*Possible Spoilers Ahead!*
To be completely frank here, I honestly didn't much like House By The River's bleak, over-wrought tale of woe. I found that it took itself way-way too seriously and carried the level of its melodramatics to the point of being downright laughable at times.
This business of over-doing it really came to a head in this film's last half-hour.
I mean, c'mon. The characters in the story pushed the plausibility of their actions just a bit too far for me to take them at face value.
OK. I will gladly admit that regardless of "House" being a poverty-row production from Republic Studios, director Fritz Lang certainly did manage to milk the moody eeriness of its Gothic setting to the fullest extent possible. And, yes, that did serve as quite an effective distraction.
But, after all was said and done, it sure seemed to me that all that there was left lurking beneath the ominous-looking shadows and the foreboding ambiance was just the barest bones of a decidedly confused and poorly thought-out story.
By the end of the picture I was left feeling quite dissatisfied and misled by "House's" story which told a rather screwy tale of a quirky, second-rate novelist whose pent-up neurosis finally rears its ugly, little head.
In a number of ways "House's" story about madness and inevitable murder reminded me a lot of Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" (with its obvious differences well noted, of course).
To be completely frank here, I honestly didn't much like House By The River's bleak, over-wrought tale of woe. I found that it took itself way-way too seriously and carried the level of its melodramatics to the point of being downright laughable at times.
This business of over-doing it really came to a head in this film's last half-hour.
I mean, c'mon. The characters in the story pushed the plausibility of their actions just a bit too far for me to take them at face value.
OK. I will gladly admit that regardless of "House" being a poverty-row production from Republic Studios, director Fritz Lang certainly did manage to milk the moody eeriness of its Gothic setting to the fullest extent possible. And, yes, that did serve as quite an effective distraction.
But, after all was said and done, it sure seemed to me that all that there was left lurking beneath the ominous-looking shadows and the foreboding ambiance was just the barest bones of a decidedly confused and poorly thought-out story.
By the end of the picture I was left feeling quite dissatisfied and misled by "House's" story which told a rather screwy tale of a quirky, second-rate novelist whose pent-up neurosis finally rears its ugly, little head.
In a number of ways "House's" story about madness and inevitable murder reminded me a lot of Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" (with its obvious differences well noted, of course).