(1940)
Dir - Norman Lee
Overall: MEH
The second British film adaptation of an Edgar Wallace novel to find release in the United States, (the first being The Dark Eyes of London with Béla Lugosi the previous year), The Door with the Seven Locks is an exhaustively meandering thriller mystery that neither thrills or cleverly mystifies. Released as the much more misleading Chamber of Horrors overseas, the film makes frequent attempts to be amusing with quippy dialog and a handful of vibrant, fun characters, but the plot is outrageously boring. It is probably not a good sign when your villain is literally falling asleep as he is finally explaining his unnecessarily complex master plan in the finale and good luck having any interest in the chain of events that transpire before it anyway. The actors are competent enough, but there are no memorable faces anywhere and the performances do not have much of a chance to transcend the lackluster material even if there was. It does not commit any atrocious crimes, but it is almost immediately forgettable.
(1942)
Dir - Leslie Arliss
Overall: MEH
Unmistakably, The Night Has Eyes, (Terror House, Moonlight Madness, the latter being the most appropriate title), has the proper trappings of a Gothic horror mystery; one that perhaps Roger Corman would have tackled two decades later had it been based off of an Edgar Alan Poe writing. The soundstage sets are seeped in fog, there is a mysterious castle that is routinely surrounded by swampy, slimy moors, an even more mysterious, anti-social recluse living there, conniving housekeepers, secret rooms, and a murder enigma looming over everything. It forgoes going into any supernatural terrain, (as close as it may tread), but as a story built almost entirely on a having suspenseful mood, it never really delivers due to small be they detrimental shortcomings. James Mason's cynical and ultra-moody war veteran/composer is staggeringly unlikable, so two women falling in love with him in a year period, (both almost immediately upon meeting him), seems melodramatically stupid. Likewise, the ending while plenty gaudy, comes off as kind of random and lazy. It gets a bit plodding during the second act as well, lingering around either unpleasant or unintelligent characters exchanging identical dialog over and over again.
(1949)
Dir - Thorold Dickinson
Overall: GOOD
Filmed a number of times previously in the silent era, Thorold Dickinson's The Queen of Spades was the first sound film adaptation of the Alexander Pushkin short story of the same name. While it drops an intriguing flashback early on, the middle of the story continues to progresses a bit slowly one could argue. Though it takes nearly the entire running time for the supernatural elements at least to become paramount, the inevitable finish is remarkably tense and spooky. This is do to Dickinson's occasionally flashy direction, Otto Heller's equally inventive cinematography, and Austrian-born stage actor Anton Walbrook's continuously troubling performance as a working class soldier thoroughly obsessed with the cursed magic that will grant him immediate fortune. Considered lost for decades, it was finally rediscovered in 2009, making it one of the more sought-after works in Dickinson's comparatively small filmography which includes only nine directorial efforts in nearly twenty years.
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