Double Door

It is the performance of the forgotten stage actress Mary Morris who you will remember here, that is if you are lucky enough to find a copy of this rare gem. Obviously based on a stage melodrama which starred miss Morris, she is here in her only film role and is playing a highly despicable character whom you know needs to be locked up and institutionalized herself.

Everything about this movie is masterful, from the story to the performances to the costumes to the sets. Charles Vidor did an excellent job of adapting a stage production to the screen.

A particularly important entry in VintageFilmBuff's Paramount collection is director Charles Vidor's 1934 engrossingly cinematic translation of the highly successful 1933 Broadway chiller, "Double Door", in which stage stars Mary Morris (her only film) and Anne Revere (film debut) repeat their roles most effectively, aided by lovely heroine Evelyn Venable and well-cast Kent Taylor as the weak-as-water "hero". Full marks for sets and atmosphere.

An earlier user has already mentioned the similarity this plot (at least at first) bears to Sidney Howard's 'The Silver Cord', recently filmed with Laura Hope Crews repeating her Broadway role as a smothering mother coming between her mother's boy of a son and his new wife. In 'Double Door' too, an easily dominated young man is fought over by two stronger-willed females, mommy being replaced by a controlling, much older half-sister who also has her hapless sister under her thumb.

During the last depression, moviegoers were obsessed with the wealthy. As with the aristocrats in Europe, these folks neither created nor managed wealth.

After the Paramount logo, we see the title appear in ordinary white text on glass, followed by credits for cast and crew. Through the glass, behind the text, we see a heavy set of doors.

Is how it was introduced in the opening credits. With a confronting beginning - an elderly woman's face in extreme close up - and she is extremely scary!!!

The main character here is Mary Moore as Victoria Van Brent, the oldest sister and dominatrix in a family whose only remains are herself, younger sister Caroline, and baby brother Rip. They live together in an old creepy mansion full of reminders of the past but devoid of the present.