We do not find out the circumstances of the accident until late in the picture but Ellen has clearly never quite recovered from this tragedy.

Shortly afterwards Ellen sees another body in the derelict house, this time a woman’s body. The police are called again and again they find nothing. Ellen becomes increasingly distraught and John, by this time very concerned, calls in his psychiatrist friend tony (Tony Britton) to take a look at Ellen.

Ellen refuses to be shaken in her belief that she really did see those bodies. She is so persistent that they even dig up her neighbour Mr Appleby’s flower beds but they can still find absolutely no evidence to support Ellen’s story. Ellen rings Inspector Walker (Bill Dean) so many times that the police dismiss her as a harmless crank and no longer bother to respond to her phone calls. On Tony’s advice Ellen eventually agrees to admit herself to a private clinic in Switzerland but before she takes that plane flight the story reaches its climax.

As you might expect Elizabeth Taylor gives a wonderfully over-the-top performance. Taylor was never afraid to push her acting to extremes that would have been ridiculously histrionic in any other actress, but she was always able to get away with it. And she gets away with it here. Her performance is the key to the film’s success and she delivers the goods.

Laurence Harvey and Billie Whitelaw provide fine support. Robert Lang is amusing as Mr Appleby, a man who seems both absurd and vaguely sinister.

Brian G. Hutton directed only a handful of movies although these included another rather outrageous and very entertaining Elizabeth Taylor vehicle, Zee and Co (released in the US as X, Y and Zee). He does a very capable job with Night Watch. Screenwriter Tony Williamson had a prolific carer in British television, writing episodes for just about every crime/adventure series of the 60s and 70s. Twisted little stories were something he was very good at and his screenplay is economical and effective.

This movie has been released in the Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD series, in an excellent anamorphic transfer.

Night Watch is a fine example of the British psychological horror thriller and Elizabeth Taylor’s performance in her only horror outing is certainly an added inducement. Taylor proves that she can do horror very well indeed.

The Second Woman (1950)

The Second Woman (later re-released with the title Ellen) is a 1950 United Artists release that has languished in obscurity and that’s rather unfortunate.

The opening is obviously and I would assume deliberately reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Rebecca. A woman tells us that she keeps remembering a house, a house named Hilltop, now just a ruin.

There are moments that will call to mind several other notable movies of the 1940s, including other Hitchcock movies.

We get a scene with a man seemingly over come by carbon monoxide fumes from a car with its engine kept running in a garage.

A woman is told that she should leave her house immediately because she is in extreme danger.

We need to be wary of taking anything we see in this movie at face value.

Then we go into a flashback which occupies most of the movie’s running time.

Ellen Foster (Betsy Drake) meets Jeff Cohalan (Robert Young) on a train. He’s charming and friendly and he seems to be trying to pick her up (and she seems to like the idea) but there’s something slightly odd about him. He seems a bit distracted, a bit moody. As if something was haunting him.

They’re both heading for the same small town.

Jeff is an architect and apparently a very successful one. He’s well-liked but people worry about him. He has never been the same since the accident in which his wife was killed. Nobody likes to talk about the accident and Jeff certainly doesn’t want to talk about it.

But Ellen has fallen head over heels in love with Jeff and there’s no way to restrain a woman’s curiosity.

Jeff invites her to look inside Hilltop, the house he designed and in which he lives. That causes some surprise to the locals - Jeff has never allowed anybody inside Hilltop.

Jess seems to be getting more distracted and disturbed. And strange things keep happening to him. His much-loved horse breaks its leg. His dog is poisoned. There is worse to come. The painting is a particular puzzle. It’s one of Jeff’s prized possessions but the colours have started to fade. Ellen is convinced there’s something very significant about this painting.

And as Ellen says, it just isn’t possible for anybody to have that much bad luck. There’s something sinister going on. Everything that Jeff loves dies. Dr Hartley (Morris Carnovsky) is concerned that Ellen might be in danger. That seems more and more likely.

One nice twist is that we cannot be certain that Ellen is the one in danger. Events seem to be heading inexorably towards disaster but we don’t know from which direction the danger is coming and we don’t know the motive.

There are several plausible explanations for these strange events. The movie does a pretty good job of keeping us in doubt about the actual explanation.

The plot twists are handled quite deftly. There’s some decent misdirection. Mostly it relies on an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia that builds gradually but inexorably.

I loved Jeff’s cliff-top modernist house (I dislike modernist architecture for public buildings but I have a real weakness for modernist houses).

I have issues with Robert Young in his 1930s movies. He tries too hard and he’s too hyper-active. By 1950 however he had learnt to tone things down and he gives a fine subtle performance here. Betsy Drake is a likeable lively heroine.

This is a psychological thriller at times veering toward psychological horror and with some hints of the gothic. There are obvious echoes of Rebecca but also of Suspicion and Spellbound and maybe Laura.

This movie ticks just about all my boxes. I enjoyed it enormously. It deserves to be much better known. Highly recommended.

My copy of this film, which obviously had fallen into the public domain, is in one of those Mill Creek 50-movie DVD sets (in this instance their Mystery Classics set). The transfer is quite good.

Double Door (1934)

Double Door is a 1934 Paramount release and it came out in May of that year so it is a pre-code movie. It has definite claims to being a horror movie, but not in the style of the 1930s Universal horror films. There’ll be more to say on the subject of genre later.

It was based on a hit play of the same name by Elizabeth McFadden. The play itself was based on the real-life story of the fabulously wealthy but bizarre Wendell family. The last of the Wendells died in 1931.

McFadden denied that her play was based on the Wendells but the parallels between that family and McFadden’s fictional Van Brett family are so striking that it stretches credibility beyond breaking point to believe that the Wendells were not the inspiration for the play.

The setting is Manhattan in 1910. A wedding is taking place in the Van Brett family mansion. It might be 1910 but despite the family’s vast wealth the house seems decades out of date. The past is an oppressive presence.

The family is ruled by the formidable Victoria Van Brett (Mary Morris). Under the terms of her late father’s will she controls the money. Her sister Caroline (Anne Revere) and her half-brother Rip (Kent Taylor) are entirely dominated by her. Right from the start we sense that Victoria is not quite sane and is consumed by hatreds and resentments. We will quite soon discover that she is not sane at all and that she is very definitely evil.

Rip has married Anne Darrow (Evelyn Venable), a nurse. Victoria is furious at the idea of a Van Brett marrying someone from outside the Van Brett’s social class. To her marrying a nurse is not much better than marrying a shop girl or a parlour maid. Victoria is determined to wreck this marriage and her overwhelming and controlling personality and iron grip on the purse-strings puts her in an excellent position to do so. Victoria will stop at nothing to destroy the marriage and to destroy Anne.

Rip is pleasant enough but he’s a weakling and a fool. Anne has one ally, Rip’s best friend Dr John Lucas (Colin Tapley), but there’s a complication. Dr Lucas had at one time been in love with Anne and Victoria can (and will) use that fact to plant seeds of suspicion in Rip’s mind.

Anne is soon engaged in a desperate and seemingly losing fight to save not just her marriage but her sanity as well. Victoria’s madness reaches epic proportions.

Mary Morris gives us an extraordinary portrait of malevolent insanity which is truly amazing to watch. Paramount’s promotion of the movie compared her to Karloff and Lugosi and the comparison has some substance to it. Victoria Van Brett is a full-blown monster, albeit a human monster.

Anne Revere takes stagey overacting to levels never previously thought possible.

Evelyn Venable is a likeable enough heroine. This is a movie entirely dominated by the women. Both Kent Taylor and Colin Tapley are adequate but a bit colourless

This is out-and-out melodrama. From the start there’s an atmosphere of suppressed hysteria in the Van Brett household and the hysteria soon bursts into full bloom.

There’s also a very strong gothic feel. There’s something slightly decadent and Poe-like in the descent into collective madness of the slowly decaying and degenerating Van Brett family.

It’s not really the plot that matters so much as the overheated claustrophobic atmosphere and the extraordinary menace projected by Mary Morris’s bizarre but fascinating performance.

And there are some genuine horror moments. There are no hints at all of the supernatural. The Van Brett mansion is hunted not by ghosts but by very human evil. The other characters are trapped is a web of malevolence spun by Victoria.

Double Door is an oddity but an extremely interesting one and it’s highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray looks nice and includes some extras.

recent reviews from my other movie blog

Some recent reviews from my Cult Movie Reviews blog that might be of interest -

Duel in the Jungle (1954) is a lightweight but fun Anglo-American adventure romp with Dana Andrews.

Tarzan and His Mate (1934) is one of the most notorious of all pre-code movies and it’s also quite possibly the best-ever Tarzan movie.

The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929) was the first of the Paramount Fu Manchu movies with Warner Oland (better-known as Charlie Chan) as Fu Manchu. And it’s quite entertaining.

Against All Flags (1952) was one of Errol Flynn’s later swashbucklers. Not in the same league as the great Flynn adventure films but it’s worth it for Anthony Quinn’s gloriously over-the-top supporting performance.

Carry On Cleo (1964) was the best movie of the entire Carry On series. And, very surprisingly for a Carry On movie, the production values are remarkably high.

The Night Has Eyes (1942), a British thriller with a very strong admixture of the gothic. One of James Mason’s early starring roles.

Corridor of Mirrors (1948)

Corridor of Mirrors is a fascinating 1948 British gothic melodrama with perhaps just the faintest hint of film noir (enough to get it included in the 14th Annual San Francisco Film Noir Festival in 2016 anyway).

Mifanwy Conway (Edana Romney) has a wonderful husband and two lovely children and she is certainly not lacking for money. She seems to be very happily married. So why is she setting off to London to see her lover? It’s a complicated story, told mostly in flashback. She does meet her lover, at Madame Tussaud's wax museum, but she doesn’t meet him in the way you might expect. He’s one of the exhibits.

Seven years earlier Mifanwy was a high-spirited girl and a fixture in the night club scene. She and her friends belong to the infamous set known as the Bright Young Things. They live for pleasure and for parties and most of all they enjoy thumbing their noses at their parents.

It’s probably inevitable that her path will eventually cross that of Paul Mangin (Eric Portman). Mangin is an artist, fabulously rich and notoriously eccentric. Mifanwy thinks this will be a harmless romantic diversion, another way to deal with boredom. Mangin however seems to be fascinated by her to the point of obsession.

Mangin claims to have been born 400 years too late. He should have been born 400 years earlier. He should have lived in the Italy of the Borgias. It’s not all that uncommon to feel that way but Paul Mangin takes the idea very seriously indeed. In fact he does live in the Italy of the Borgias - he has recreated the past in his palatial home.

Mifanwy is the woman he has been waiting for. He has been waiting for her all his life. Women expect men to say such things but Mifanwy begins to suspect that in this case it is literally true. Mifanwy still thinks she can keep things on the level of a casual love affair but it is clear that to Paul there is nothing remotely casual about it.

There are plenty of bizarre plot twists to come and I won’t spoil the movie by revealing any more. Suffice to say that this is a movie that likes to surprise us and it throws plenty of ideas at us.

Star Edana Romney co-wrote the ambitious screenplay, based on a novel by Christopher Massie. 

This was the first feature film directed by Terence Young. Young went on to considerable success in the 60s helming three Bond movies (including the best of them all, From Russia with Love). 

The style of Corridor of Mirrors is unapologetically arty. This might irritate some viewers but there was probably no other way to handle this material. The story flirts with gothic horror and also with fantasy and the danger with this is that it could have subsided into whimsy or jokiness - in this case the artiness certainly works far better than whimsy or comedy would have. It also gives Young and cinematographer André Thomas the opportunity to indulge themselves in all manner of arty effects. Although it’s a British film it was for some reason shot in a French studio. 

Edana Romney looks striking and exotic and this is essential. The film could not have worked otherwise. As for her acting, she never really manages to make Mifanwy sympathetic and at times her character’s motivations are rather obscure. Fortunately this doesn’t really matter - what does matter is that despite his obsessiveness we should feel some sympathy for Paul Mangin and Eric Portman has no difficulty in achieving this. He also performs the more difficult feat of making Mangin seem like a man who might be mad without ever making him absurd. Had he seemed ridiculous for even a moment the entire film would have collapsed. 

The DVD cover artwork proudly tells us that this was Christopher Lee’s film debut. And so it was. But don’t get too excited - he has no more than a bit part. 

Simply Media’s DVD offers a good transfer. Image quality is excellent; sound quality is acceptable.

Corridor of Mirrors is a bewildering mishmash of genres and influences. It’s easy to point to the movie’s flaws but they don’t really matter. This is a breathtakingly ambitious and wildly strange movie that takes risks and if the risks don’t always come off the wonder of it is that more often than not they do come off. Very highly recommended.

The Verdict (1946)

The Verdict, made by Warner Brothers in 1946, was Don Siegel’s first feature film as director. It was based on Israel Zangwill’s classic 1891 locked-room mystery The Big Bow Mystery. Although some have classified The Verdict as film noir its claims to that status are  rather dubious, although it does have some rather dark moments. It’s one of the many memorable movies that Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre made together during the 1940s, and this time they share star billing.

The movie is set in London in the 1890s. Superintendent Grodman (Sydney Greenstreet) gets a nasty surprise right at the beginning of the film when he discovers that a man who was hanged a few hours earlier at Newgate Prison was in fact innocent. Grodman’s case against the man was based on circumstantial evidence although at the time the case seemed convincing enough. It was certainly enough to persuade a jury to convict. 

Grodman’s distinguished career is now in ruins. He is forced into retirement and to rub salt into the wound his arch-rival, Chief Inspector Buckley (George Coulouris), gets his job.

Grodman has certainly not forgotten the case. He continues to investigate the matter as a private citizen, with some help from his friend Victor Emmric (Peter Lorre), a rather dissolute but engaging artist.

The murder victim had been Hannah Kendall and when her nephew is murdered it seems obvious enough that the crimes are linked, although the exact nature of the linkage remains uncertain. Discovering the link proves to be beyond the meagre powers of the newly promoted Superintendent Buckley. Grodman however is confident that he can solve both crimes.

This is not just a locked-room mystery but also a psychological murder mystery, an aspect of crime in which Grodman has a particular expertise.

There are plenty of red herrings although the ultimate solution is really the only possible one. Screenwriter Peter Milne made quite a few changes in Zangwill’s story but his script is still satisfying as both locked-room puzzle and psychology mystery.

The setting provides the opportunity for the movie to indulge rather lavishly in the fogs for which London was famous (famous in detective stories at least). The gaslight and fog atmosphere works well. The movie comes across as a gothic mystery with a hint of film noir.

This was Don Siegel’s first feature but he already seems very assured.

Sydney Greenstreet gives one of his best performances as the indefatigable Grodman. Peter Lorre is in full-on Peter Lorre mode and his performance is as always delightfully offbeat. Both great actors who were even better when working together - they played off each other so well. The slightly unlikely friendship between Grodman and Emmric is one the movie’s great strengths. They’re both ambiguous and complex characters, and both actors were extremely good at portraying ambiguity and complexity in nicely subtle ways.

In 1946 Greenstreet and Lorre were at the height of their popularity and had by this time made the transition to full-fledged stardom. Warner Brothers considered them (quite rightly) to be capable of carrying an A-picture.

Joan Lorring has fun as a music hall singer who may (or may not) hold the key to the solution.

The Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD offers a fairly good transfer, without extras. 

The Verdict is one of those movies that should appeal to just about all fans of classic movies. If you enjoy murder mysteries, if you enjoy gothic movies, if you enjoy film noir - this one has all bases covered. Add to that Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre at their top of their form and you have a surefire winner. Highly recommended.

This Side of the Law (1950)

Warner Brothers have come up with a few interesting film noir items in their made-on-demand Archive series, and This Side of the Law certainly qualifies as interesting.

This 1950 Warner Brothers offering is perhaps more of a gothic thriller than a true film noir but it has enough noirish elements to be worthy of consideration by noir fans.

We start in true noir style with the hero in a great deal of trouble telling us how he got into the mess in a flashback that occupies most of the movie’s running time. David Cummins (Kent Smith) was a vagrant who got a lucky break. At least he thought it was a lucky break. Lawyer Philip Cagle (Robert Douglas) pays Cummins’ fine for vagrancy and offers him a job. All he has to do is be another man for a week.

Cummins happens to be the splitting image of missing millionaire Malcolm Taylor. Taylor has been missing for seven years. In a few more weeks he will be declared legally dead. Cagle doesn’t want that to happen. Cummins will take his place.

Cummins turns up at Taylor’s palatial but very gothic mansion, Sans Souci. He manages to fool Taylor’s brother Calder and Calder’s wife Nadine. He even manages to fool Taylor’s wife Evelyn. So far so good, but Cummins soon discovers that Sans Souci is not a happy place. No-one seems to be pleased to have him back and no-one at the house seems to like anyone else there. Cummins starts to piece a few things together. Malcolm Taylor had been having an affair with Nadine. His relationship with his brother Calder had been uneasy to start but this affair had been the icing on the cake.

Evelyn hadn’t known about Taylor’s affair with Nadine but she knew about his other affairs and the marriage had clearly been very shaky indeed. Now Evelyn finds out about Malcolm and Nadine and a tense situation gets a great deal tenser. While this is happening Calder is being slowly consumed by jealousy. And of course they all wanted Malcolm’s money.

What Cummins hasn’t figured out yet is why exactly Cagle wanted him to impersonate Taylor. Cagle claimed he was acting in Evelyn’s interest and his explanation sounded plausible enough. Cagle also wanted to find out exactly what had been going on at Sans Souci, and exactly why Malcolm Taylor disappeared. Cummins is starting to get an inkling of what the real situation is and it puts him in a difficult position.

Cummins is your typical noir hero. He’s a decent enough guy and he really didn’t want to get involved in such a messy situation but he really needed the $5,000 Cagle offered him to impersonate Taylor. Now he’s in over his head and things are threatening to get out of control. He’s playing a perilous game with some very dangerous players.

Kent Smith had a very long career from the 1930s to the 1970s but never quite made it as a star. His leading roles were always in B-pictures. It’s difficult to understand why this was so. He had the looks and he had the talent. Perhaps the explanation is simply that he never got that breakthrough rôle that might have propelled him to stardom. In this movie he shows that he had what it takes to be a fine film noir lead. It’s a nicely understated performance.

Viveca Lindfors does well as Evelyn, but it’s Janis Paige who gets the juicy female rôle as the scheming femme fatale Nadine and she makes the most of it.

Russell S. Hughes’ screenplay (from a story by Richard Sale) is pefectly serviceable. Director Richard L. Bare had a long if undistinguished career but he keeps the action moving along. There are no wasted scenes and Bare and cinematographer Carl E. Guthrie  capture the right atmosphere, a mix of film noir and gothic. The limited budget necessitated the use of matte paintings for some of the exterior shots of the cliff-top mansion but I always feel that the obvious use of matte paintings actually enhances a gothic feel, and that’s certainly the case here. Bare makes effective use of the classic gothic device of having key scenes played out on a treacherous cliff top. It’s an unoriginal idea but it works and it adds to the menacing gothic flavour.

The Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD offers a fine transfer although as usual in this series there are no extras.

This Side of the Law is an unassuming but thoroughly satisfying B-movie. Recommended.

Dark Waters (1944)

Dark Waters is a 1944 United Artists release that could be described as an exercise in southern gothic film noir.

Leslie Calvin (Merle Oberon) and her family were trapped in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies when the Japanese invaded. They managed to get aboard a cargo steamer bound for New Orleans but the ship sank. There were only four survivors, including Leslie. Her parents both perished. As the film opens she is in a hospital in New Orleans. She is physically recovered but psychologically she is still extremely fragile. Her only surviving family comprises an uncle and an aunt whom she has never met. They are contacted but it seems they have just moved to Louisiana to take possession of a family plantation in the bayou country. Leslie had expected them to meet her at the railway station but for some reason they do not show up, and overcome by depression and loneliness she passes out. Luckily the kindly Dr George Grover (Franchot Tone) happens to be at hand.

Dr Grover drives her out to the plantation, Rossignol. Aunt Emily (Fay Bainter) and Uncle Norbert (John Qualen) seem friendly but slightly distracted. An old family friend who lives at Rossignol, Mr Sydney (Thomas Mitchell), appears to be the one giving the orders. Also present is the estate manager, Cleeve (Elisha Cook Jr). The atmosphere is definitely strained. Mr Sydney is all affability on the surface but he clearly expects everyone to do as he tells them.

Romance blossoms between Leslie and Dr Grover but for some unexplained reason no-one at Rossignol seems entirely happy about this. Also curious is the fact that even though they know about Leslie’s horrific experiences in an open boat after her ship was torpedoed they seem to keep making unfortunate references to the sea or to disturbing subjects involving water (such as the fact that not long before a woman had been claimed by the quicksands in the bayous).

Leslie is convinced she is losing her her mind. She keeps hearing voices. Then a chance encounter with an old family retainer who had been dismissed from Rossignol by Mr Sydney makes it clear to her that she is threatened by something far more sinister than madness. But is there anybody she can trust? Dr Grover seems to be the only one but even he is sceptical of the story she tells. Somehow she must convince somebody that she is not crazy but is in imminent danger.

Merle Oberon does pretty well in the leading role, conveying Leslie’s fears without resorting too much to hysterics. Franchot Tone gives a solid and likeable performance as Dr Grover. He underplays the role nicely. Elisha Cook Jr gives one of his best performances (and he was always good) as the creepy and distinctly over-friendly Cleeve. it is Thomas Mitchell however who steals the picture. He is delightful sinister as Mr Sydney. He is able to inject an extraordinary menace into Mr Sydney’s affability.

The screenplay went through numerous hands (including those of John Huston). An unusual feature is that although Hollywood movies normally liked to tie things up neatly at the end this script makes no attempt to explain fully the criminal conspiracy at the heart of the plot. Director André De Toth (who helmed some fine movies in the film noir canon) wisely doesn’t let this worry him and concentrates on building the brooding and malevolent atmosphere. De Toth, a fine and rather underrated director, always relished slightly offbeat material.

The bayou country setting is used with considerable skill and there is a definite southern gothic ambience to this picture. The swamps seem alive with menace and evil and one false step can land you in the quicksands. The rather gothic house fits in very nicely with the general tone. The people are as worrisome as the settings. The more charming a person is the more reason you have to fear them.

The Region 1 DVD from an outfit called Mr FAT-W Video is truly terrible. Even the scenes filmed in bright sunlight look like they were filmed in the middle of the night. Everything looks dark and muddy and there is considerable print damage. Sound quality is barely acceptable. It’s also expensive so you’re getting rock-bottom budget quality at a premium price. Amazon claims this DVD comes from Image Entertainment but their name is found nowhere on either the disc or the packaging. This movie deserves much better treatment on DVD.

Dark Waters is an unusual and exceptionally interesting blend of terror, mystery and suspense. An excellent movie and worth grabbing even if the DVD is not up to scratch. Highly recommended.

House by the River (1950)

House by the River is rather unusual among Fritz Lang’s American films. It’s a period thriller, set presumably sometime in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. And this is unquestionably a gothic thriller.

This was a low-budget movie, made by the Republic studio. Republic was a Poverty Row studio although they did make the occasional A-picture. They were certainly not as low down the food chain as PRC where Lang’s fellow-countryman Edgar G. Ulmer spent most of his career. House by the River doesn’t suffer too badly from its low budget. Lang had adapted surprisingly well to his lengthy sojourn in Hollywood. None of his American pictures have the lavish budgets of his early German movies but Lang by this time needn’t need big budgets. His style had become much more economical with a much greater focus on character. What he did need was a decent cast, and in this instance he has that.

Louis Hayward is Stephen Byrne, an unsuccessful writer. As we gradually discover, he’s not really much of a success at anything. His brother John (Lee Bowman) is continually rescuing him from one scrape or another. And he’s certainly not much of a husband. When he first meet him he’s trying to seduce his wife’s maid. He is as unsuccessful at this endeavour as he is in everything else, but this time with much graver consequences. He ends up strangling the maid.

As he explains to his brother, it was an accident. It could have happened to anybody. It’s clear that nothing is ever Stephen’s fault. Life is always conspiring against him, causing publishers to reject his manuscripts, and now causing him to commit murder. Against his better judgment, John once again agrees to try to keep Stephen out of trouble.

This proves to be a very poor decision. The evidence at the inquest seems to point more towards John than Stephen, and Stephen does nothing to lessen these ill-founded suspicions against his brother. While John finds himself more and more enmeshed in a nightmare Stephen prospers. One day of course the reckoning will come for Stephen, but will it come too late for John?

Louis Hayward does a very fine job. He gets the self-pity just right. Stephen is a boy who has never grown up, never accepted responsibility. His grip on reality is less than perfect. Much less. The whole world revolves around him. He assumes that because he wants to be a writer he must be one. It’s just those fools of publishers who can’t appreciate his talent. Now he has found a theme that will guarantee the recognition that he believes he deserves. Typically enough his choice of theme is thoroughly self-centred and selfish. He will use the murder he himself committed as material for the novel that will cement his reputation. And in fact the notoriety that surrounds the murder does establish his fame as a writer. Stephen is a nasty piece of work but he is so wrapped up in himself that he’s entirely unaware of it.

Lee Bowman does a capable job as John, while Jane Wyatt is very good as Stephen’s wife Marjorie. But it is Hayward’s performance that is crucial to the movie’s success and he  delivers the goods.

Edward Cronjager was a more than competent cinematographer. He rarely worked in either the film noir or gothic areas but when he did do so he proved himself quite capable, his most impressive work being the very underrated 1947 Technicolor noir Desert Fury. Lang and Cronjager evoke the necessary gothic atmosphere exceptionally well considering the modest budget they had to work with. The scenes on the river are suitably moody and ominous.

Film noir and the gothic overlap quite a bit, both genres tending to focus on doom and the remorselessness of fate, and Stephen Byrne’s story has that sense of inevitability about it that one associates with both genres. The nightmare that John Byrne finds himself living has that same sense of inevitability. John will always try to rescue Stephen, and he was always going to come to grief one day as a result.

The Kino DVD is all too typical of this company’s output. Picture quality is mostly quite acceptable but there is some print damage. It’s certainly nowhere near up to the standard that a Fritz Lang movie deserves. Lang has been both lucky and unlucky where DVDs are concerned. It’s been a positive asset to his reputation that just about all his American movies have been released on DVD and are therefore accessible, but very few have been given top quality releases.

House by the River is an unusual but unjustly neglected part of Fritz Lang’s filmography. Lang and the gothic prove to be a good match and this movie is highly recommended.