ThiefHott Too much of everything

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

isajademarilyn A woman falls for a stranger, marries him and learns dark secrets when she arrives in his mysterious mansion. Her husband is a widower and he might have murdered his first wife. Reminds you of something? Add to that the black and white photography with revealing shadows, and you get a very dull copy of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Rebecca. Released in 1940, seven years before, Rebecca is the first American movie of the British born director.Joan Bennett is only a shadow of Joan Fontaine, and her character doesn't have that fire burning inside and she slowly fades away and bore us til the silly ending. The only interesting key plot was the other rooms, only ruined by Joan Bennett's same blank stare while listening to each rooms' deadly story.Even a better ending couldn't have saved the movie due to dull acting. Prefer Rebecca (1940) if you're looking for a great film noir.

calvinnme This thing is somewhat like Rebecca, in a way. There is an impulsive marriage of a young woman, Celia (Joan Bennett) to a mysterious man, Mark (Michael Redgrave). After the marriage Celia finds out he has been married before, except this time, there is a son by that marriage. And her husband has a personal assistant who is facially deformed and is prone to setting fires. However, Celia is not like Rebecca. She is full of life and not unsure of herself at all.One night, shortly after their marriage, Mark, an architect, talks about how he "collects" rooms as a hobby at a party at their house. Before the guests go look at the rooms, Celia tells the guests how her husband has said in the past that happy occasions are often tied to the rooms in which they occur. However, this tour is not one of happy events, instead all of the rooms are replicas of rooms in which grisly murders have occurred, and the new husband has the murders and the rooms down to the last detail. The look on Celia's face shows that she is suddenly wondering what exactly is going on in the head of that husband of hers.And then one more secret..there is a door where Mark is working away on another replica room where Bennett is not allowed to go. Then one day she manages to get in and finds....I'll let you watch and find out. Let me just say if not for the great visual style of Lang, the fact that Michael Redgrave had a knack for being creepy when he wants to and Joan Bennett could aptly project just about any emotion, and don't forget the score, this thing would have been a total washout, because the ideas are not that original and the ending is just not all that it was built up to be, given all of the wind machines, at least not for me.

anthonymcdonald150 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...

JohnWelles "Secret Beyond the Door..." (1949) is a film noir from the master of the genre, Fritz Lang. It stars Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave in a Freudian tale of strange, twisted neurosis that was made in the wake of Alfred Hitchcock's ostensibly similar take on psychoanalysis, "Spellbound" (1945).The screenplay, by Silvia Richards from Rufus King's short story, is almost another version of the "Bluebeard" fairy tale as well as borrowing odds and ends from Hitchcock's "Rebecca" (1940): the wild and impulsive Celia (Bennett) marries the architect Mark Lamphere (Redgrave), and while on their honeymoon, she realises her new husband has many secrets, such as having had a previous wife, and more intriguingly, a strange hobby of building and replicating rooms where murders have been committed. Yet one room remains locked; driven by curiosity and a growing fear for her own life, she seeks to find the "Secret Beyond the Door…" It is hardly original, stealing mainly from Hitchcock's aforementioned films (even the paintings behind the credits are reminiscent of Salvador Dalí) as well as "Suspicion" (1941) and a whole host of "wife in danger" movies, so popular in the thirties and forties. However, Fritz Lang's immaculate direction lifts this, if not quite into that elite stable of movies that comprise his best American work, then it is still top stuff, stunningly shot by the legendary Stanley Cortez (he was the cinematographer for both Orson Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons" [1942] and Charles Laughton's "The Night of the Hunter" [1955]), giving it a real noir ambiance and excellently acted, the performers all being attuned to Lang's bleak vision of life, the obligatory happy ending notwithstanding, demanded by the studio, RKO.While the psychology is pat and the story is unoriginal, it's treatment is superlative. For fans of noir and of great films, this is a must-see.