Double Door

This is an ordinary chamber play all taking place in one house, but it is astoundingly efficient especially staged on film that by appalling close-ups turns it into one of the ghastliest nightmares ever rendered alive, mainly because of perhaps the grisliest female characters in film history played by Mary Morris in all too convincing horror. She is just a kind old lady that wishes everybody well, no one can but believe the best of her, everyone trusts her, but she has an obsession: a heritage of a precious pearl necklace, that she doesn't want to part with, when her younger brother imperils her control of the estate when he marries, so she does anything to prevent that marriage, in a positive warfare campaign of intrigues verging on virtuosity. It's a masterful play, and its screening does it more than justice, as Charles Vidor successfully underscores and enhances all the effects, that constantly keep piling up to ever more overwhelming strokes of innovation. No wonder the play kept Broadway on edge. In character it reminds a little of J. B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls", but this is much more gruesome. In short. It's a killer.

With so many movies in the early-30's about high society I didn't think I'd be in the mood for yet another one. Boy was I wrong. "Double Door" was an astounding movie.

The movie took place in New York City in 1910. The focus was the Van Bretts, one of the oldest families in New York and one of the oldest and wealthiest families on Park Avenue. A woman named Victoria 'Vicky' Van Brett (Mary Morris) was the torch bearer and matriarch of the Van Brett family. She was a mean, dictatorial, spiteful old woman. If you look up "old hag" in the dictionary her face will be there. She was akin to May Robson's character in the movie "You Can't Buy Everything" (1934).

Vicky ruled the Van Brett family with an iron fist, and at the moment she was cross with her younger half-brother Rip (Kent Taylor) for marrying a nurse. How could he marry an "upper servant"!?

In that respect, "Double Door" was just like several other movies of that era in which a romantic rich boy desires to marry a girl from a lower class. It's always a fight for love. And in every case the woman has to prove that she's not marrying the man for his money, only out of love. More specifically, "Double Door" is similar to "Shopworn" (1932), "Another Language" (1933), and "Silver Cord" (1933) in which the mother is the most vociferous against her son's sweetheart.

In "Double Door," Vicky made no attempts to hide her contempt for Rip's bride, Anne Darrow (Evelyn Venable). Even though Vicky wasn't Rip's mother she fit the part due to the large difference in age and the fact she had to fill the role as his mother when both his parents died. Vicky was set on driving Anne away if it was the last thing she did.

Vicky had so much control over Rip, Anne, and her younger sister Caroline Van Brett (Anne Revere) because she controlled the purse strings. She was the executor of the Van Brett estate so all Van Bretts and all the servants had to bend to her will; and what an unyielding will she had.

Mary Morris was excellent as Victoria Van Brett. Although she was not even forty when this movie was made, she had the mannerisms, voice, and movements of a woman at least sixty-years-old. Even when she stared (or glared) she conveyed so much. I'm sorry she didn't do more. When I looked up her filmography she only had "Double Door" to her credit. It could be that she was a stage performer and only did this movie because she'd done it in theater before. In any case, I thought her performance was Oscar-worthy.

Anne Revere was also exceptional as Caroline Van Brett, Vicky's sister. She was a forty-two-year-old woman with the mentality of a two-year-old. She was so utterly handicapped by Vicky's dominance that she never developed. She was a sad sight. She spoke and behaved like a child--always in search of Vicky's love and approval.

Kent Taylor and Evelyn Venable were passable as Rip and Anne, the newlyweds. Anne's manner of speaking didn't seem to fit to me considering she was a nurse before marrying Rip. She spoke proper and posh as though she was from society herself. The only thing I can think to attribute that to is her training or taking lessons in order to fit in with her husband's family and friends.

A lot of credit has to be given to the writer, Elizabeth McFadden, and the director, Charles Vidor, who was able to make the play work on screen. I'm giving out flowers everywhere on this one. "Double Door" was a true treat.

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The main character here is Mary Moore as Victoria Van Brent, the oldest sister and dominatrix in a family whose only remains are herself, younger sister Caroline, and baby brother Rip. They live together in an old creepy mansion full of reminders of the past but devoid of the present.

Victoria - age unspecified but clearly middle aged- always dresses in black, emotionally batters younger sister Caroline to the point where she is just a shadow of a human being, and has got baby brother Rip convinced that his late father is always looking down on him, and that his wishes are Victoria's wishes.

Let me straighten out one little matter. The synopsis says that the film is about Victoria threatening people with a secret torture chamber in the house. There isn't one, so if you are expecting Vic to go mad and don the red robe of the inquisitors and put somebody on the rack, then you will be sorely disappointed.

The film opens on Rip's wedding day to a "commoner" - a nurse named Ann. Her union to Rip will issue in new blood and life to the family. Victoria has her own idea as to who Rip should marry, and it isn't Ann, whom she assumes is after the family money.

Now this had me wondering, why did Victoria wait until AFTER the wedding to take any action to get rid of Ann? Wouldn't it have been easier if Rip was just beginning to see Ann to nip things in the bud? I guess Victoria figures she can get rid of Ann just as easily after she marries Rip as she could before. Now for a woman to never marry in 1910, the time this film was set, was a big deal and a departure from social norms. But Victoria doesn't seem to hate men, she just loves control. The family money just affords her that control. Marriage at the turn of the 20th century for a woman would mean ceding control, and she was not about to do that.

Victoria starts out with passive aggressive stuff to put a rift between Ann and Rip, but when that doesn't work, she turns to a more severe and permanent solution.

This film has great atmosphere, even if it is a bit claustrophobic. If it didn't say Paramount I'd swear it was a Universal horror with its secret panels and dark corridors. One funny thing about the film - you get a big dose of the thoughts and feelings of everybody in the cast except Victoria, who is the central character. Maybe this is to dehumanize her so the audience can look upon her as pure villain - I know I did.

One bit of trivia - This film was based on a play that was very loosely based on the wealthy Wendel family of 19th and early 20th century New York. The last generation -only the third in fact - consisted of one brother and seven sisters who never married. The brother ruled over the sisters with an iron fist, would not let them socialize or marry because he thought heirs would decentralize their fortune, and did not allow electricity or even a phone into the house. So they all lived together in gloom, prisoners of their wealth until the last sibling died in 1931 leaving a fortune worth 100 million in that day's money - two or three billion today. Ironically, with no direct heirs 2303 people came out of the wood work from all over the world claiming to be heirs including an entire village in Germany named Wendel and some actual distant cousins in Czechoslovakia. Eventually, just about every claim was disproven. However, brother John forgot one thing - if nobody knows what you HAVE been doing, then nobody knows what you HAVEN'T been doing either, thus there were many people among the fortune hunters claiming to be illegitimate children of the recluse siblings.

I'd recommend this old spooky film if it ever comes your way.

From 1934, "Double Door" has one of the most evil characters I've ever seen, Victoria Van Brett (Mary Morris), and a plot that will have you on the edge of your seat, particularly in the last 10 minutes.

Beautiful Evelyn Venable, who was the model for the Columbia Pictures logo, plays Ann Darrow, who marries Victoria's brother Rip (Kent Taylor). Rip, Victoria, and their sister Caroline (Anne Revere) all live in a Fifth Avenue mansion in around 1910.

The family has money, but Victoria controls it and her entire family. She ruins Caroline's chance at happiness by breaking up her relationship, and she works very hard to destroy Rip's marriage. She takes all their wedding gifts, refuses to let the organ play the rest of the bride's entrance, and swaps a $500 set of pearls, an heirloom for the bride, with some cheap necklace. Then she makes them cut their honeymoon short. Ann is determined to be civil to her. You'd need the disposition of a saint.

Caroline is terrified of her, as one time, her sister had closed her up in some kind of vault and keeps threatening to do it again.

Rip and Ann finally have had enough (though I'd say it took Rip an inordinate length of time) and decide to move out. Victoria wants Rip to stay. She comes up with a plan.

This was Anne Revere's film debut after playing the role on Broadway. She's a wonderful actress who has to have big moments of hysteria. I suppose today it seems over the top, but acting was different then. Revere certainly proved herself to be a gifted actress, eventually winning an Oscar.

Mary Morris also did her role on Broadway, and this was her only film. They must have thrown tomatoes at her from the audience when she did the play, not because of her, but because of the character she played.

This is a nerve-wracking film. I highly recommend it.

"Double Door" focuses on Anne, a young bride in turn-of-the-century Manhattan who finds herself at the mercy of her husband's embittered, older half-sister, Victoria, who controls the family estate with an iron fist. Anne at first attempts to win her new sister-in-law over, but finds that Victoria's manipulation and scare tactics could be lethal.

This dour adaptation of the stage play of the same name (and featuring two stage originals: Mary Morris and Anne Revere) works for two reasons: One, the night-and-day performances from Evelyn Venable, playing the innocent Anne, and Mary Morris, the wretched and vindictive sister-in-law; and two, the sprawling mansion setting, which provides an ominous, classically spooky backdrop for the psychological games to unfold (think "The Old Dark House", but on Fifth Avenue).

Morris, a stage actor who only ever appeared on film here, is the main attraction for most, and while her theatrical style at times pokes through, she is still fiercely effective in this role--the character of Victoria belongs in the ranks of the most wicked female villains in film history, up there with Annie Wilkes, Alex Forrest, and Mrs. Danvers. She is vile, greedy, and controlling, and Morris wrings every last drop of these character elements. Venable plays counterpoint as the likable newcomer who at first hopes to see some good in Victoria, only to find her relentless abuses too much to bear, while Anne Revere is memorable as Victoria's downtrodden sister who has been terrorized by Victoria her entire life (even being locked in a soundproof vault as "punishment").

The majority of the film consists of a back-and-forth dynamic between the Victoria and Anne before it ratchets up in the last act to a quasi-murder mystery, with Victoria's confounding propensity for evil reaching its apparent peak. There is a notable mix of melodrama here with psychological thriller elements and, at times, horror, though for most modern audiences, "Double Door" will play more like a straightforward psychological drama soaked in gloom. As a character showcase of exemplary wickedness, "Double Door" is among the best pre-Code examples. 8/10.