Last week, I started on my latest project — watching all 50 of the movies included in Mill Creek’s Fabulous Forties box set!  I started things off with Port of New York and then I was lucky enough to discover two excellent low-budget gems: The Black Book and Trapped.

And now, we come the 7th film in the Fabulous Forties box set: 1947’s The Red House.

The Red House takes place is one of those small and seemingly idyllic country towns that always seem to harbor so many dark secrets and past crimes.  Everyone in town is friendly, cheerful, and quick to greet the world with a smile.

Well, almost everyone.

Pete Morgan (Edward G. Robinson) is the exception to the rule.  A farmer who moves with a pronounced limp, Pete lives on an isolated farm and refuses to have much to do with any of the other townspeople.  He lives with his wife, Ellen (Judith Anderson), and his niece, 17 year-old Meg (Allene Roberts).  Pete and Ellen are extremely overprotective of Meg.  Pete, especially, is always quick to tell her not to associate with any of boys in the town and not to enter the dark woods that sit next to the farm.  He tells her that there’s a red house hidden away in the woods and the house is haunted.  Going into the red house can only lead to death.

Despite Pete’s eccentricities, Meg is finally able to convince him to hire one of her classmates to help do chores around the farm.  Nath (Lon McAllister) is a good and hard worker and soon, even Pete starts to like him.  Meg, meanwhile, is falling in love with Nath.  However, Nath already has a girlfriend, the manipulative Tibby (Julie London), who cannot wait until they graduate high school so that she and Nath can leave town together.  When Nath starts to also develop feelings for Meg, Tibby responds by flirting with the local criminal, Teller (Rory Calhoun).

Though things seem to be getting better on the Morgan Farm, Nath eventually makes the mistake of admitting that, when he goes home, he takes a short cut through the old woods.  Pete angrily forbids Nath from entering the woods.  Of course, this has the opposite effect.  Soon, Nath and Meg are spending all day sneaking away into the woods so that they can look for the red house.

Once Pete learns of what they’re doing, he decides to hire Teller to keep them from even finding and entering the red house.  Needless to say, love, melodrama, murder, and tragedy all follow…

Despite the fact that the DVD suffered from a typically murky Mill Creek transfer, I enjoyed The Red House.  It’s one of those films that is just so over the top with all of the small town melodrama that you can’t help but enjoy it.  (If M. Night Shyamalan had been a 1940s filmmaker, he probably would have ended up directing The Red House.)  Nath and Meg were kind of boring but Julie London was a lot of fun as Tibby.  If I had ever starred in production of The Red House, I would want to play Tibby.

Plus, the film’s got Edward G. Robinson doing what he does best!  Robinson was an interesting actor, in that he could be both totally menacing and totally sympathetic at the same time.  He has some scary scenes as Pete but they’re also poignant because Robinson suggests that Pete hates his behavior just as much as Ellen and Meg.  Robimson was a powerhouse actor, the type who could elevate almost any film.

And that’s certainly what he does in The Red House!