- A rare Fritz Lang misstep, Secret Beyond the Door relates the implausible tale of Celia Lamphere (Joan Bennett), whose new husband Mark (Michael Redgrave) may be trying to kill her. It's odd enough that Mark failed to mention to Celia the existence of his sister Caroline (Anne Revere) and son David (Mark Dennis), both of whom reside in their family home. Still, those omissions pale in comparison to the revelation that Mark's previous wife (whom Mark also neglected to mention) died under mysterious circumstances in the very room that Celia is now inhabiting. The only thing weirder would be if Mark used his talents as an architect to reconstruct famous "murder rooms," one of which he insists on keeping locked. Did I mention that Mark's employee and secret admirer (Barbara O'Neil) uses a scarf to fake a disfigurement? That would normally be the strangest detail in a movie, but it's nowhere near the top of the list in this film.
- In all fairness, Secret Beyond the Door has three pretty good scenes that merit specific mention. One is its phantasmagoric opening sequence in which Celia discusses the possible portents of her dreams. Another is the opening of the film's famous locked door and the subsequent revelation that we've seen that distinctive room before. The final good scene is one in which Mark imagines himself being questioned on the witness stand by another version of himself. Those shining moments aside, the rest of the film comes across as a bizarre amalgam of Rebecca's haunted second wife (complete with burning house!) and Spellbound's deeply-Freudian repressed memories. Lang was every bit the director that Hitchcock was and should have been equally adept at making a psychology-heavy film noir, but you certainly wouldn't know it from this film.
- One of the murder rooms depicted Baden, Missouri.
