Pretty bad, but I loved it!

Mankin

"Secret Beyond the Door" (1948: **1/2 out of ****) is the sort of absurd, high-flying forties "kitsch" that I find irresistible.  In it, heiress Joan Bennett marries architect Michael Redgrave after a whirlwind courtship in Mexico, then discovers a whole passel of Freudian hang-ups in his closet. Most of them spring from the day his mother locked him in his room when he was ten (or did she?).  Fritz Lang gives it the works:  distinctive, shadowy camerawork by the great Stanley Cortez ("Night of the Hunter"), the frenzied romanticism of a Miklos Rozsa score, thunder and lightning flashes, swirling mists, stream-of consciousness voice-overs, etc.  An enjoyable bad movie, almost as surreal in its way as "Last Year at Marienbad", but much livelier. My head says, "this is ridiculous," but my heart says "all right!"

score /10

Mankin 7 June 1999

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0039090/