The Worst Film Ever

Lack of good storyline.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Another take on the BLUEBEARD/REBECCA type storyline from German auteur Fritz Lang, although I have to say that this is one of his worst movies. The story involves an idealistic young bride who marries a handsome man and moves into his ancestral home only to discover that he's hiding some very dark secrets. Who is the mysterious scarred woman in his home, and what secret is lurking behind door number seven? There seem to have been hundreds of similarly-themed movies made during the 1940s and this is definitely a lesser effort compared to what's come before (Hitchcock's own version of REBECCA was a masterclass in suspense). SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR is slow and stodgy, with little incident to recommend it. Even worse, despite some impressive sets and locations, there's little of the Gothic atmosphere you'd hope from such a production.Joan Bennett is a rather cold heroine and not really someone you can support very much. Michael Redgrave (THE LADY VANISHES) is better, but seems a bit miscast in his role - he's too much of a nice guy to really convince as a sinister suitor. Sure, things do pick up for an appropriately exciting climax, but by that stage it's too little, too late.

With Fritz Lang. Michael Redgrave, Joan Bennett and the supporting cast this movie starts off great. Miss Bennett is so gorgeous, the leading ladies of today must be so jealous while the casting directors must wonder where did all the beauty go, Redgrave is as good as ever I have seen. I know the script can get a bit long toothed but that's just because current films don't rely on story driven movies. Natalie Schafer is such a scene steal-er. I loved this movie. Could not recommend it enough if you have a cold March evening and there is nothing ON TV, just go and bring yourself back to the mid 40's, the fashions, the set dressing will do it and enjoy the masters at movie making doing what they do best.. LOVED IT...

From director Fritz Lang (Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, Metropolis), I was quite surprised to see that this old film in the genre it was and featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die was only rated two out of five stars by critics, I was still going to watch it regardless. Basically in New York, Rick Barrett (Paul Cavanagh) has died, and his sister and heiress Celia (The Reckless Moment's Joan Bennett) who loved him very much has a brief affair with her brother's friend Bob Dwight (James Seay), he is also administrator to the funds, and they later get married. However she goes on a vacation to Mexico, and there she meets Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave), the eccentric and mysterious owner of a minor magazine, she has a crush on him, and later she divorces her original husband, marries him and moves to Lavender Falls, moving into his mansion Blaze Creek. Celia finds out the manor is administrated by Rick's sister Caroline (Anne Revere), also living there is his secretary Miss Robey (Barbara O'Neil) and his rebel and weird son David (Mark Dennis), born from Rick's previous marriage to a woman called Eleanor. Over a short space of time MArk shows strange behaviour, one night he gives a party to common friends and shows all the rooms in the mansion to the guests, all the rooms relate to men that killed the wives, only one room is never opened and always locked, number 7. Celia is highly inquisitive but equally scared to find out the secret beyond the door, and overcome with curiosity she opens the door and find out the mystery, Mark appears to potentially be planning his wife's murder, but it is not him that goes mad, but Miss Robey setting fire to house, and Mark makes it up to Celia saving her life and they reconcile. Also starring Natalie Schafer as Edith Potter. I agree the reason the film isn't perhaps all that thought out is because many of the flashback sequences are confusing, and it is almost too strange to take seriously, but the performance Bennett is certainly the most interesting, Redgrave I agree doesn't have quite enough romantic appeal but he certainly gets being weird pretty spot on, I think the most watchable sequences were certainly the murderous bits full of surrealism, so it is not a completely disappointing thriller melodrama. Okay!

Secret Beyond the Door is directed by Fritz Lang and adapted to screenplay by Silvia Richards from a story by Rufus King. It stars Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Barbara O'Neil and Natalie Schafer. Music is by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography by Stanley Cortez. After a whirlwind romance, Celia Barrett (Bennett) marries Mark Lamphere (Redgrave) but finds once the honeymoon is over his behaviour becomes quite odd... A troubled production and troubling reactions to it by the critics and Lang himself! Secret Beyond the Door is very much in the divisive half of Lang's filmic output. Taking its lead from classic era Hollywood's keen interest with all things Freudian, and doffing its cap towards a number of "women in peril at home" films of the 1940s, it's a picture that's hardly original. Yet in spite of some weaknesses in the screenplay that revolve around the psychological troubles of Mark Lamphere, this is still a fascinating and suspenseful picture. I married a stranger. Draped in Gothic overtones and astonishingly beautiful into the bargain, it's unmistakably a Lang film. His ire towards the cast and studio, where he was usurped in the cutting room and with choice of cinematographer, led Lang to be very dismissive towards the piece. However, it contains all that's good about the great director. Scenes such as the opening involving a paper boat on ripples of water, or a sequence that sees Mark dream he is in a courtroom full of faceless jurors, these are indelible images. Then there's the lighting techniques used around the moody Lamphere mansion that are simply stunning, with Cortez (The Night of the Hunter) photographing with atmospheric clarity. Blades Creek, Levender Falls. Elsewhere the characterisations are intriguing. Mark is troubled by something and we learn it's about women in his life, while his "hobby" of reconstructing famous murder scenes in the rooms of the mansion, is macabre and really puts a kinky distortion in the narrative. Celia marries in haste but is surprisingly strong, her character arc given heft by the fact we think she may well be prepared to die for love. Then there's the house secretary, Miss Robey (O'Neil), a shifty woman with a headscarf covering an unsightly scar on one side of her face, and Mark's young son David (Mark Dennis) who is cold and detached and has some disturbing theories on his father's means and motivations. Lilacs and locked doors. Cast performances are not all top grade, and even though Redgrave doesn't push himself to required darker territories, the performances are involving and worthy of the viewer's undivided attention. Rózsa's musical score is a cracker, deftly switching from the romantic swirls that accompany Mark and Celia during their love courting, to being a stalking menace around the Lamphere house and misty grounds when danger and psychological distortion is near by. Technically it's a remarkable movie, where even allowing for some daftness involving the psychobabble, it's a picture that Lang fans can easily love. There are those who detest it, very much so, but if it does hit your spot it will get inside you and stay there for some time afterwards. 8/10