THE RED HOUSE (1947)

In the backwoods village of Piney Ridge, teenager Nath Storm (Lon McCallister) is dating local hottie Tibby (Julie London) but has a crush on Meg (Allene Roberts), though high school dropout Teller (Rory Calhoun), who tells people he's good at lots of things they don't teach in school, has an eye for both girls. Meg's parents died years ago, and Pete (Edward G. Robinson), a friend of the family, adopted her. Meg lives with Pete and his sister Ellen (Judith Anderson) out of the village limits near a mysterious place called Oxhead Woods which Pete owns, and which he pays Teller to patrol with a gun to keep trespassers out. Pete, who has a wooden leg and is getting on in years, needs some help around the farm and he hires Nath to work after school. It's a long trek back home so Nath has to leave before dark, but he gets to be near Meg. On the first night, he decides to use Oxhead Woods as a shortcut home though Pete tells him not to, warning him about a red haunted house. It's windy, the path is winding, and Nath thinks he hears screams. Another night, someone pushes Nath off the path into a creek. When Meg, Nath, and Tibby go exploring in the woods one Sunday afternoon, Pete gets angry and forbids Meg from going into the woods. Two things become clear: 1) Pete has something to hide in the woods; 2) Pete is perhaps inordinately possessive of Meg. Meg continues trekking into the woods and eventually finds the red house, small and dilapidated, but before she can explore it, Teller fires warning shots at her from afar. She falls and breaks her leg and Nath finds her and carries her to safety. Soon, Nath and Meg are involved, and Tibby shifts her affections to the possibly dangerous Teller. Pete fires Nath and begins slipping into odd states when he looks intensely at Meg and calls her Jeannie. Soon, the secret of the red house comes to light and changes everyone's lives.

It's difficult to classify this film by genre. Because it was in the public domain back in the early days of VHS, it was easily available, usually in poor or incomplete prints. For some reason, I thought it was a rural romantic comedy (maybe because of the presence of the handsome juvenile actor Lon McCallister, or the bland storybook title) and I avoided it. Indeed, the movie begins like a lightweight high school romance, but a darker Gothic tone develops as Oxhead Woods is introduced and Pete begins acting suspiciously. Edward G. Robinson gives a layered performance, moving Pete from fatherly to creepy over the course of the first half of the film, and eventually into overwhelming darkness. The movie has been called horror and noir, and even compared directly to Psycho—the last scene, like Psycho's, involves a car in a swamp. It also has a dark fairytale feel, like Night of the Hunter. But it's more a psychological thriller than horror; there is menace, especially in the nicely done scenes of walks in the dark woods, but until the very end, no gore or deaths. Critics rightly praise Allene Roberts, only nineteen at the time, as the innocent but strong and independent Meg, but Lon McCallister is just as good as the similarly innocent and strong Nath. Both had relatively short careers in the movies and I would guess they are at their peaks here. Rory Calhoun has the bad boy look down pat, and singer Julie London, only 21 at the time, commands the screen as the sexpot Tibby–she would continue acting for years, but she's best known as a jazzy torch singer. Judith Anderson is wasted in the nothing role of Ellen, as is Ona Munson in a small part as Nath's mother. At 100 minutes, it feels a bit too long with some bogging down in the middle, but it's definitely worth seeing. Its working title was No Trespassing, a much better title. Pictured are McCallister and Roberts. [TCM]