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The Red House
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - The Film Detective Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (22nd August 2016). |
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The Film
 Adopted at a young age after her parents were killed, Meg (Union Station's Allene Roberts) has grown up under the care of siblings Peter (The Stranger's Edward G. Robinson) and Ellen (Rebecca's Judith Anderson) on the secluded and self-sufficient Morgan farm. An outcast at school due to the rumors surrounding the Morgans, Meg is starved for company and convinces Peter – who has a wooden leg after losing one in an accident – to hire classmate Nath Storm (Thunder in the Valley's Lon McCallister) to help around the farm even though he is going steady with Tibby (Emergency's Julie London) whose father runs the town's more prosperous farm. Although Nath finds the Morgans to be warm and friendly in spite of the local gossip until Nath announces his plans to take a shortcut through Ox Head Woods to get home. Peter tries to badger Nath into taking the long way, warning him of the dangers of the terrain at night and the screams emanating from the mysterious Red House deep in the woods ("Did you ever run away from a scream? You can't; it will follow you"). A defiant Nath brushes off the warnings but gets lost in the woods and scared by sounds that might be screams or just the wind that have him running back to the Morgans and staying the night in the barn. Feeling the fool, Nath decides to take the shortcut during daylight on the way to the farm so that he will be able to find his way home that night. After work and dinner at the Morgans, Nath takes the shortcut home only to be struck by an assailant and pushed into the river. At first he suspects Peter but both Ellen and Meg vouch for his whereabouts when Nath returns to the farm to confront him. Convinced that his attack has something to do with the Red House, Peter vows to seek it out in Ox Head Woods, and Meg agrees to help since she too has felt herself drawn to the woods despite Peter's orders to stay away from the woods. Having promised to go swimming with Tibby on Sunday, he instead invites her to join him and Meg on their search. When Tibby lets slip the trio's afternoon activities over dinner at the Morgans, Peter once again orders Meg to stay out of the woods and gives a more sinister warning to Nath about the dangers of the Red House. Annoyed with Nath and Meg, Tibby takes the shortcut through the woods herself and runs into bad boy hunter Teller (Motel Hell's Rory Calhoun) who makes a pass at her and dazzles her with a billfold of seven-hundred-and-fifty-dollars that he gives her to purchase a government bond for him with the utmost discretion. It turns out that Peter has granted Teller the land rights to Ox Head Woods in exchange for scaring the curious away from it, and he gives Teller the permission to take more definitive measures to keep Nath away from the Red House. Generally classified as a film noir, The Red House (from the novel by George Agnew Chamberlain) is more of a gothic mystery that goes expressionistic during moments of high drama. While the mystery of the Red House drives a wedge between the once-close Meg and Peter – for which Peter holds the overly-curious Nath responsible – the parallels between Meg's curiosity and maturity are restricted to Peter's pathology. Rather than creating symbolic and psychological barriers between the young and older characters, the film presents pretty much all of its elder characters as sympathetically as the younger and also as unfulfilled. While Peter engaging Teller to keep the curious away from the Red House and out of Ox Head Woods would suggest in most mystery films some sort of illicit activity or other hidden secrets, Peter's fear of the woods and the Red House is seemingly sincere to the point that he cannot keep his cool (which just ends up making Meg and Nath even more curious), and he otherwise regards the titular location with great sadness. Anderson's Ellen is not another Miss Danvers, but a spinster who has sacrificed the possibility of happiness with kindly Dr. Byrne (Touch of Evil's Harry Shannon) to care for her brother, as we learn from Nath's own widowed mother (Gone With the Wind's Ona Munson) who may lose her own second chance at happiness out of a sense of propriety despite the encouragement of her son. Saucy Tibby, as essayed by torch singer London, is a daddy's girl and budding femme fatale – particularly when handling Teller's billfold – but her in-born sense of propriety rears its head when Teller asks her to run away with him. The sun-bleached Sonora, California exteriors and intentionally overexposed photography of Bert Glennon (Stagecoach) give the film a more realistic feel than the studio-bound or studio adjacent exteriors of a PRC or RKO contemporary chiller while the studio interiors also have a more believably rustic feel while lending themselves better than real locations to the expressionistic changes in lighting as the psyches of Peter or Meg go askew. The score of Miklós Rózsa (Double Indemnity) goes against the grain of the film during its busiest orchestral passages but manages to not sound clichéd effectively employing the Theremin. The gothic aspect is represented not only by the "haunted house" but also in repressed memories, feelings of déjŕ vu, the past seeming to repeat itself in the mind of a character, and said haunted character achieving a sense of peace with a poetic denouement. The secret of the Red House may have turned out not to be that shocking in terms of mystery films, but it is the telling of the film that maintains our interest and warrants repeat viewings.
Video
Released theatrically by United Artists, the film became a public domain staple on home video and DVD from the usual suspects – sometimes clipping off the UA presentational card – before it got an HD remaster for HD Cinema Classics' 2012 Blu-ray/DVD combo. As with the other HD Cinema Classics Blu-rays, that edition was criticized for its use of DNR to clean up scratches and wear while also weakening what detail was in the source. The Film Detective's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed BD-R has its share of wear and the occasional hairline vertical scratches but none of that detracts from ones enjoyment of the film. Highlights seem a tad weak in the opening scenes and other sunny exteriors but that seems to be an effect of intentional overexposure since some of the studio interior close-ups look almost as rich as what one expects from a major studio HD remaster of an older monochrome film. As with The Film Detective's other BD-Rs and Blu-rays of these PD classics, it is not hard to imagine that this is the best The Red House has looked on home video so far short of one of the larger national archives or MGM revealing that they have the original camera negatives and decide to do a 4K remaster.
Audio
The original mono soundtrack is presented in a clean DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track that, while limited in fidelity, does convey Rozsa's score with a bit more presence than the various PD copies. Optional English SDH subtitles are included and do not feature any glaring errors.
Extras
There are no extras. Do note that the HD Cinema Classics edition did include an audio commentary track.
Overall
Generally classified as a film noir, The Red House is more of a gothic mystery that goes expressionistic during moments of high drama.
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