I love this movie so much

To me, this movie is perfection.

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

"You've heard of the last straw, Bill? Well you're it."So sums up the plot of the chilling thriller The Hidden Room. Robert Newton's wife, Sally Gray, has been repeatedly unfaithful. Bobbie can't take it anymore, and he's vowed to kill the next of her lovers. Phil Brown just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.The Hidden Room was ahead of its time, no doubt inspiring stories like Sleuth and Secrets in Their Eyes. It's not your normal revenge story of the 1940s; it's very creepy. Robert Newton was an easy casting choice for the frustrated villain, but I'm sure James Mason, Herbert Marshall, and Claude Rains were envious that they weren't chosen instead, as they each could have played the part.My biggest criticism of the film is its untapped potential. When Scotland Yard gets involved in the story, the cleverness of writer Alec Coppel dwindles. There could have been many more cat-and-mouse games, or gotchas for the audience, all of which would have fit in with the opening tone of the film. It doesn't make any sense that Scotland Yard even becomes involved in the first place, let alone the other steps that are taken. Still, if you like creepy stories or revenge schemes that involve mental torture, you'll definitely want to check out The Hidden Room.

When Dr Clive Riordan discovers that the friendship of his wife and American Bill Kronin is actually an affair he confronts them with a gun, whisking Bill away with wife Storm sure that he will murder him. With Bill missing days later, the police begin a missing persons search that makes the headlines. Unable to go to the police without ruining her reputation, Storm is certain that Clive has killed her lover – however a letter from Bill suggests he is still alive. Meanwhile the police investigation continues, with Clive never coming into it once, despite the fact that he is holding Bill alive in a secret room in his house – waiting for the police to give the case up before killing him for real.I have made a bit of a fudge in describing the plot above but it actually flows a lot better than I have written it. The plot is quickly set up and it brings the film down to a series of cat and mouse style games, all of them Riordan and at least one other. So we get Riordan and Bill talking in the secret room; Riordan and Storm talking around the supposed murder; Riordan and Supt Finsbury talking around the investigation. The film can pretty much be broken down into these parts, interlinking with each other. Each works well as the writing and tension help to keep the film moving along well right down to the satisfying conclusion.The script is enjoyable in producing characters that are interesting. For example I enjoyed the way that Clive seemed to quite like Bill despite the fact that he was going to kill him. The script also has a touch of humour across it, with the macabre comedy across it played subtly while also leaving room for an amusing Carry On style joke from the woman complaining about her husband in Riordan's surgery. Dmytryk directs well mostly inside rooms, keeping enough back to build the tension but not letting it become stagy.The cast respond well to this and it is they that make the script work well. Newton is the standout of the cast as he delivers a cold and clinical character who is also emotional but in a very English way. He works well with the other actors to deliver some solid tension. Brown is good considering what is asked of him in his character – he works well with Newton. Gray is almost on the sidelines for much of the film but gives a reasonable turn despite this. Wayne delivers an obvious character perhaps but it does work when you consider how it compliments and plays off Newton's character.Overall then an enjoyable little film. Criminally few have seen it but it works well within itself thanks to a solid script that good performances make good on, and of course atmospheric handling from director Dmytryk.

If you like this film, see if you can get hold of DEAR MURDERER, which has a similar plot and stars Eric Portman and Greta Gynt as the cuckolded husband/ faithless wife, with Dennis Price as one of her lovers. Again, murderer and victim share a long chat and seem to quite like each other. It was made a few years earlier, I think. But that doesn't stop this film being brilliant, with excellent playing from all the protagonists. Storm seems a thoroughly unlikeable woman. Presumably she stays with her husband because he is coining it as a psychiatrist in Harley Street with rich private patients. On my DVD cover a "Wayne Naughton" is credited - surely they mean Welsh comedian Naunton Wayne who is brilliant here (as always) as the Superintendent. He's one of those eccentric detectives, but he doesn't overplay his hand as Alistair Sim might have. He has a sad little speech about how he thought about marriage for so long that he missed the bus. A liking seems to spring up between him and Dr. Riordan, too.

The British never really "got" noir; the few successes they showed (Night and the City, The Third Man) had American directors or casts to light, or darken, the way for them. Among those directors was Edward Dmytryk, who had started big in the noir cycle with Murder My Sweet, Cornered, and Crossfire but who fled to England in the fallout from the Hollywood witch-hunt -- in which he named names, including Jules Dassin, who directed Night and the City. (Luckily, Dmytryk later returned to Hollywood to helm The Sniper.) Obsession tells the story of a jealous psychiatrist (Robert Newton) with a faithless wife (Sally Gray); he's one of those hyperarticulate verbal sadists whom you want to cosh with a bumbershoot or choke with cucumber tea-sandwiches. He decides to wreak a hellish revenge on the latest of his wife's paramours (the basically harmless Phil Brown; the philandering wife is Sally Gray). He locks the poor Yank in a cellar somewhere in bombed-out London until he fills a bathtub with enough acid to destroy all traces of the corpse (transported daily to the dungeon, along with food and martinis, in hot-water bottles!). Somehow the wife's inquisitive mutt gets mixed up in his plans.... Obsession is very restrained and British in hinting at things that the Americans would shove in our faces, but pulling back in just the nick of time. Dmytryk plays with the conventions expertly, keeping the suspense taut without shocking the bejezus out of us. It's a good thriller that returns to an ordered cosmos with all the laws of fair play observed -- not the anarchic, primal universe of true film noir.