The Secret of the Blue Room – 1933 – Classic locked door mystery
Recently I have been very interested in older horror movies and I stumbled across The Secret of the Blue Room. This was supposed to be just that, an older horror movie. I had not heard about it before, so I concluded that it was not one of the true classics. But the plot still seemed very interesting. There’s something about a looked door mystery that just appeals to me. I don’t know how that started but it might have been when I first saw a version of Edgar Allen Poe’s classic story, Murder in the Rue Morgue.
Not that old, or is it?
Not the version with Bela Lugosi from 1932 which I most certainly want to see as well. No, this was a more modern version shown on Swedish Television in my youth. Since I’m old, and even if it’s newer than 1932 it still was made quite a few years back. You know, in my mind it’s still 1985 or something and if you see it from that perspective, 1971 isn’t that far. But in reality, it’s about 50 years old when I write this.
I can’t say that I remember much from it either. There are fragments in my memory but that’s about it. But I do remember the feeling of watching it. I think it was the first murder mystery I ever saw too, if it wasn’t Murder on the Orient Express of course. Well. It really doesn’t matter. Mysteries happening inside a locked room is very interesting, period!
Set in a castle
The Secret of the Blue Room is set in a castle. It has very few cast members. Not more than is necessary to create the story and the mystery. We learn that there’s a room in the castle, the Blue Room, where tragedies happened 20 years earlier or so. People died during the strike at one o’clock AM. Add the fact that there are three young men trying to attract the daughter of the wealthy Robert von Helldorf. I guess he’s a count or a baron or something.
To show courage, one of the love-sick men dares the other one to spend a night in the room just to prove their worth for the young woman’s hand. Kind of a childish bet really but it works in the context of the film. We have to remember that it portrays a different time period where men were supposed to be heroes and protect the poor young defenseless women. Of course, I wasn’t around so I can’t say if it’s a product of the entertainment industry – a romanization, or if this was really the case in real life back then. Certainly, the time has changed but I’m not sure to what extent and to what is fact and what is fictional.
Never mind. Do I need to state that the first person staying in the room at night disappears and that the second one is found dead? It would be a mystery otherwise, would it? It’s not really as straightforward as I describe it of course and there are a lot of small things adding to the mystery and suspense too. Why does the chauffeur lie about his whereabouts and who is the mysterious man that the Butler doesn’t let into the house?
Lost aesthetics
As a side note, why did they even use colors in the movie titles back then when no one really could say what the color of the room was anyway. There are more examples of this of course. It kind of takes away some of the aesthetics. Or what could have been pretty easily achieved aesthetics.
The Secret of the Blue Room hasn’t aged that well. It’s not a timeless masterpiece. It’s pretty easy to figure out most of the mystery. I had almost all the pieces figured out when the movie ended. The acting is ok and I don’t think the script could’ve taken any more strain. If the actors has gone deeper into their characters it would just have become silly. It needed to stay as wooden as it was.
What more to say? Well, even if I never heard about Secret of the Blue Room before it’s operantly a remake of a German movie from the year before and has also been remade at least two times after this. So don’t come a say that remaking working concepts, ideas and scripts is something new. It was made almost a hundred years ago too. Maybe I should see some of the other versions?
