Conference bookie::movies

486.0. "The Hidden Room" by DSSDEV::RUST () Fri Mar 04 1994 13:55

    I caught "The Hidden Room" on one of the local mystery channels last
    night, by way of unwinding from an arduous day of sitting around the
    house wondering how long it was going to take to shovel my driveway.
    [Answer: about 5 minutes, once my snowplow guy got there. But I
    digress.]
    
    This is a late '40s film, I think, about your typical love triangle;
    brilliant British psychiatrist has beautiful society wife who hangs
    around with cheerful American chap. The doctor discovers that his wife
    has been fibbing to him about how much time she's spending with her
    chum, and determines to take revenge.
    
    The twist in this film is the manner of the vengeance, which was
    certainly unique, at least at the time the film was made. Alas, I've
    forgotten who the director was, but s/he had a nice touch with
    atmosphere; for much of the plot-unfolding, it felt almost like
    Hitchcock directing a Highsmith story. And if it eventually came up
    lame, I still got my entertainment quota out of it. (Further discussion
    behind spoiler, just in case.)
    
    
    
    The gist of it was that the doctor wanted to play mind games with his
    unfaithful wife, so he staged a jealous-husband scene in which he
    confronted the guilty pair, waved his gun around and fired into the
    wainscoting, and then let the young man leave - and when, after a few
    days had passed, it became clear that the young man had vanished, the
    doctor led his wife to believe that he had done away with him.
    
    Which he had, sort of; he'd immured the fellow in a basement room in an
    abandoned warehouse, which happened to be within convenient walking
    distance of the garage where the doctor left his car. He visited the
    prisoner daily, informing him that his intention was to kill him as
    soon as he had been reassured that the police had no evidence against
    him; until then the prisoner would live, on the (interesting, if a bit
    frail) theory that if evidence did turn up and the police charged him
    with murder, he could produce the alleged victim and suffer a mere
    kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment charge. [Since I believe murder
    was a hanging offense at the time whereas kidnapping wasn't, the doctor
    may have had a point here.]
    
    There was another reason for the long imprisonment; to avoid leaving
    a trail of clues, the doctor was very carefully assembling the
    ingredients of the murder (and body-disposal) bit by bit, bringing
    small quantities of acid to the room with every visit, and slowly
    filling a tub with them. [There's a major plothole here, but I love
    acid-bath murder plots so much that I'm willing to forgive it. And
    there's a lovely Hitchcockian device associated with it as well...]
    
    The young prisoner copes as well as he can, trying to build rapport
    with the kidnapper, trying to find ways to escape, etc., but the doctor
    is impervious and so is the room. And after the wife's various chats
    with Scotland Yard about her suspicions turn up no evidence against the
    doctor, things look black for our young American. But wait...
    
    There's a dog, you see. [There's always something.] It follows the
    doctor to the hidden room one day, and once it's been there he can't
    afford to let it go. The prisoner immediately adopts it, and the
    doctor, unwilling to risk the traces of physical violence by trying to
    wrest it away, permits this. [BAD murderer!] The prisoner, a clever
    youth, having been told all about the acid bath (since the doctor
    wishes his victim to squirm - BAD murderer, to tell the victim the
    details), begins to train the dog to... [It's pretty neat; if you'd
    like to see the film someday, stop here. OK?]
    
    ...to pull the drainplug out of the bathtub. [By great good fortune,
    there's another tub within reach of the prisoner, on which he can
    practice.] There's a delightfully thrilling moment here when the dog,
    a small curly-haired type, is tugging at the chain and falls into the
    tub... "No, no!" cries the prisoner, retrieving the pup. No, indeed...
    
    The climax of the film has Scotland Yard coming back into the affair
    because of the wife's suspicions about what happened to the dog (and,
    oh yes, the American); the tub of acid is nearly full; and the prisoner
    is near the end of his rope. The doctor shows up, provides the daily
    martinis and chicken sandwiches (the poor guy's been living on this for
    months by this time; his liver must be shot), and then chats pleasantly
    with his victim, who begins to grow woozy. The martinis, he tells him,
    were poisoned... 
    
    The victim, brave to the end, laughs a hollow laugh "Ha! Ha!", and
    says, "Then you've got a problem on your hands. Go look in the other
    room." The dog, it seems, learned its trick well, and the
    painstakingly-accumulated acid has all run down the drain. [I shall not
    inquire as to how a drain plug, whatever its composition, kept the
    liquid in the tub for the *months* that passed; perhaps it's possible.
    Didn't seem likely.]
    
    After that, things wind down in a typically British police-procedural
    sort of way, and there's an ending tacked on that - while disappointing
    in one sense - seemed very fitting (if misogynistic) in another. But
    that's beside the point; the fun parts were the head games being played
    by the doctor and his victim. (I also note that the murderer was undone
    by the actions of the dog and of a cat; Nature, it seems, abhors a
    murderer. Heaven knows the cops couldn't have caught him by
    themselves.)
    
    I love those late-night movies,
    -b