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Because it was released by the premier horror studio Universal, focuses on an old castle with a spooky room, and features horror star Lionel Atwill, SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM has been marketed as a horror film throughout the year. It's actually a whodunit with horror elements that influence but never dominate the film. But it would be close-minded to reject this film just because it's not a full-fledged chiller. SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM is an enjoyable film that projects an air of menacing mystery and efficiently moves the plot with a palpable suspense until the movie's resolution.

SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM benefits from attractive sets (leftover from THE OLD DARK HOUSE and FRANKENSTEIN) that convey an ornate yet forbidding castle milieu. Director Kurt Neumann, while no stylist in the James Whale vein, effectively utilizes the setting's atmospheric potential. He provides a suitably eerie aura with taste and restraint, avoiding obvious stunts like self-playing pianos. Such gimmicks would damage the film's mood and credibility.

On the whole, performances are good. The actors and actresses provide believable characterizations that help propel the plot. Particularly impressive are Lionel Atwill as the castle owner troubled by his estate's secrets and Edward Arnold as a detective who handles the castle's mysteries in a domineering, no-nonsense manner. Elizabeth Patterson is mildly annoying as a terrified maid, but fortunately her performance doesn't affect BLUE ROOM's atmosphere.

Curiously, a few of the plot's riddles remain unexplained at the film's end. It would have been logical for Universal to provide a sequel with the same fine cast in order to resolve everything. Instead, the studio chose to remake the film twice with different performers. But BLUE ROOM's minor plot holes shouldn't detract one from enjoying this well-made mystery.

This is certainly one of THE classic 'old mansion murder mysteries' that were so popular in the 30s; and it can contend with most of the very best of them. A great challenge for every mystery fan who likes to guess the murderer, because the plot takes so many turns and twists that it's really hard to follow even for a 'murder expert'! The settings are excellent, following the classic scheme of the old, elegant but somehow frightening isolated country house, with solid wooden stairs, long dark corridors with knight's armors in every corner, distinguished old-fashioned furniture - and a dark room with an old DARK mystery...

The cast is magnificent, headed by mystery expert Lionel Atwill, and beautiful Gloria Stuart (who had also played in "The Old Dark House" a year before) as the object of desire for no less than three young men; Edward Arnold, well-known to friends of more down-to-earth gangster movies and comedies, as the blunt detective, Paul Lukas as the suave foreign 'officer and gentleman' - even every bit part was casted just perfectly! In my opinion, an absolute 'must' for any fan of the classic mysteries of the 30s - and a good opportunity for others, who are not too familiar yet with the genre, to get to know it WELL and at its BEST!

Secret of the Blue Room (1933)

*** (out of 4)

Forgotten Universal mystery/horror film about a haunted room that kills whomever stays the night in it. Is it a ghost or something else? I was shocked to see how well made this film was and the direction added some nice atmosphere along the way. The story is very well written with a nice mystery and a wonderful ending that certainly caught me off guard. The only weak part is some of the police investigation. Stars Lionel Atwill and Gloria Stuart. Rare but certainly worth searching for. I might even prefer this to The Old Dark House, which shared some of the same sets as this film.

Remade twice by Universal.

Not bad little Old Dark House quickie from Universal with a great cast and a "guess you had to be there" plot. A trio of horndogs (Paul Lukas, Onslow Stevens, William Janney) want to marry pretty Gloria Stuart, despite her warbly singing voice. So they decide to have a contest to see who gets her hand. All three men will spend one night in the "blue room," a supposedly haunted room of a spooky old mansion where three murders were committed twenty years earlier. Then the fun starts. In addition to the top talent already mentioned, this one also features Paul Barrat, Lionel Atwill, and Edward Arnold. Pretty good lineup. It's definitely worth a look for classic film fans. Probably won't blow you away or anything but I doubt you'll feel your hour and change was wasted.

This is, what, the fourth classic Universal horror film to start with the same rendition of Swan Lake? "Secret of the Blue Room" revolves around a mansion with a cursed room, were three unsolved murders have occurred over. In order to impress the object of their desire (Third time in a row Gloria Stuart has shown up), three suitors each decide to spend a night in the seemingly haunted room. Murder follows, mysteries are investigated, and red herrings abound.

If this movie was a book, we'd call it a great airport read. It's generally unremarkable and didn't offer anything particularly new, even in 1933. The film is a straight mystery with only marginal horror elements. There's some light Gothic trappings, such as a silhouette shot of the mansion right out of "The Cat and the Canary" and a great scene of Gloria being attacked by a fedora clad villain, who we naturally only see in shadow. The climax takes place in a spider web covered secret dungeon. The cast is good, truthfully. Lionel Atwill, as the girl's father, plays up his natural creepiness. William Janney as the youngest suitor and Paul Lukas, with his strong accent, are both more interesting then your typical Hollywood romantic leads of the time. My favorite performance has to be Edward Arnold as the detective. His uncompromising interrogation techniques make the second half of the movie energetic and fun. Mary the cook provides some amusing comic relief, with her anxious insistence not to be incriminated in the case.

I was sort of surprised to find out the movie isn't based on a stage play, with its small cast and limited locations. It's not a particularly memorable film but it is a decent way to spend an hour, a good example of the sub-genre. Universal was weirdly fond of the story, remaking it twice, in '38 as The Missing Guest and in '44 as Murder in the Blue Room, a musical/comedy. Funnily, each was in black and white meaning we just have to take the movie's word on the titular room's primary color.

Three men all in love with the same woman decide to spend the night in the cursed "blue" room where tragedy strikes who ever spends the night. Of course tragedy again strikes and the police are called into solve the crime.

Grand Universal mystery thriller suffers from having been remade both officially and unofficially over the years. The film itself is a remake of an earlier German film so I guess turn about is fair play.

Feeling more like an old friend rather than a griping thriller this film is a good little mystery. Odds are you'll know whats going on, but you won't mind since the cast is the real reason to see this. Paul Lukas is a dashing military man, Lionel Atwill is the owner of the cursed house, Gloria Stewart is the woman in question and Edward Arnold is the detective called in to solve the crime. They are all aided by a strong supporting cast of Universal studio regulars.

This is one to make an effort to see especially if you're a fan of good, if familiar, mysteries.

7 out of 10 due to the passage of time and the multiple remakes.

Considering it's age, a pretty good old dark house/castle movie The acting is a bit stilted, as one would expect for the year it was made This is a locked room mystery, in which multiple people have been/are killed in the castle 'blue room' The film starts out slow with a love quadrangle (!) and a full length song, but gets going after that, The earlier mystery that the plot is based on is never explained, and leaves us wondering at the end, Paul Lukas plays with a strange Bela Lugosi accent, which i found annoying, but i got used to it eventually, Worth watching for genre fans, but it would have been better if they waited a few years to make it

The clock strikes midnight. It's Gloria Stuart's 21st birthday and she is celebrating over a late dinner with her father and three eager suitors.

The happy conversation soon turns to the castle's blue salon, a room that has been locked for 20 years. Three people died mysteriously in that room, all those years ago. One of the suitors proposes a challenge: he plans to spend the night in the blue room if his each of his rivals will do the same over the next two nights.

Things happen pretty quickly over the next several scenes: Suitor number one disappears, the butler converses in low tones with a stranger at the kitchen door, a mysterious attacker frightens the daughter, suitor number two is shot....

The plot is pretty standard but it's fast paced and has a couple of twists. The usual old dark house corners and shadows are put to good use. There's also the classic shot where the camera pans slowly across the suspects' faces, one by one, close up.

Gloria Stuart is fine as the beautiful daughter. Lionel Atwill is appropriately suspicious as her shifty father. Paul Lukas is rather dashing as the best of her suitors (although his accent is a bit distracting). Midway through the picture, Edward Arnold enters the scene as a clever and dogged police detective who's determined to get to the bottom of things.

Lively characters, plenty of suspense, a bit of humor - exactly what you would expect from a Universal picture with this title. Lots of fun.

One of the many, many reasons why I love watching these really old (1920s - 1940s) mystery/drama films is because the stories, or at least pivot aspects of them, seem so outdated and unworldly by today's standards. Take the basic premise of "Secret of the Blue Room", for instance. Three men are rivaling for the love of beautiful 21-year-old Irene; daughter of the prominent Lord Robert Von Helldorf. To decide who marries her, they agree that each one of them must spend a night in the mansion's fearsome Blue Room; a guest chamber where nobody has set foot since three mysterious and still unresolved deaths occurred there 20 years earlier. Alright, solid and compelling enough thriller plot, but has anyone noticed that the girl in question - Irene - isn't supposed to have an opinion? The men decide that one of them will marry her, the father approves for the test to take place under his roof and that the stake is his own daughter's hand, but lovely Irene simply must accept that the identity her future husband will be determined by a game of bravery and stubbornness instead of love, respect or gallantry. Crazy old days. Thank goodness for the evolution of women's rights and feminism throughout the years!

Anyways, my silly rant aside, "Secret in the Blue Room" is a mystery-thriller just the way I like them: short (65 minutes) and straightforward, with qualitative dialogues and absorbing red herrings. The denouement isn't too difficult to figure out in case you've seen similar whodunits before, but I reckon it's quite a convoluted climax for a 1933 film. Despite being one of Universal's lesser known productions from the 30s, the film can still depend on a strong ensemble cast, including veteran actors like Lionel Atwill and Paul Lukas, and a surefooted young director. Kurt Neumann was only in his mid-twenties when he made "Secret of the Blue Room", and his career abruptly ended in the 50s with modest Sci-Fi classics like "The Fly" and "Kronos". Female lead Gloria Stuart already showcased her acting talents here, as well as in "The Old Dark House" and "The Invisible Man", but she would only truly famous 65 years later, thanks to her role in "Titanic".

This is your typical or standard 1930s cutesy mystery-horror film. Nothing special about it. The only real reason to watch it is for Gloria Stuart and Lionel Atwill if you like them.

4/10

A bit rusty and dusty, this film made by Universal in 1933 tells of three men infatuated with the daughter of Lionel Atwill who all agree for sake of ego to stay in the mysterious "blue" room, a room where no one has gone into for twenty or so years because of all the terrible things that befell the inhabitants of that room. Gloria Stuart plays the beautiful object of their affection and carefully plays on the sidelines as each man prepares and stays in the blue room. What happens? Well, that would be giving too much away, but what does ensue is a nice, tight mystery for the most part with some credible red herrings and a somewhat plausible and innovative resolution. Lionel Atwill does a fine job in his patriarchal role as does Stuart. Paul Lukas, Onslow Stevens, and the rest of the cast also do fine jobs. Story really moves this film along, and the script is very good for this time period and for a mystery. My print was somewhat faded and I am not sure if a crisper print exists. I hope so. I know it will be sometime - if anytime - for this film to get the proper DVD treatment is deserves.

During the 1930s, there were a ton of 'dark house mysteries'...films where a murder takes place at some creepy house or mansion. The cops end up investigating and eventually it's all sorted out by the end...and there are usually a few more bodies by the time it's all sorted. Because of this, there is definitely a sameness to this movie as these others...though fortunately there are enough differences to make it interesting.

The film begins with Irene's 21st birthday. Apparently she (Gloria Stuart) is quite the catch, as three men are there vying for her affection at this little party. To prove his rugged manliness, the youngest of her suitors promises to spend the night in the Blue Room. Why is this so scary? Twenty years ago, three people died there...and it's been bolted shut ever since. The two other suitors join him and by morning, one of them is dead. Soon the inspector (Edward Arnold) arrives and tries to figure out what happened.

It's interesting that the same exact musical intro occurs in this film as "Dracula"....made by the studio two years earlier. "Swan Lake" was reused and most folks might not recognize it...and the IMDb trivia draws attention to this.

So is it any good? Well, it does help that the film has some excellent actors in it, such as Lionel Atwill and Paul Lukas. He and the rest of the cast do a competent job with the story

Secret of the Blue Room takes place in a big, creaky old mansion on a dark and stormy night, of course. To me it is oddly populated by an odd grouping made up of a father, his daughter who live in the mansion, and three men all of which are in love with the daughter and each trying to win her to their side. That just seems a little too on the nose for me but oh well. One of the rooms is apparently haunted and one of the suitors challenges the others to spend a night in this haunted room to prove his ultimate love for said daughter. I won't reveal any more except to say that it is a little predictable but the all-around solid cast, and the sets all overcome the routine story to provide a somewhat fun little mystery worth checking out.

A spooky castle home forms a suitably eerie setting for a tale of the titular haunted room and the three murders which took place in it twenty years before. In their desperation to win the hand of the fair Irene, three disparate suitors agree to spend consecutive nights in the jinxed room; what follows is a tale of murder, secrets, red herrings and eventual resolution.

The limited budget of the universal haunted room mystery is visible, however it's well-made, atmospheric and has enough mystery to keep one watching. It's an enjoyable enough romp, though guessing the fiend behind the murder isn't too hard. It has plenty of charm, mood and features solid yet understated performances from the actors, especially Gloria Stuart and Lionel Atwill.

While Universal was spending lavishly on its other horror pictures--even splashing six figures for a stinker like "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1932), while investing over $300,000 in the classic "The Invisible Man" (1933)--"Secret of the Blue Room" cost a relatively-paltry $69,000. Judged on this basis, for the bang of one's buck, it's a successful B-production. Although usually lumped together with Universal's classic horror films, it's more of a murder mystery, or whodunit, set in a creepy castle. It's in the same vein as films such as "One Exciting Night" (1922), "The Monster" (1925), "The Bat" (1926), "The Cat and the Canary" (1927) and "The Bat Whispers" (1930), except with less comic relief and no clear stage origins. That it's a haunted castle rather than a house seems to point to its German roots, and, indeed, it's credited as a remake of a German film, which I haven't seen (seemingly, nor has anyone else recently), made the prior year. An earlier German picture, which I have seen and is available today, that I'm reminded of is F.W. Murnau's "Schloß Vogelöd" (often translated non-literally as "The Haunted Castle") (1921).

Another connection is James Whale's "The Old Dark House" (1932), for which the title has become something of a name for a subgenre of horror films set in spooky houses on stormy nights. The main room of the first floor of the castle here is the same set constructed for Whale's production, and Gloria Stuart starred in both. Like other old dark house movies, a storm blows doors open, there are ghost stories, secret passages, a locked unkept room with a haunted history, a strange man, suspicious housekeepers, nervous maids, a screaming and fainting heroine and a detective investigating murder. "Swan Lake," one of only two melodies to be heard here, also plays at the beginning and the end, as it did in "Dracula" (1931), "The Mummy" (1932) and "Murders in the Rue Morgue." The resolution for this one is rather untidy in leaving the room's history unexplained, but I respect the production's no-frills treatment. The frequent use of wipes in editing being about the closet thing here to showy filmmaking.

Stuart's role as the ideal form of femininity here seems more thankless and, today, rather cringe inducing for different reasons than her part in "The Old Dark House," where Whale exploited it for the sexual perversities and proclivities of the house's stranger occupants, including homosexuality, incest and attempted rape. Nothing of the kind appears here; yet, her father imploring her to kiss him and her three suitors, which she obligingly does on the lips for each, seems almost as weird today. She also plays the piano and sings a love song for them. To top it off, Stuart delivers the lines, "Oh, it must be terrible to be a man and have to be brave. Thank goodness I can be a coward with a clean conscience."

1933's "Secret of the Blue Room" was a remake of a 1932 German film titled "Geheimnis des blauen Zimmers," and even uses a few exterior shots from the original, while all interiors were filmed on the same marvelous sets built for James Whale's "The Old Dark House" (1932), also seen in independents such as "The Vampire Bat" and "Strange People." The last of the vintage Universals to utilize Tchaikovsky's serene "Swan Lake" over its opening credits (following "Dracula," "Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Mummy"), it begins on a suitably blustery midnight, celebrating the 21st birthday of young Irene von Helldorf (Gloria Stuart), along with her father Robert (Lionel Atwill), and three determined suitors, police captain Walter Brink (Paul Lukas), newspaper reporter Frank Faber (Onslow Stevens), and the much younger Thomas Brandt (William Janney), who impulsively proposes marriage to Irene on the spot. Mocked by the others, the young Brandt brings up the locked blue room, where Irene's mother had died 20 years before, with two others falling victim within since the original tragedy, all at the stroke of 1:00AM. Betting each of his rivals that they must all spend a night in the forbidding salon, Brandt seeks to prove his bravery by going first, only to disappear without a trace before morning, the bed not even slept in. Von Helldorf is reluctant to phone the police, until on the second night, a shot rings out from the blue room, and Faber is murdered at 1:00AM. Lionel Atwill heads a superb cast in his Universal debut, and Edward Arnold turns in some solid sleuthing, as he later would in the 1935 James Whale whodunit "Remember Last Night?" Formerly husband and wife in Whale's "The Kiss Before the Mirror," are Paul Lukas and seductive Gloria Stuart (disrobing just as her jealous husband shoots her dead); she would next appear in Whale's "The Invisible Man," while Lukas would turn up in Whale's "By Candlelight." Part of the original SHOCK! package of vintage Universal horror classics released to television in 1957, this remake was itself twice remade by the same studio, in 1938 as "The Missing Guest," and in 1944 as "Murder in the Blue Room," both of which changed the backstory and added different characters (in this 1933 feature, no one solves the 20 year old mystery of the blue room). Neither of the two remakes were included in the SHOCK! package, but all three turned up on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater, with four broadcasts for "Secret of the Blue Room" - May 18 1968 (following 1959's "Terror is a Man"), May 24 1975 (following 1940's "Chamber of Horrors" and 1943's "Calling Dr. Death"), Mar 5 1976 (following 1957's "The Deadly Mantis"), and Sept 10 1983 (solo).

I can remember when I first saw this that I guessed fairly soon who was going to be behind any misdemeanor that followed. And that still bothers me after seeing this again. Because if I could guess and keep with my first instincts, how many other whodunit fans would do the same? But the red herrings in the story are diverting which makes it a good mystery to watch in any case.

The Blue Room in Helldorf Castle has been a forbidden place for 20 years. The butler holds the only key to that room. Nobody has been able to unlock the mystery of what really happened there in the past. So it is alarming when a guest suggests that all three suitors to Irene Helldorf should each spend a night sleeping in there. Tommy Brandt has already proposed to Irene and wants to be the first to prove his courage to her.

The presence of Lionel Atwill as the master of the castle will be savored by all mystery fans. Paul Lukas as one of the suitors is his usual affable but menacing self. I couldn't help chuckling at his habit of shaking hands with his roommate every time he laid over to go to sleep. Robert Barrat as the butler in charge of the Blue Room is my pick of the castle staff characters. And a good weird echoing scream from Gloria Stuart helps to make this an irresistible cast to watch.

Was looking forward to streaming this film.

It's Universal, a dark spooky mustery and had some actors I liked.

Many, is it boring. Really slow. I was falling a sleep.

Soooo disappointing.