SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Maddyclassicfilms Behind Locked Doors is directed by Budd Boetticher and has a screenplay by Malvin Wald and Eugene Ling, the film stars Richard Carlson and Lucille Bremer.Ross Stewart(Richard Carlson)is a private investigator who's hired by reporter Kathy Lawrence(Lucille Bremer)to find a corrupt judge. Kathy believes the judge is being hidden at a local sanatorium, she asks Ross to pretend to be a manic depressive and they'll pretend to be married so she can ask for doctors help and get him admitted to the sanatorium. Once inside it's hoped he can locate the judge. Once inside he faces the danger of really going insane and not being discovered.This is a very good Noir that deserves a great deal more attention. The plot with him going undercover in the sanatorium is interesting, there is real emotional and psychological risk there and it makes for some really tense moments. Carlson and Bremer are both very good.

reprtr For anyone who cares . . . . the basic plot here, and especially the denouement of this movie, involving the wrestler-turned-actor Tor Johnson, was repeated in part in the Peter Gunn episode "See No Evil," complete with Johnson's reprise of essentially the same part, in the same setting, and practically the same set-up. There's no doubt that writer/creator Blake Edwards had seen this picture at some point, and the most compelling part obviously stuck in his mind. Both are extremely violent sequences in which Johnson is absolutely riveting and terrifying -- as well as tragic -- in his screen presence, and neither would work as well with any other actor in the role; no wonder Ed Wood was inspired to add him to his stock company.

Alex da Silva Reporter Lucille Bremer (Kathy) convinces private investigator Richard Carlson (Ross) to go undercover as a patient into the "Siesta Sanitarium" where she believes wanted man Herbert Hayes (Judge Drake) is hiding out. Indeed, he is there. Behind locked doors and with the protection of the staff at the institution, headed by Thomas Browne Henry (Dr Porter) and sadistic warden Douglas Fowley (Larson). Once inside, Carlson also comes face to face with violent inmate Tor Johnson (the "Champ").The film is OK. It needed a little more pace during the beginning sequences at the asylum. While it is not a bad film, it is all familiar stuff these days, and you can probably predict the ending. The staff and patients at the mental hospital are stereotypical and somewhat cartoonish but the film keeps you watching during its short running length.There is an interesting fun game to play at the beginning of the film where Bremer and Carlson decide to pick a mental illness to have. Hmmm….what to choose…they consider schizophrenia before settling for depression. Yep, nice choice. They then read up about all the symptoms and behaviours associated with the condition before getting their deception past the doctor. Everyone plays this game nowadays in their quest to get off sick from work. So, it's a film ahead of its time in that respect.I thought Lucille Bremer got the more memorable scenes – the interview with Thomas Browne Henry in order to get Carlson admitted into the hospital and her sudden appearance in a scene towards the end of the film. She also had some good dialogue to keep the rather slimy Carlson at arm's length. Unfortunately, the film's quality is poor with interference throughout.Sanitariums no longer exist, so you can no longer bluff your way into these places, but if you fancy 3 years off work – approach your boss with details of a new mental illness which manifests itself in an ability to actually show up and do some work as required. There won't be any psychologist theories about this and you should ask to be rushed immediately home to recuperate.

bmacv In the noir cycle, if you were looking for sinister skulduggery, you needn't have searched any farther than the closest mental institution. Creepy snake-pits were the setting, in whole or in part, of (just to name a few) Strange Illusion, Spellbound, Shock, The High Wall and Shock Corridor. But maybe the scariest asylum of them all was La Siesta, in Oscar (later, Budd) Boetticher's Behind Locked Doors.You'd have to be crazy to go there, because while its name promises cozy afternoon naps, what it delivers is apt to be the big sleep. Private eye Richard Carlson doesn't want to go either, but he up and falls for a reporter (Lucille Bremer) who persuades him to do the inside legwork on a story she was after. (A corrupt judge has vanished, and his girlfriend has been making nocturnal visits to La Siesta, where she's ushered in through a side door.) So they fool a doctor in giving Carlson a diagnosis of manic depression, and he becomes an inmate.Inside, Carlson uncovers a web of secrets and lies, enforced by sadistic attendant Douglas Fowley with the help, as a last resort, of a punch-drunk prizefighter who's kept in a cage-like cell (Tor Johnson, who also graced Plan 9 From Outer Space). The intrigue centers around the judge, who's paying off the head of the hospital to hide him. But, when suspicions are raised by a deliberate act of arson, Carlson becomes the top item on the hit list....At barely more than an hour, the movie doesn't have any time to waste, so Boetticher moves at a pretty fast clip (only the ending seems rushed). He lays on the shadows, too, with characters ominously silhouetted against walls and doors. More of an old dark house story, really, than a more freighted and ambiguous noir, Behind Locked Doors sets its sights modestly but achieves them handily.Note: The plot summary of this movie in the `bible' – Silver and Ward's Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style – is hopelessly garbled, as though two different films had become confused.