"The Red House" came to my attention when I watched Martin Scorsese's "A Personal Journey Through American Movies" documentary. The famous director described the film as a B movie gem, and it is quite fascinating. Edward G Robinson gives an excellent performance in the lead role as reclusive farmer Pete Morgan who lives with his strangely devoted spinster sister (Judith Anderson, very good in a sympathetic role)and sweet young adopted daughter, the very wholesome 17 year old Meg (Allene Roberts, who is a direct cross between Teresa Wright and Cathy O'Donnell). When Meg's high school crush Nath (nice but bland Lon McCallister) comes to do some after-school work, the dark secret of the "The Red House" is revealed, and Robinson's obsession with Meg, and a mysterious figure from the past, grows deeper.
This rises above it's B movie origins largely because of Robinson's performance, and the strange, unsettling motivations of his character. It's sort of Freudian and very creepy. There is an interesting sub-plot with a very young and pouty Julie London and Rory Calhoun having a rough-and-ready romance. Much of the directorial work by Delmer Daves is pretty standard stuff, though he does do a good shadowy night scene. Miklos Rosza's score is effective, but didn't we hear it the year before in "The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers"? It sounded very similar to me, and Rosza's scores unfortunately have a tendency to screech after a while. I watched this on a public domain DVD, and the print was pretty bad. It's worth rescuing from the domain, an interesting and worthy little noir feature.
This rises above it's B movie origins largely because of Robinson's performance, and the strange, unsettling motivations of his character. It's sort of Freudian and very creepy. There is an interesting sub-plot with a very young and pouty Julie London and Rory Calhoun having a rough-and-ready romance. Much of the directorial work by Delmer Daves is pretty standard stuff, though he does do a good shadowy night scene. Miklos Rosza's score is effective, but didn't we hear it the year before in "The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers"? It sounded very similar to me, and Rosza's scores unfortunately have a tendency to screech after a while. I watched this on a public domain DVD, and the print was pretty bad. It's worth rescuing from the domain, an interesting and worthy little noir feature.