House by the River

Another movie that I saw pop up on one of the FAST services that sounded interesting was the Fritz Lang movie House by the River. Because it sounded interesting, I decided to watch it and, having done so, can now do a post on it here.

The movie is set around 1900, although that's not made explicity clear at the beginning. In a house by one of thos dangerous-looking rivers in that it has a faster-than normal current and all sort of stuff floating in it lives the writer Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward). Apparently he makes enough money to have a maid, young Emily (Dorothy Patrick in a small role). One day while Stephen's wife Marjorie (Jane Wyatt) goes out to town for the day, Emily uses the bath since nobody else is there to use it. She comes down the stairs, where Stephen is at the foot of the stairs attracted to her as she's underdressed and he's had a bit to drink. Stephen starts putting the moves on Emily, who clearly doesn't want the moves put on her and tries to get Stephen to stop. She starts screaming for help, and in trying to get her not to scream, accidentally strangles poor Emily to death!

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Now, Stephen has a dead body in the house, and that presents a big problem of how to get rid of the body since nobody will believe that Stephen is only guilty of manslaughter and not murder. But Stephen has a brother, John (Lee Bowman), with whom he has some sort of dysfunctional relationship. Stephen claims that Emily fell down the stairs, which we all know to be a complete lie, and that nobody would believe this, which makes sense since there's no broken bones or even bruising. But one would have to guess, even though it's not well explained, that Stephen has some sort of blackmail he can hold over John's head, as John eventually agrees to go through with helping Stephen dispose of the body.

The two put Emily's dead body in a sack and dump it in the river, with the hope that either the body will decompose or that the sack will make it all the way to the ocean, the opening shots of the river making it look like some sort of delta area close enough to the sea to make this a possibilty. Or course, none of that happens since this is the era of the Production Code and there's no way Stephen is going to get away with what he's done. So as you might guess, the body is eventually found.

But, in a stroke of good luck for Stephen, the sack in which he and John put Emily's body contains markings that implicate John and not Stephen in having killed poor Emily. Not that John is actually sent to prison as that would be too conventional a move. This also makes Stephen notorious enough that it draws interest in his novels, which become best sellers. But Stephen, being too arrogant for his own good, sets out to write another novel. This one is a thinly-veiled account of the murder of Emily, and written by Stephen in such a way that somebody who has inside information could put two and two together and recognize that it was Stephen and not John who killed Emily. John obviously knows all this but can't say anything since he's an accessory after the fact. Marjorie, however, is able to figure it all out and realize that Stephen is the real killer.

There are more twists and turns, but as I said in previous paragraphs there's also the Production Code, which requires the guily to expiate their since, which will result in an ending that involves Stephen getting what's coming to him.

It's the Production Code requirements that make House by the River another of those movies that could probably be really good if the writers weren't constrained in how they could end the movie. That, and the fact that House by the River was made at Republic, which gives it more the feel of a B movie. Still, even in spite of all those issues, House by the River is not a bad movie and is certainly entertaining enough. It just could have been better.