Word: laughtons
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...Strange Door (Universal-International), remotely based on Robert Louis Stevenson's short story, The Sire de Maletroit's Door, is a creaky costume melodrama that lets Charles Laughton wallow in villainy up to his ample jowls. The film itself is puerile stuff. But Actor Laughton, who slices his ham with stylish zest, makes it fun to watch whenever he looms into sight...
...secret panels have secret panels, where Boris Karloff keeps the keys to the dungeons, and evil servants slink about among torture contraptions apparently devised by some medieval Rube Goldberg. Lording it over this den of vipers, slobbering over great platters of mutton, and fondling his foul schemes, sits Seigneur Laughton...
...Strange Door" claim that it was adapted from a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson. I, for one, don't believe it. Nobody could have hashed together this melange of 17th century torture chambers, spooky castles, and paranoid noblemen except Universal-International, looking for another vehicle for Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff...
...practically impossible to give a coherent account of what this picture is about. It appears that the most psychopathic of the abounding royalty (Laughton) has a grudge against the members of one side of his family; Karloff, on the other hand, likes them. He therefore tosses Laughton into a water wheel which is about to crush en masse the only admirable characters in the film. Laughton clogs the wheel, and all is well...
...other stars--Charles Laughton, Joan Blondell, Agnes Moorehead, Don Taylor, and Audrey Totter--perform their bit parts adequately and usually evoke additional pathos. But the only tears really worth shedding are for Wald and Krasna, who wasted so much talent on such an incredibly trite plot...