Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1933


The Secret of the Blue Room

Buy The Secret of the Blue Room now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




{{Infobox film

| name = The Secret of the Blue Room

| image = The Secret of the Blue Room - theatrical poster.jpg

| alt =

| caption = Swedish film poster for 'Secret of the Blue Room'

| native_name =

| director = Kurt Neumann

| producer =

| writer =

| screenplay = William Hurlbut

| story =

| based_on =

| starring =

| music = Heinz Letton

| cinematography = Charles Stumar

| editing = Philip Cahn

| studio = Universal Pictures

| distributor = Universal Pictures

| released =

| runtime = 66 minutes

| country = United States

| language =

| budget = $69,000

| gross =

}}

'The Secret of the Blue Room' is a 1933 American pre-Code mystery/horror film directed by Kurt Neumann and starring Lionel Atwill, Gloria Stuart, Paul Lukas and Edward Arnold. The film's plot concerns a group of wealthy people who stay at a European mansion that features a blue room that is said to be cursed, as everyone who has stayed there has died shortly after. Three people suggest a wager that each can survive a night in the blue room.

'The Secret of the Blue Room' is based on the German film 'Secret of the Blue Room' and was Universal Studios' least expensive feature of 1933. Universal later remade the film as 'The Missing Guest' (1938) and 'Murder in the Blue Room' (1944).

Plot



A woman's suitor named Tommy challenges his two rivals to each spend a night in a blue room in which several murders had occurred years before at 1 a.m. Tommy sleeps there on the first night but disappears at 1 a.m. The second man sleeps there the next night. At 12:30 a.m, he starts playing the piano, but is shot half an hour later.

As these events occur, a police investigation leads to several answers to several mysteries. On the fifth night, the third man sleeps in the blue room. However, he places a dummy in an armchair and conceals himself behind a coat. At 1 a.m, a revolver reaches around the door and fires at the dummy. The man and several police officers jump out of their hiding places. After a furious gunfight, the villain is apprehended and discovered to be Tommy.

Cast



Style



The authors of the book 'Universal Horror' describe 'The Secret of the Blue Room' as an "engaging example of the early 'spooky house' mystery" and observe that it "had all the recognizable elements of the classic Universal horror films ... for all the atmosphere the picture unmistakably remains a whodunit at heart."

Production



'The Secret of the Blue Room' was produced on a budget of $69,000, making it the cheapest Universal Studios production of 1933. The film was a remake of the 1932 German mystery film 'Secret of the Blue Room'. According to 'The Hollywood Reporter', Lillian Bond was cast as Betty but was replaced by Muriel Kirkland.

Release



'The Secret of the Blue Room' was released in the United States on July 20, 1933. Universal later remade the film as 'The Missing Guest' (1938) and 'Murder in the Blue Room' (1944). The film was released on DVD on October 16, 2014 as part of the Universal Vault Series.

Reception



In a contemporary review, Richard Watts Jr. of the 'New York Herald Tribune' found that despite being a bit too formulaic, the film was "better than a number of previous efforts of its school" but contained a "grand cast." Mordaunt Hall of 'The New York Times' compared the film to 'The Old Dark House', stating that the film "lopes along in quite an interesting fashion until it comes to the denouement, which is by no means as satisfactory as might be anticipated." Wanda Hale of 'The New York Daily News' stated that the story was "too unreasonable for words." A review in 'The Film Weekly' observed that the performances by Paul Lukas, Gloria Stuart and Lionel Atwill were "worthy of a stronger and less threadbare story."

Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas and John Brunas commented in their book 'Universal Horror' that "most of the early Universal mysteries that masquerade as horror films are fairly dismal" but declared this film as "a minor gem ... probably one of the best of Universal's non-horror horror films." Hans J. Wollstein of AllMovie awards the film a three-star rating, noting that it made "good utilization of standing sets, including the mansion from James Whale's far superior 'The Old Dark House' (1932), adds production values not matched by its Poverty Row competitors, of which there were many."

References



Footnotes



Sources

*

*


Buy The Secret of the Blue Room now from Amazon

<-- Return to movies from 1933



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1106329565.