Skip to main content

Secret of the Blue Room (1933) - Kurt Neumann


Secret of the Blue Room is a pretty decent crime/horror movie that follows in the Old Dark House footsteps. Lionel Atwill is the most seasoned actor in the film, turning in a pretty passable performance. This isn't his best role by any stretch of the word. There are infinitely worse movies than this one. It is short, running at 65 min, but has a good helping of terror and suspense. This film gives you a good helping of the who done it plot device and in a good way. It actually kept me guessing the entire time and kept my interest. 

The movie is about three men that are in a pissing contest about gaining the hand of the young Irene Von Helldorf. It just so happens, the Van Helldorf family estate has a mysterious room that is "responsible" for the deaths of anyone that stays overnight in it. One person drowned and the other shot. Very mysterious. Of course this is a prime opportunity to prove your worth as a suitor for the young lady. Of course that goes horribly wrong. After yet another murder in the room the tensions rise and investigations are started. This is where the movie really gets interesting. Now everyone must prove that they can withstand the room one by one. 

It does have downsides The scares are obvious and the dialog is contrived. The copy that I watched was incredibly washed out and over exposed. It sucked to watch. It was hard to see and the audio was tired and distorted in some sections. Once I got over much of the technical snags I really enjoyed it. This is a Universal release and is attached to none other than producer extraordinaire, Carl Laemmle. Those names hold some weight but not everything they do can be Golden. The Secret of the Blue Room is a really interesting picture with some real potential. It makes me think of movies like 1408 and Murder by the Clock. It has a great story but it isn't executed in the best way. I still recommend it to anyone looking to do a movie marathon. Check it out. 
  • Shot in all of six days. 
  • Features Swan Lake by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
  • The plot is based on the German film Geheimnis des Blauen Zimmers
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ju-On (2000) - Takashi Shimizu

Watching Japanese horror is similar to watching British comedy. If you enjoy dry whit then you probably enjoy the boys of Monty Python in drag. That's the joke, they're dressed like women. Get it? Well, that's British humor. But if you're like most Americans you probably prefer Adam Sandler farting his way across a football field and hooking up with chicks that are way out of his league. Americans usually prefer this more in your face, crass brand of humor. My point is funny in England is different from funny in the US. The same goes for J-Horror. What the Japanese consider scary is very different from what Americans consider scary and it shows in this horror film. Japanese horror is generally slow (a little too slow sometimes), suspenseful and creepy. Ju-On is a creepy effing film. The movie has almost no soundtrack. It is incredibly suspenseful and the pay-offs are pretty awesome, but I think that it was done better in the American version (cultural t...
Post a Comment
Not scared yet? »

Le Diable au Convent (1899) - George Melies

Le Diable au Convent is longer than the two previous Georges Méliès ventures into short form horror. This particular French short shows the Devil himself running a convent and terrorizing the poor old nuns that live there. However he is finally vanquished by the good of Faith. This is yet another Méliès classic, showcasing the art work that really goes into his short film-making. This is one of the earliest examples of a horror movie that could rely on its elaborate set design and artistic design. Everything in this film, although horribly aged, has been packaged extremely well. If you are a fan of production and set design then I would highly recommend just about anything that Melies has his name on. Though nothing that is considered too extreme actually happens, Satan does have his way with a convent. The satanic imagery itself must have kept this film on the traveling carnival circuit. It certainly wouldn’t fit into the good moral bag that society shoved i...
1 comment
Not scared yet? »

Spookies (1986) - Genie Joseph, Thomas Doran, and Brendan Faulkner

It's impossible to get a decent movie when you take two films and just squash them together. That is essentially the story of how this movie came together. The film started as Twisted Souls. However, according to the financial backer they didn't have enough horror. So they ended up hiring another guy to come in and add a monster in virtually every scene.  This movie started out being directed by Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran. It basically is the tale of two sets of teenagers that arrive to a strange building surrounded by a strange cemetery. It was your usual tale of teenagers in a big hows with a few monsters. Then they brought in Genie Joseph and added even more. Like a haunted birthday party, a murderous cat-man, zombies, and an old wizard. It really became a smorgasbord of horror with a very thin plot-line leading it around. This movie is hard to summarize in a conventional way. It just packs so much.  The most interesting part of this movie are ...
2 comments
Not scared yet? »