DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952) in The Psycho Ward Forum

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DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952)

Author	Comment
Sid Terror	DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952)	Lead	[-]
Aug 2 10 8:38 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	So you say Marilyn Monroe never made a Horror film? This little girl might disagree with you... Marilyn Monroe stars as a mental patient recently discharged from the psycho ward of an asylum! Her brother Elisha Cook Jr. as an elevator operator in a luxury Hotel thinks she is cured and is helping her make a new start... Getting her a job as a babysitter for rich guests at the hotel. Add Richard Widmark, Anne Bancroft and Jim Backus to the cast and you have one of my favorite psycho thrillers that really gets your skin crawling! Monroe's mania really starts to unravel about the time we see the razor scars on her wrists from a past suicide attempt after she lost her former fiance in a plane crash during the war. Enter Richard Widmark (also a pilot) who has just broken up with his girlfriend Anne Bancroft (a singer performing at the Hotel). Monroe starts to lose her grasp on reality when she begins to imagine Widmark is her dead fiance returned from the grave. Monroe starts to abuse the little girl she is babysitting (tying her up and gagging her, plotting to push her from a high hotel window, etc.) because she imagines the little girl will somehow ruin her being reunited with her deceased ex. ...Then it REALLY takes a one way trip to Crazyville! I highly recommend this one. It put Monroe on the map as a serious actress early in her career. Why do the prettiest ones always have to be the most disturbed? Last Edited By: Sid Terror Aug 5 10 3:44 AM. Edited 4 times.
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telegonus		#1	[-]
Aug 3 10 2:23 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	It's nice to look at, too. The movie, I mean; Marilyn, obviously. A very dark movie. I don't think of it as a horror so much as horrifying. Marilyn's character, what she goes through.
Sid Terror		#2	[-]
Aug 3 10 3:59 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Indeed, watching her slow mental meltdown makes you squirm. Just watching it play itself out is horrifying. The kid might be a little bratty, but what happens to her is just wow. It is the first of real psychotic babysitter movies that I can recall. I can only imagine how shocking it was in its day too, in a time when little kids just weren't victimized like that in movies. It still does kind of push the envelope.
rogueevolent		#3	[-]
Aug 3 10 6:54 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Woa Sid!!! Mucho thanks for starting this thread and flagging to (at least to me) my attention a film I was totally unaware of. I've got to check this out. - Jay "We didn't come here to fight monsters, we're not equipped for it" -- Richard Carlson (Creature from the Black Lagoon)
CreepingBride		#4	[-]
Aug 3 10 9:19 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	As a horror movie, REPULSION does it better. Last Edited By: CreepingBride Aug 3 10 9:34 PM. Edited 1 times.
Monsterpal		#5	[-]
Aug 3 10 9:27 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK is a pretty decent suspense thriller with a fine cast, but I wouldn't call it a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination.
Sid Terror		#6	[-]
Aug 3 10 10:11 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Monsterpal wrote: DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK is a pretty decent suspense thriller with a fine cast, but I wouldn't call it a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination. Perhaps it was a tiny stretch, but for the little girl being tied up and gagged and tortured and almost pushed from a high building by an insane monster (however good looking), it might be a different story. The only thing that would switch the genre for sure is to swap the hot babysitter for Bela Lugosi as a mad doctor (doing some weird "experiments" or something) driven insane by the loss of his wife.
Sid Terror		#7	[-]
Aug 3 10 10:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	rogueevolent wrote: Woa Sid!!! Mucho thanks for starting this thread and flagging to (at least to me) my attention a film I was totally unaware of. I've got to check this out. - Jay Thanks. I aim to please. I was actually amazed there was no folder for this film already on these boards. It isn't often that happens.
MikeTheMook		#8	[-]
Aug 3 10 10:37 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Marilyn could tie me up anytime!
Monsterpal		#9	[-]
Aug 4 10 12:00 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	One monstrous point in this film's favor is that it was directed by Roy Ward Baker during his few years in Hollywood in the fifties (another notable Baker film from that period is INFERNO with Robert Ryan), about eighteen years before THE VAMPIRE LOVERS. Yes, he's the same Roy Ward Baker who directed FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH, SCARS OF DRACULA, and MOON ZERO TWO, as well as a good 1958 film about the Titanic, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER.
telegonus		#10	[-]
Aug 4 10 12:52 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	A Night To Remember at times plays like a horror. The people are all dressed up like in an old horror, and the ship's interior design (they didn't call them "floating palaces" for nothing) is similar to the castles and manor houses that pop up so regularly in old horrors. The scenes in the rapidly flooding boiler room, the growing unease as the passengers realize the enormity of the situation, literally one of life and death, is grim stuff. No mad doctors, monsters, zombies or vampires in this one. There's no need for them. The cold night air, the iceberg and the rising sea water do the trick nicely.
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MikeTheMook		#11	[-]
Aug 4 10 10:12 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts
Butcher Benton		#12	[-]
Aug 4 10 12:44 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	We're screening Don't Bother to Knock at Noir City, Chicago 13-21 August at the Music Box Theatre.
TomWeaver999		#13	[-]
Aug 4 10 1:00 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	This was a staple on New York Channel 2's THE LATE LATE LATE SHOW when I was a teen, and I saw it a couple times. My memory is that it was mostly kinda depressing. For me it was a bit too slow-moving and claustrophobic a movie for 4 in the morning, it never did much for me. When it was first announced, Dorothy McGuire was going to star (but I don't know if she was going to be the babysitter or the Anne Bancroft character).
Butcher Benton		#14	[-]
Aug 4 10 6:55 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Any movie that features Marilyn Monroe throwing Elisha Cook Jr. ass-over-teakettle in a hotel room is worth seeing!
Sid Terror		#15	[-]
Aug 4 10 6:58 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	And cracking his skull open with a freestanding floor ashtray or whatever thet heavy looking thing was.
Gil Ray		#16	[-]
Aug 4 10 7:56 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm gonna have to track this one down. Thanks, Sid!
ryanbrennan		#17	[-]
Aug 4 10 10:18 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm just glad to see a decent thread with Richard Widmark even though he isn't being much discussed.
Sid Terror		#18	[-]
Aug 5 10 4:03 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	ryanbrennan wrote: I'm just glad to see a decent thread with Richard Widmark even though he isn't being much discussed. A big Richard Widmark fan here too. In this case though Widmark got top billing, but Monroe ran away with the picture. He should have expected it with the attention he once got as Tommy Udo. This time they had crazy with curves though. Even the publicity of the time was targeted on the new kid, and deminishing him. Wardrobe test...
MikeTheMook		#19	[-]
Aug 5 10 6:37 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I taped this off of AMC many moons ago. Now I shall have to dig it out and give it another viewing. Good flick.
Sid Terror		#20	[-]
Aug 5 10 7:15 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Marilyn Monroe and FILM NOIR is a great mix that we didn't get enough of in my opinion. I can think of exactly three instances... THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950), DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952), and the amazing NIAGARA (1953). 1953 was a transitional year for Marilyn, with NIAGARA and HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE and GENTLEMAN PREFER BLONDES all being released. The last two were such huge hits that the die was cast and sexy light comedies / musicals is all that 20th Century Fox wanted to cast her in. Come to think of it though, wouldn't NIAGARA fit into "The Psycho Ward" category too? Joseph Cotton definitely qualifies as a screen looney / killer in that film. Maybe I should start a folder for it too.
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DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952)

DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952)