House of Secrets (1956)

Instant Favorite.

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fantastic!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

First to clear up any misunderstandings this was Ranks attempt at an A feature.As usual it lacks originality.The substituted agent must have been used many times prior to this.Michael Craig gives a lacklustre performance with a truly awful mid Atlantic accent.The colour photogrAphy and the views of Paris are the best features of a truly forgettable film

For me, a thoroughly enjoyable, well-paced, beautifully shot and above-par acted thriller.The locations are interesting and vibrant, the fight scenes are well choreographed, fast (for their time) and thus more realistic than most I've seen from this period and the plot twist interesting enough, even 60 years later.It is for me, slightly reminiscent of a Hitchcock thriller with elements of an early Bond film. It also reminds me of a very good 1950s 'story for boys'.I have given it a 9/10 simply to try and counterbalance the unfairly low rating it has so far received - in reality I would rate it a 7 or 7½.Recommended to anyone interested in film-noir, 1950s Paris and/or appreciative of the beauty of mid-century Technicolor.

For a french reviewer like me who love film noir, House Of Secrets is an absolute entertaining movie. I first loved all the Parisian locations (around rue du Bac, l'île Saint-Louis, Eiffel tower, rue Lamarck, an unknown restaurant) and Marseille.The plot with impersonation is interesting with some fine twists. The fights are real fast paced, destroying the furniture more violently than in American serials. The cinematography by Harry Waxman is very colorful and shadowy. The editing by the brilliant Sidney Hayers (soon to direct Circus Of Horrors and Burn Witch Burn) is real fast and raw.The best surprise again for a french reviewer is the casting of Gérard Oury as a badman, very surprising when you see his future top box office movies with Bourvil and Louis de Funès as a director... Swell souvenir.

Larry Ellis bares a striking resemblance to a dead criminal whose smuggling gang's activities threaten the economy of the western world so the CIA recruit him to take on the dead man's identity to infiltrate the gang The above is the premise for HOUSE OF SECRETS . It's maybe not a groundbreaking idea but it's a solid one similar to WHITE HEAT which I had the pleasure of seeing again a few days previously . With both movies you know where the story is going and that it's only a matter of time before the undercover agent gets found out . But where as in WHITE HEAT the audience are kept on the edge of their seats by the intelligent script HOUSE OF SECRETS is rather uninvolving and seems somewhat underdeveloped , a case in point is when Larry is asked to meet " The girl " . He doesn't know which girl the gang are talking about , so instead of the gang members physically taking him to meet the girl thereby blowing his cover due to his ignorance Larry goes to meet his CIA contact to ask what girl the gang are referring to . Things like this means the script misses the opportunity to create nail biting tension and makes the movie rather uninvolving