BEHIND LOCKED DOORS
aka The Human Gorilla
D: Budd Boetticher (1948); with Richard Carlson, Lucille Bremer, Douglas Fowley, Tor Johnson, Thomas Browne Henry.
Tor Johnson in a Forties noir? Directed by Budd Boetticher, the director of Westerns like The Cimarron Kid and The Tall T? Believe it. This mildly interesting Poverty Row quickie runs barely over an hour, so it’s important that things keep moving along (which they do). Carlson plays Ross Stewart, a detective hired by a reporter (Bremer) to help track down a crooked judge on the lam. In a plot twist that should ring familiar to fans of Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor, the private dick feigns manic depression and is committed to a mental hospital where the judge is believed to be hiding out. Conditions inside the hospital are less than pleasant, giving the detective something new to look into while trying to track down the barrister (whose room is in the cordoned-off “locked ward”). His nosiness soon draws some unwelcome attention from Larson (Fowley), the hospital’s sadistic attendant/goon/enforcer, and the administrator (Browne). The game’s up when Stewart and the judge come face to face and the detective is found out. That’s where ol’ Tor comes in. As a former prizefighter, the hulking Johnson is kept in a locked room, where he spends most of his time huddled in the corner. When Larson gets bored, though, he bangs a tin cup on the bars and Johnson goes berserk, shadowboxing his way around his room. The hospital’s way of dealing with problem patients is to throw them in the room with the Champ, then let him take over from there. Soon Stewart is forced into a go-round with the ex-boxer; with an advantage of 80 or so pounds, the Champ makes short work of him. In typical Poverty Row fashion, noir means “barely lit at all” in this low-budget programmer. Tor, who’s mute as usual and wears the same blank grimace as in Ed Wood’s movies, is not the film’s real menace. Larson’s stiff bearing and glasses somehow make him more intimidating, with his snarl backed up by a huge wad of keys which he uses to whack unruly patients. Douglas Fowley was a character actor (and father of legendary record producer Kim Fowley) who logged well over 200 movies in his career, most recognizably as the director in Singin’ in the Rain. Still, there’s nothing quite like seeing Johnson casually toss around an average-sized man like he’s a Raggedy Andy doll, especially in something as unlikely as a seedy Forties B noir.
This article appears in February 16 • 2001.