The Red House (1947 100 mins.) [Talking Pictures TV 12.00am thursday)
A brother and sister conceal a terrible secret from the teenager they have adopted, concerning a farmhouse deep in a forest. Mystery, starring Edward G Robinson and Lon McCallister.
An absolutely terrific film that was unfairly neglected and near forgotten for decades but which has undergone significant re-evaluation and rehabilitation in the past five years or so.
Although it's nominally a domestic drama/mystery thriller it's shot in the style of a film noir by the outstanding genre director Delmer Daves, who made his name in noir thrillers before moving on to make some of the best Hollywood westerns of the fifties.
Edward G Robinson is perfect in the lead role and pulls all the attention away from the "limited" abilities of the two juvenile actors with whom he shares the first part of the story.
A very young Rory Calhoun gives spirited support as a local roughneck and Judith Anderson is perfectly cast as Robinson's long suffering wife - a study in grim faced determination to carry on with her life despite sharing in The Terrible Secret.
There's some top notch scenery (the film was shot largely on location in the Sierra Nevada mountains), the black and white photography is gorgeous and there's a Miklos Rozsa score underpinning the whole thing.
A quietly creepy and brilliantly constructed little gem.
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