SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR

THE SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR- The title alone spells D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! This is another wonderful black and white classic about mental illness, love triangle, bossy women and murder! The plot is made up of a combination of "Rebbecca", "Spellbound",a just a pinch of "Citizen Kane", all the great ingredients for every movie spoof on the Carol Burnett Show.

The film started out with a woman's voice over: "I read some where, if a girl dreams about a boat, that means she will sail to safe harbor. But if she dreams of daffodils , it means death... I don't have time to think about daffodils right now, because this is my wedding day..."
Joan Bennett plays Celia a beautiful heiress on vacation in Mexico, she meets a mysterious stranger Mark Lamphere played by Michael Redgrave. She falls in love with him and marry him no questions asked until she goes home to his house where she discovered he was married before with a child and a wife he never loved who died mysteriously.

As part of her discovery she finds out he also has a strange hobby of collecting rooms, his mansion is filled with different rooms with different themes. Each room is a direct purchase of the original... each room come with a story, a story that ends in murder.

There is a delicious cast of characters, mostly women, from the flamboyant Edith Potter ( played by Mrs. Howell Natalie Schafer), to the angry secretary with a veil over her face to the bossy butch sister-in-law, all have over the top performances that make this kind of movie a laff riot.

Fritz Lang directed this film with wonderful surreal images and tells the story in a Hitchcock suspensful way. The movie starts with the line "When I looked into his eyes...I saw death looking back at me..." how can you resist?!