Someone at the Door

This is a perfectly fine film of its type. Based on a play, so it's talky and restricted in action. The story is a mild situation comedy, nothing hilarious, but it's the plot twists that are the point. As good as any British mystery comedy of the time I think. A Hammer/Exclusive film, Anthony Hinds producer, and James Sangster assistant director. As said elsewhere, brother and sister inherit this large house. Brother is a writer who needs to make more money. He thinks by concocting a story that he killed his sister he will make a fortune. In parallel, there is treasure hidden in the house and the thieves are trying to get the two to leave the house by making it sound haunted. In the opening scene there is "someone at the door", who enters at night and starts making spooky noises. Don't get the idea that the writer goes to trial for murder and then is dramatically saved. It never goes to that point, the plot is wrapped up without anything like that. No story is published about him murdering his sister or anyone else.

Michael Medwin and his sister, Yvonne Owen, have just inherited a large house, without the means to keep it up. Hoping to gain some notoriety to jack up the price, they and Hugh Latimer, Miss Owen's boyfriend, decide to fake a kidnapping, with Medwin as the suspect. What they don't know is that crook Garry Marsh has stolen some jewels, and his accomplice, Danny Green, have hidden in the old house. Now Green, who has been put on the owners as a rather surly factotum, is trying to figure out how to get the jewels out of the priest's hole that Medwin an Latimer have hidden them in.

It's a nice start, looking like a haunted-house comedy-crime thriller, that veers very nicely throughout, with the tone growing darker and darker, just as it should. At just under an hour, it plays like lightning. Since Francis Searle was the director, I didn't expect much, but I was surprised at how well this film version of a stage play was.

Newspaper journalist Ronnie Martin (Michael Medwin) cooks up a hare-brained scheme to get himself a great story and make loads of money: fake a murder, get himself arrested, and then reveal the victim to be still alive. To help make his daft idea a success, he involves his sister Sally (Yvonne Owen) and her boyfriend Bill (Hugh Latimer). The trio's plan comes unstuck when they run into ruthless criminals searching for stolen loot hidden somewhere in the Martins' home.

Before Hammer hit the big time with horror, they made a range of films in different genres, Someone at the Door being a dark comedy - but one with very few laughs. The film's main problem is the performances, the cast shouting their dialogue as though they're projecting from a stage - the whole thing feels very much like a bad theatrical farce, Medwin in particular being quite insufferable, over-acting like his life depends upon it (reading others' reviews, I see that the film was adapted from a play - but not adapted very well!).

With more subtlety (and a few more genuinely funny moments), the film could have been a lot of fun in the old dark house tradition (Hammer's favourite location, the impressive Oakley Court, standing in for the Martin residence); instead, it's quite a chore to sit through.

2.5/10, rounded down for the stealing of a medical corpse by Bill, a plot point that is conveniently forgotten about by the end of the film.

Just watched this and I have to disagree with the low scores here...... this is just a bit of fun and for its age it carries it off admirably..... it's a farce and it's enjoyable to watch.... It doesn't pretend to be anything else.... I recommend to anyone just watch it and don't try to compare it with anything else...it's under an hour, and you don't need to overthink this film. Just enjoy it for what it is... a bit of fun!

It was nice to see Michael Medwin acting the goat, and Garry Marsh as the bad guy. I always thought Marsh was underrated as a comedy character actor though he played his fair share of serious roles. I didn't think he got the opportunity to play the comedy enough here which was a shame and I do wonder if he might have been better playing Hugh Latimer's part and He played the other part but that is not to take anything away from either of them here. The whole cast know that they are just playing up on the farce and the whole film works as just that. Great Fun...!

My next film to watch, from the Hammer archives and for the "House of Hammer" podcast was 1950's "Someone at the Door". An adaptation of a stage production, which had previously been produced for the screen by Herbert Brenon in 1936. Though there are some elements to this farce that I did enjoy, generally I found my attention repeatedly wandering.

Ronnie Martin (Michael Medwin) and his sister Sally (Yvonne Owen) have come into possession of a large, but rather rundown house. Ronnie is a journalist and, noting that murder is all that makes the front page these days, comes up with a ruse. He'll "kill" his sister, get arrested, be exonerated when she shows up at his trial and then turn it into a story. The trouble though is that the police are already interested in the house, as a previous employee of the estate, has genuinely disappeared.

Certainly, in the early moments, you can really see how this would have worked on the stage. Ronnie is a broad comedic character, and his cowardice and timing would have generated a few laughs. It can't maintain that pace though, and eventually, I felt became rather tiresome with characters charging endlessly around the secret hatch that is key to the films plot.

There were some touches that I enjoyed, such as a stagey introduction to each actor. Hugh Latimer, from "PC 49" returns and has a nice role as Sally's boyfriend, who is in on the scheme - though his character generally exists to help move things around the room and, as I say, the opening couple of scenes - when Robbie and Sally believe that their house might be haunted and when they blunder around cleaning promised a more amusing film than the hurried scramble the rest of the film proves to be provides.

If I had to compare farce comedies that Hammer has provided so far, I have to say that I prefer "This Sporting Life" but I don't have any particular desire to see either of them again, any time soon.