The House Across the Lake

An American writer (Alex Nicol), down on his luck, meets his rich neighbors who also live by the lake. He befriends the ailing husband (Sid James) and falls in love with the duplicitous wife (Hillary Brooke).

Ken Hughes directed "The House Across the Lake" (with the irrelevant American title of "Heat Wave") from his own screenplay based on his own novel. I guess he is the only one to blame for the story's blatant rip-off of James M. Cain (particularly "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Double Indemnity"). But at least he rips off the best, which means this crime thriller is more engaging than most of the films included in VCI's "Hammer Noir" DVD collection.

Alex Nichol and Hillary Brooke were not exactly household names in Hollywood. This is not to say they were unsuccessful. No, they both had many TV and movie appearances to their credit. But they also never quite were leading man and leading lady material. And, like other second and third-tier actors at the time (such as Richard Basehart), they were lured to Europe for starring roles in lesser productions. "Heat Wave" is a lower-budgeted British thriller--and the Brits were happy to have some Americans in the leads as it would increase the marketability of the film. In other words, folks in the States might be more likely to book this in their theaters.

Mark is sitting at a bar getting drunk when he's approached by someone. He seems to know who it is and buys that person a drink and begins telling his story. It seems he was home alone one evening working on his book when he got a phone call from the folks living across the lake. Although he doens't know them, he's invited to a party they are having. Once there, he sees the lady of the house is a hottie--but also a philandering woman. As for the husband, he's a whipped man and spends most of the evening playing pool with Mark and telling him his marital problems.

Later in the film, the evil wife, Carol, begins making advances towards Mark. He's clearly turned on by her, but she is bad--and he resists her allure....for a while. Eventually, however, they begin seeing each other and Mark KNOWS it's wrong...but he can't stop. Carol promises he can have her if only her sickly husband was out of the way.

Does this sound familiar? Well, if you love film noir, you probably recognize this as a reworking of the plot from the classic "Double Indemnity". It's not exactly the same...but darn close. While it lacks originality and is clearly derivative, it IS well acted and has a nice mood overall. Worth seeing even if a bit familiar.

By the way, cheers to Miss Brooke. She not only played a great femme fatale, but you'd have thought she was British due to her accent. You'd have never guessed that she was American through and through.

Hillary Brooke plays a beautiful woman married to a much older, wealthy man. We've seen the story in film noir before. We've seen it many times.

But this 1954 picture is well written and exceptionally well cast. Its budget is clearly not high. Yet, the chemistry could blow up a chem lab. Alex Nicol is likable as a hot-tempered writer. He happens to be trying to finish a book right near this wealthy man and his wife.

The wife is played by Hillary Brooke. She is like Kathleen Turner a few decades before Turner burst on the scene: She's sly, sexual -- and that voice! She has a deep, purring voice that has elements of Tallulah Bankhead in it.

The film resembles "The Postman Always Rings Twice." Of course, that had a pedigree of its own. The stars were good but not entirely convincing together. Brooke is less beautiful than Lana Turner but she's a more compelling performer.

And there's "Double Indemnity." It's hard to think of topping that one. Barbara Stanwyck gives a peerless performance in it. So maybe Brooke could be called, at least in this movie, the poor man's Barbara Stanwyck.

The House Across the Lake (AKA: Heat Wave) is directed by Ken Hughes and he also adapts the screenplay from his own novel High Wray. It stars Alex Nicol, Hillary Brooke, Sid James, Susan Stephen and Paul Carpenter. Music is by Ivor Slaney and cinematography by Walter J. Harvey.

American novelist Mark Kendrick (Nicol) is living in England and trying to finish his latest novel. When he is invited for drinks at the house across the lake, Mark becomes entangled in the web of a beautiful blonde...

OK! This plot is hardly new and film noir boasts some truly excellent pictures where a man is duped into a downward spiral by a femme fatale vixen. In that respect, this Hammer Film Production can't compete, either in production value or quality of narrative, yet this is still worthy of inspection by the film noir faithful.

Nicol's (looking like a poor man's Sterling Hayden) Mark Kendrick and Brooke's Carol Forrest are classic noir characters, he tells us his weakness is women, his constant narration sombre and hapless, she's an icy cold bitch of considerable sting. And with Sid James moping around forlornly as the rich husband who is ill of health and broken of heart, the characterisations are vibrant and performed to a good standard to draw us into the play.

The air is ripe with pungent pessimism, we know from the off that Mark is in trouble, and sure enough the tale contains treachery, death and moral murkiness. Unfortunately the visuals don't quite match the mood of plotting. The lakeside shots are well done, and Kendrick's cottage with the venetian blinds briefly offer up some promise of noirish disharmony, but mostly the picture is filmed in standard black and white and a trick is missed to elevate the piece to better heights.

Visual missed chances aside, this is a good low budget Brit noir that gets in and does the job well. 7/10

At a time when noir production was converting to TV, Lippert hooked up with England's Hammer Films. (And that's before Hammer hooked up with Dracula and Frankenstein.) Judging from this effort, budget minded Lippert got a lot more bang for their buck overseas.

Compared with traditional noir, the settings here are much more naturalistic than expressionistic. There's little of the usual menace of light and shadow. Instead, most scenes are shot on location with natural lighting, except for the climactic fog-bound sequence. This undercuts atmosphere and mood, staples of standard noir. As a result, it's the fateful story that's highlighted. And since the story is narrated in flashback, it seems the outcome is pre- determined in some metaphysical sense.

Sure, you've seen the story before, as others point out. A rich man's slutty wife (Brooke) conspires to kill him with key help from a luckless fall guy (Nicol). Sounds like Double Indemnity (1944) even down to the double-cross. Still, the screenplay is good enough to hold interest. And was there ever a more stately ice queen than Hillary Brooke. It's hard to see her ever unwinding enough for intimacy. And therein lies a problem. Too bad the film couldn't show some stage of real melt from her, like a dash of undress or even mussed-up mascara. Nicol too is pretty low-key for a guy obsessed. But then this is 1954, not exactly the anything goes of more recent vintage. In my book, it's luckless Sidney James who steals the film, with his nicely modulated peek at a doomed man. I like the way the script only later fills in why he's so seemingly indifferent to his wife's very public affairs. That way we're left really curious for a well-timed period.

Anyhow, the movie's much better than the lowly two-stars out of four that TCM rates it. Then again, maybe I'm just a sucker for any noir with a well-turned ankle.