Seven Doors to Death

"Seven Doors to Death:" sounds intriguing, doesn't it? Quite a catchy title! Very exciting start to this film: a shot rings out, a woman screams & comes running out of a house in a courtyard. She jumps onto the running board of a slow moving car & orders the driver to turn down a dead end street by holding a small flashlight to the side of his head as if it were a gun. The driver speeds down the dead end & crashes; when he recovers, the lady is gone. Sounds great doesn't it? It is great, but this exciting scene lasts for all of about two minutes. After that, it's mostly downhill. The plot becomes muddled as the seven suspects all take turns doing suspicious things, & three or four more murders take place. Chick Chandler is adequate as the male lead, but he's got too many corny lines with too much emphasis on comedy. June Clyde is good as the lady who jumps on the running board. Most of the others are fairly good as well, especially Rebel Randall as a woman who can't seem to get enough attention from the men. The real problem with this film is not in the acting, it's in the script. An interesting premise is talked to death with routine dialog. I rate it 5/10.

The seven deadly doors open off a very pretty open courtyard. Right away I was scared— probably because I could have actually paid money to see this mess. If you can figure out the plot, the physics department may have a place for you. Poverty row PRC really cut more than corners with this one. The sets are few, and dark for more reason than atmosphere. For a supposed mystery, there's about as much suspense as watching a clock tick. But then it is 1944, and wartime audiences need any kind of escape. That's probably why usual sidekick Chick Chandler gets a shot at the lead and shows why he was better as a sidekick. He seems not to be taking anything too seriously. The highpoint may well be half-dressed Rebel Randall's shimmy and shake that unfortunately doesn't come til near the end. Otherwise, there's nothing to recommend in this woeful programmer.

A garrulous but slick PRC quickie with a sharp line in cynical wit, atmospherically lit by Robert Cline and fluidly directed by silent veteran Elmer Clifton, with a personable hero in Chick Chandler (who drives a car called Genevieve, which I don't think we actually see), plenty of mad or shifty-looking suspects and a couple of glamorous but tough broads with big forties shoulders (one of whom brawls energetically with the hero at one point).

The villain's modus operandi proves startlingly gruesome; anticipating real life psycho Ed Gein a few years later.

Unfortunately a boring flick, and obviously the only way to see it is the butchered bootleg Public Domain version, which is so blurry and dark that at times you have hard time making out where the screen is. The leading actors are a nuisance. The man spends most of his screen time trying to appear nonchalant, charming and sexy, forgetting totally what the film is about and that he is a murder suspect because of some dame who played him for a goose to start with. The dame herself merely walks through the flick, being dignified if she's not busy appearing cute. It's a rather badly written stuff, never interesting or witty. No good camera work, no memorable soundtrack, no glamorous actresses or atmospheric sets. It only scratches the surface of the genre, and nothing happens if you miss this totally missable flick.

These old whodunit movies depend on good chemistry among the characters. The leads in this one seem a bit lacking. The plot is fun and keeps us guessing. There doesn't seem to be much threat overhanging the cast, so it doesn't exactly keep us on the edges of our seats. The movie begins nicely with a young woman using a flashlight (pretending it's a gun) to hijack a ride with a young man. He crashes the car and she disappears. After hunting her down, they become allied in a murder case. They are possible suspects much of the time, but it never seems to be serious. This makes what they do rather bland and uninteresting. The girl is a little too one dimensional and the male lead quite dull. There is a courtyard that looks a little like a contemporary shopping mall. There are seven shops and everyone is a suspect. The title makes me think of foreign intrigue. It's not that, though some of the peripheral characters are interesting. Unfortunately, it's relatively forgettable when all is said and done.