House Arrest

House on Telegraph Hill (Fox Film Noir)
$14.98
Italian actress Valentina Cortese plays Victoria, a Polish survivor of the Holocaust who takes the identity of a dead friend and emigrates to America, pretending to be the mother of young Christopher (Gordon Gebert) and eventually marrying his guardian, Alan Spender (Richard Basehart). She has taken this identity to get a new start, because her own family is entirely gone and this is a chance to start anew - with money. So there are feelings of guilt that haunt her through the movie as she easily carries on a pretense - all of those who would remember the real woman, Karin, whose name she has taken are also dead, and the boy had barely been born. But Spender too is playing a game, having insinuated himself into the family for the promise of wealth as well, and after marrying Victoria and becoming the legal father of Christopher, the actual heir to the house on Telegraph Hill and the family wealth, what is to stop him from getting rid of these small obstacles to making it his own fortune? At least so the paranoid Victoria thinks...

This has some lovely San Francisco location work - the house commands a wide view of the city, and there's a nicely done runaway car scene on the famous hills. And Basehart is fine as the enigmatic and potentially murderous Spender, but I was less impressed with Cortese, who seems overly excitable from the get-go - yes, she'd been through the war - but that's several years in the past at this point, and she has no reason to pin all her fear and paranoia on Spender, as there's also a menacing governess, Margaret (Fay Baker), to contend with. The film in fact seems to posit Margaret as her rival, even enemy at first but doesn't develop that angle into potential psychopathology, instead immediately assuming that Spender is the likely guilty party; and the suspenseful moments - an out-of-control car, a near-fall through a decrepit floor down a cliff - aren't all that well-handled. I felt throughout the need for the hand of the Master, Hitchcock - this was really his kind of picture. Wise was a fine director at times, and he did excellent work within the style, notably with BORN TO KILL (1947) and THE SET-UP (1949), but he just doesn't seem to get much juice out of this fairly ordinary storyline which seems to owe more than a little debt to films like Hitchcock's SUSPICION - with one important plot point near the end a direct lift from that film. The final, dramatic resolution is far too drawn-out and becomes fairly tedious. Still, for Basehart, the location work and the nice gothic house it's worth a look.

House Arrest
$9.98
I am so glad this movie is finally available in widescreen! It has definitely been a guilty pleasure of mine for some time. They really assembled a great cast here. And the premise is cool. Granted it's not really plausible but who cares, it's just a movie!

House Arrest
$19.99
Studio: Uni Dist Corp (music) Release Date: 11/04/2008 Run time: 80 minutes

House Arrest
$16.00
For a traveler to a foreign country, part of the intrigue is that you are vulnerable to the laws that do not take your nationality as a priority. The urge to be accommodating and submissive is a response to the insecurity of not having the freedoms and protection expected in one's home country. Some travelers are challenging, some are paranoid and some are just trusting to the point of naivete'. For Maggie Conover, all or none of these responses may apply, at least for her initial visit to "la isla" in the Caribbean. A travel writer for the magazine, Easy Rider, she meets the daughter of the island's rebel leader. Isabel has grown up restricted and confined to the island, which is her prison, and her father as the jailer and ultimately the murderer of her two husbands. Maggie revisits "la isla" several years after her initial trip. As other readers retort her possible stupidity in going back to the island and risking what she ultimately risks, I can understand the woman who does go back.....There are no clear cut reasons except one, and that is all about Isabel and the mystery of her whereabouts. The reader will have a racing heart when you read about the authorities detaining her. Confined to a house arrest in a hotel, she fears her situation in an escalating climax beginning with the awareness that the room and phone have been surveiled, and the hotel staff briefed as to the seriousness of her impending charges. Of course, no one tells her what the charges may be. She is under the charge of a Major, who escorts her in a confusingly obsequious manner to various prison and detention centers for interogations. Unable to trust anyone, the secrets she carries are now compromising her very own freedom. What did she do to risk her life and make herself so vulnerable to the justice of a foreign country? An engaging book that will keep you breathing fast until the very last pages. It will make you rethink your travel plans...well, maybe!