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List Price: $24.95Amazon.com's Price: $22.49 You Save: $2.46 (10%)as of 11/24/2009 03:47 EST details
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Kino Video
EAN: 0738329041922
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, NTSC
Label: Kino Video
Languages: EnglishOriginal Language
Manufacturer: Kino Video
MPN: KICD4192D
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Kino Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: November 22, 2005
Running Time: 88 minutes
Studio: Kino Video
Theatrical Release Date: March 25, 1950
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Studio: Kino International Release Date: 11/22/2005 Run time: 85 minutes
Amazon.com:
Virtually unseeable for half a century, House by the River, the rarest of Fritz Lang's American films, proves to be an atmospheric serving of Southern Gothic with style and perversity to burn. This is a happy surprise, given that the film was made at a low point in Lang's career, at a Poverty Row studio, with a low-wattage cast. Louis Hayward--whose dark, spoiled good looks and insinuating smile suggest Orson Welles' tawdry evil twin--plays an effete author in a small 19th-century town. One hot, lazy afternoon he's tempted (in a brilliantly directed scene) by thoughts of the comely maid soaking in his upstairs bathroom. There follows an awkward pass, a hand over her mouth, and suddenly he finds himself an accidental murderer. With a dead body to get rid of, living by a river comes in handy. But on this river, secrets have a way of returning with the tide.
The script by Mel Dinelli (who had just written the trim 1949 thriller The Window) ably milks the suspense, and there's a creepy moonlit search by rowboat for the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't corpse. The failed novelist, beginning to relish his guilt, acquires fresh inspiration as a writer and also becomes a cagy manipulator of other people, notably the wife (Jane Wyatt) who doesn't know what he's done, and the crippled brother (Lee Bowman) who does. Making a virtue of production resources only slightly upscale of Edgar G. Ulmer, Lang turns the titular domicile into an Expressionist hothouse where lace curtains yield a web of shadows, potted plants throw jagged black spears across high-key faces, and the breeze from the river is anything but fresh. Mastered from British archival materials, the DVD gleams like a cutlery-store window. --Richard T. Jameson
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Fritz Lang was the first director I ever fell in love with, probably 20 years ago. I've been slowly (very slowly) going through his whole filmography and I don't have too many left. This was number 23 (of 37 to date) and though it's not one of the better ones, it still offers plenty of Lang's typically despairing pleasures. Edward Cronjager's awesome heavily shadowed b&w photography lets us know immediately that we're in noir-ish territory (though the turn-of-the century coastal setting - gulf coast? ... Read More
Rating: -
Fritz Lang's "House by the River" is not a true film noir, but more properly a gothic mystery or thriller. As such, it compares favorably with Robert Siodmak's "The Spiral Staircase" as the best of the genre. In movies of this type, atmosphere plays a major role, and this one has it in spades: the gloomy old houses, the tidal creek that carries debris out to sea and then washes them back again, the corpse that returns at a most inopportune time for the killer. The print and sound quality are above average ... Read More
Rating: -
Although director Fritz Lang's atmospheric exercise in Southern gothic "House by the River" doesn't rank as one of his major films, such as "M," "Metropolis," "Fury," or "The Big Heat," this morbid Victorian melodrama about murder most foul contains enough of his characteristic themes to make it rewarding for people who fancy his films. Several reasons account for its lackluster stature. First, Republic Studios produced and released "House by the River" and Republic wasn't a prominent studio like MGM, Warner ... Read More
Rating: -
This shows what a great director like Fritz Lang can do with peanuts. Laughton must have seen this for his "Night of the Hunter", some of the feel is so similar. "Hunter" is superior because the script and cast are, but Jane Wyatt is one of the most underrated talents ever in films, in part because of the Red Scare blacklist of which she was a victim. The other leads are good but the film suffers from mediocre talent in the supporting roles. All the same, this is the kind of film Manny Farber used to champion in ... Read More
Rating:  -
The way I understand it, after some commercial failures and word getting around Hollywood that he was difficult to work with, Fritz Lang (Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, Metropolis, M) found employment at the poverty row studios directing such features as this one titled House by the River (1950), which was released by Republic Productions. Based on a novel by British author A.P. Herbert, and adapted for the screen by Mel Dinelli (The Spiral Staircase), the film stars Louis Hayward (The Man in the Iron Mask), Jane Wyatt ... Read More
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