Very Cool!!!

Absolutely the worst movie.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

While his wife is away, diabolically clever writer Stephen Byne (played by Louis Hayward) makes an unwanted romantic advance upon his maid (Dorothy Patrick). When she screams he panics and strangles her to death. He manipulates his gentle loyal brother John Byrne (Lee Bowman) into helping him hide the body. They place the body into a sack and dump it into a nearby river, but unknown to both of them the sack has a named stitched into it ... that of the innocent brother. The innocent John is wracked with guilt, while the devious Stephen is happy to seemingly be in the clear. This movie was directed by German émigré Fritz Lang, the man responsible for the brilliant classic thriller, M, and early science fiction classic Metropolis. His films tend to be dark, tense and brilliant. This is one of his best.

*Possible Spoilers Ahead!*To be completely frank here, I honestly didn't much like House By The River's bleak, over-wrought tale of woe. I found that it took itself way-way too seriously and carried the level of its melodramatics to the point of being downright laughable at times.This business of over-doing it really came to a head in this film's last half-hour.I mean, c'mon. The characters in the story pushed the plausibility of their actions just a bit too far for me to take them at face value.OK. I will gladly admit that regardless of "House" being a poverty-row production from Republic Studios, director Fritz Lang certainly did manage to milk the moody eeriness of its Gothic setting to the fullest extent possible. And, yes, that did serve as quite an effective distraction.But, after all was said and done, it sure seemed to me that all that there was left lurking beneath the ominous-looking shadows and the foreboding ambiance was just the barest bones of a decidedly confused and poorly thought-out story.By the end of the picture I was left feeling quite dissatisfied and misled by "House's" story which told a rather screwy tale of a quirky, second-rate novelist whose pent-up neurosis finally rears its ugly, little head.In a number of ways "House's" story about madness and inevitable murder reminded me a lot of Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" (with its obvious differences well noted, of course).

...is one of the creepiest lines I have heard from a movie. That single name, uttered snidely in the dark by Louis Hayward will make your skin crawl.I've seen House by the River at least 6 times. I don't know why I like it so much. It's a wonderfully well-done film but it creeps the heck out of me every time I watch it. Louis Hayward in the performance of his life plays a psychopathic wastrel of a writer in the late 1800's who tries to rape the housemaid while his wife is away, but accidentally strangles her. He cons his brother into helping him get rid of the body. He gets inspiration from this for a book, and his book is a success. But when certain people get in the way of his success, he turns the whole thing around in the most diabolical way possible.Out of all Fritz Lang's sound films, yes, even M, House by the River is my favorite. The Gothic atmosphere is so intense... the photography, the music, and acting all fit together perfectly. It might not be Lang's best American film but I think it's one of his most unique.

Lang is the first director I ever fell in love with, probably 20 years ago. I've been slowly (very slowly) going through his whole filmography and I don't have too many left. This is #23 and though it's not one of the better ones, it still offers plenty of Lang's typically despairing pleasures. Edward Cronjager's awesome heavily shadowed b&w photography lets us know immediately that we're in noir territory (though the turn-of-the century coastal setting isn't typical) as failing writer Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) has a little "accident" involving his new maid and must spend the rest of the movie covering up and trying to shift the blame for her disappearance on much stabler and saner brother John (Lee Bowman). The suspense builds steadily, with a fine courtroom scene that's nicely underplayed, and for a while I though this might end up being one of Lang's greats, but the finish is disappointingly heavy-handed and obvious, though the laugh that escaped me almost made it worth it. Jane Wyatt is beautiful as always but doesn't have enough to do; Hayward is the real star here though, progressing realistically from merely a self-absorbed heel to a real psychopath. The sets are nicely done and while the film may not feel wholly at place in Southern Gothic territory, at least it doesn't seem like Los Angeles either. Great music by George Antheil. Pretty decent Kino DVD transfer.