Secret Beyond the Door...

If you're not familiar with William Castle, he is, to use a phrase the kids no longer say, "a whole-ass mood". A director of B-level westerns and noir films, Castle pivoted to horror in the late 50's, usually releasing his movies with some kind of publicity stunt, like issuing "life insurance certificates" in case anybody died of fright during the showing. Castle's horror movies are a weird, often off-balance attempt at combining Hitchcockian suspense and dread with more lurid, proto-slasher elements designed to scare teenagers at drive-ins. The horror was never pushed beyond the sensibilities of the times, but it was definitely engineered to speak more to the gut than to the brain. Shock over horror, in other words. Secret Beyond The Door feels like it may have been a blueprint for Castle's brand of horror. It's not a full-on dive into schlocky horror, but it also doesn't try to be more prestigious than it is. This is a movie that knows its weight class, and that class is being the generic version of a well-known brand. In this case, that well-known brand is Hitchcock's Rebecca. Both movies are about an unmarried woman who meets a dashing, mercurial man while on holiday, falls into a whirlwind romance and marriage, finds herself navigating a household full of people who have allegiances and rivalries she doesn't understand, her husband runs mysteriously hot and cold, and said husband is a widower. Mysteries abound, secrets revealed, happily ever after. There are some key differences, of course. Rebecca's protagonist, the new Mrs. de Winter, has far less self-esteem; she constantly questions herself, her place, her worthiness of her husband's love, and if she ever measure up to the departed Rebecca. Secret's protagonist, Celia, by contrast, is far more self-assured. She doesn't wait to take action. She wants her husband's love, but doesn't spend time pining for it and hoping he'll open up. Of course, those differences are necessary for the story to function, but it does make Celia a little more of an enjoyable, relatable character. I sympathized with Celia; I pitied the new Mrs. de Winter. Other differences include the circumstances around the death of the previous wife, the presence of a child, Secret having a larger overall cast (providing for more potential secondary antagonists), and the secrets being kept by the husband. The biggest difference, though, is can be boiled down to quality. Rebecca is a fantastic piece of cinema; gothic but not scary, haunting but not creepy, romantic while being tragic, and most of all, the mysteries are handled with delicacy. The mystery around Maxim de Winter and his late wife is driven by anger, unrequited love, jealousy, and in the end, guilt and sorrow. Maxim's mood swings and secret-keeping are curious, suspicious even, but he doesn't come off as evil wearing a good mask. Secret's husband, Mark, is handled with no such grace. He isn't just moody, he's erratic. He lies constantly and about things that can be easily proven otherwise. He doesn't feel like a good man ill-equipped to handle complex emotions, he feels like a lunatic doing a poor job at hiding his psychopathy. Rebecca inspired hope Maxim wasn't bad and suspicion in Mrs. Danvers; Secret screams, full-throated and into a bullhorn, "DON'T TRUST MARK", and then doing a half-hearted job of propping up other characters as possible secondary antagonists. I mean, the guy has a whole wing of his mansion dedicated to recreating rooms in which murders happened at the time of said murder. That's not a hobby well-balanced people have. That should set off alarms like London during the Blitz. This obviousness undercuts the entire movie. Rebecca has tension and mystery, slowing ratcheting up the pressure on the audience; Secret Beyond The Door spends so much time putting up neon signs, it amounts to waiting for the other shoe to drop. And when it finally does, the explanation is so laughable, so much of nothing whatsoever, it makes the whole movie feel like a waste of time. Rebecca has this complex web of deceits and machinations, and Secret Beyond The Door's resolution is "someone played a harmless prank on me, I overreacted, and now I must kill". And that's not even talking about the myriad of plot threads left unresolved. The movie literally ends with the house burning down, the arsonist is identified, and there's no addressing it. No arrest, no dying in the fire, nothing. The only thing that could be said Secret does that Rebecca doesn't is providing its heroine with more agency, but the whole point of Mrs. de Winter's character is to be swept up, insecure, and afraid. It serves the narrative. That leaves Secret Beyond The Door doing nothing that its obvious inspiration didn't do ten times better. You can keep this door locked.