D: Oscar Boetticher. P: Eugene Ling. W: Malvin Wald, Eugene
Ling. Ph: Guy Roe. M: Irving Friedman. St: Lucille Bremer (Kathy Lawrence), Richard
Carlson (Ross Stewart), Douglas Fowley (Larson), Ralf Harolde (Hopps), Tom
Brown Henry (Dr Porter)
Overshadowed by films noirs of a similar theme, Behind Locked Doors lurks also in the
margins of its director’s filmography, where it is his westerns for which he is
held in greatest esteem. Here, the hand-me-down story elements and prohibitive
budget may not constitute an outstanding example of the type, but in Boetticher’s
capable hands they do comprise a pleasantly streamlined suspenser.
Sanatoriums and private hospitals were rarely safe havens in
noir, a lesson learnt by Marlowe in Farewell
My Lovely (1944), the murder witness in Shock
(1946), written by this film’s Eugene Ling, and perhaps most memorably by the
journalist Johnny Barrett in Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor (1963). Behind
Locked Doors anticipates Fuller’s film by having an incognito investigator
passing himself off as a patient to sniff out a criminal. In Shock Corridor it was a journalist going
undercover; in this case it is a private detective Ross Stewart, who is hired
by reporter Kathy Lawrence to infiltrate Dr Porter’s secretive La Siesta
institution. Kathy is convinced the crooked judge Finlay Drake (Herbert Heyes)
is hiding within La Siesta’s walls, and convinces Ross to pose as her manic depressive
husband and get himself committed. This is not entirely a public-spirited gesture
on their part, since there is a $10,000 reward for the judge’s capture.
Dark mutterings from his room-mates are borne out when Ross tries
to investigate the locked ward – reserved for dangerous inmates – and is warned
off by Larson, a sadistic warden. With the inadvertent aid of a conveniently placed
pyromaniac, Ross is able to gain entry to the forbidden area and sees Drake for
himself, ensconced in comfort. But the judge and Porter are suspicious of the
newcomer and conspire with Larson to silence him before he can expose them.
Clocking in at a terse 62 minutes, Behind Locked Doors is necessarily light on exposition and requires
more than a little generosity of spirit on the part of the viewer. (There would
be no need for such charity with Boetticher’s great westerns, each one an
exemplar of lithe, economical filmmaking.) The ease with which Ross and Kathy
hoodwink a psychiatrist to facilitate his committal is typical of the shortcuts
that expedite the narrative. So too the amorous badinage, issuing mostly from
Ross, which signals immediately that the relationship between detective and
reporter will not remain purely professional for very long. This provides
ballast for Kathy’s gathering alarm, especially when she visits the hospital to
be told Ross has been attacked by a fellow patient and is in no state to see
her.
The dangers Ross faces are more convincing than the
manufactured romance that wraps around the story like a comfort blanket. Carlson
sheds the character’s veneer of bravado at just the right pace, synchronised to
beatings from Larson and the Champ (played by wrestler and Ed Wood acolyte Tor
Johnson), a punch-drunk ex-pugilist who reflexively starts swinging whenever
Larson simulates the sound of a bell. (Johnson’s image was used to promote a
re-release of this film under the classy title The Human Gorilla.) The sense of foreboding is amplified by film
craft. Boetticher finds all the most disorienting angles in a fairly basic set
that offers him little room for manoeuvre, its limitations further ameliorated
by Guy Roe’s deft photography.
Notwithstanding the cut-and-paste plot and second-string
cast, Behind Locked Doors is a
satisfying sampler of the bargain-bin B-pictures that skirted the noir canon. Inevitably
there are dangling threads – why is the warder Hopps so fond of a mute teenage
boy in his charge? What is the nature of the judge’s dirty business? – and the
characterisations are on the flimsy side. (The acting is more than adequate,
with Fowley the standout as a bespectacled bully.) These are forgivable flaws. Consider
this a light appetiser for Hollywood’s more heavy-handed attempts to wring drama
from psychiatry and mental illness – The
Snake Pit, The Locket, Spellbound, High Wall, etc – as well as a snapshot of Boetticher’s budding
talent. (The director, still using his given name of Oscar at the time, made
another noiresque thriller the same year, Assigned
to Danger, which also utilised the conceit of an undercover investigator.) Kevin Grant
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