Seven Doors to Death

Plot synopsis:
At the Hamilton Court shops in Los Angeles, a shot rings out in a darkened apartment. A woman (June Clyde) screams and flees, seeing a car driven by architect Jimmy McMillan (Chick Chandler). Ordering him at gunpoint to speed away, in the rush to get away, the car crashes but the woman disappears. After returning to the scene, McMillan finds a corpse and calls Capt. William Jaffe (Michael Raffetto) but by the time the police arrive, the corpse has mysteriously changed to that of a different victim.
The Police Captain recognizes the dead man as Mary Rawling's lawyer. Summoning Rawlings, the owner of the Hamilton Court, McMillan immediately sees that she was the woman in his car. Her alibi does not seem convincing to Jaffe or McMillan, who decides to start his own investigation, starting with the shopkeepers at the Hamilton Court. Antique dealer Donald Adams (Milton Wallace), recalls on the night of the murder, a rare Egyptian chest was stolen from his shop. When McMillan finds the stolen chest, he also finds the man who was killed.
Another suspect, the silversmith Claude Burns (Edgar Dearing) is killed, and as furrier Charles Eaton (George Meeker) becomes involved, Mary is arrested but she is convinced that she is being framed. Ultimately, a confrontation between her accusers leads to the discovery of stolen jewels and the real culprit.

Tags: murder

Review:
"Seven Doors to Death:" sounds intriguing, doesn't it?
Quite a catchy title!
Very exciting start to this film: a shot rings out, a woman screams & comes running out of a house in a courtyard.
She jumps onto the running board of a slow moving car & orders the driver to turn down a dead end street by holding a small flashlight to the side of his head as if it were a gun.
The driver speeds down the dead end & crashes; when he recovers, the lady is gone.
Sounds great doesn't it?
It is great, but this exciting scene lasts for all of about two minutes.
The plot becomes muddled as the seven suspects all take turns doing suspicious things, & three or four more murders take place.
Chick Chandler is adequate as the male lead, but he's got too many corny lines with too much emphasis on comedy.
June Clyde is good as the lady who jumps on the running board.
Most of the others are fairly good as well, especially Rebel Randall as a woman who can't seem to get enough attention from the men.
The real problem with this film is not in the acting, it's in the script.
An interesting premise is talked to death with routine dialog.
An interesting premise is talked to death with routine dialog.
I rate it 5/10..
Middling mystery is okay time killer.
As the movie starts there's a scream, a gun shot and the sound of a body falling.
The film shifts locations as a man in a car is hijacked by a woman on the run.
In following her directions he ends up crashing his car and the woman runs away.
He tries to follow the woman into an area with a small group of stores, only to end up discovering a dead body.
The man notifies the police, who then find a body then the one he reported.
From there its complication after complication, most of which are a bit clever but really have nothing to do with the plot and seem to be out of another movie.
The conclusion when it comes seems to be tacked on and out of left field.This a PRC programmer that is a perfect example of what a by the numbers low low budget second feature is like.
The plot is set up in such away to keep you interested no matter where the plot goes.
Its structured to run no more than the alloted time.
It has a minimum of sets and just enough people to keep to make it look as though this might, possibly, be a real place (if you've never lived in the real world).
Its also completely forgettable.The plot has the group of stores being searched and researched again and again to find what ever the latest clue has revealed.
Most of the time this is done in the dark so we really can't see where we are.
Everyone is a suspect until the very end when the killer is revealed by broad leap of logic.
If it wasn't for some rather weird asides, a dance number, a bit about making toast, and a few others, this movie could easily have run half its length.
This isn't to say its a dull or bad movie, its not.
Things are pleasantly confused for at least the first 15 minutes during which time you'll desperately be trying to figure out what you're watching.
By then you'll be hooked since you'll want to know where this very messy movie is going.This is a good movie, especially when viewed at 3am while curled up in bed.
Its not high art nor is it something that you'll find becoming your favorite film of all time.
Its an okay time passer which is what it was designed to be.
What you'll take away is the odd sense that know one knew what these people were up to since some of the characters are off the wall (a body snatching embalmer who's an okay guy, for example) and some exposition that is ripe with sexual tension and implied situations the Hays office would never approve of.On its own terms 7 out of 10..
Partners in crime.
After a woman (Clyde) flees from an apartment following a series of shots, she car-jacks a passing motorist (Chandler) in order to escape and the two eventually become embroiled in a murder mystery (and a budding romance) they must solve to avoid suspicion.Throughout their enquiries a number of potential leads emerge, Gaye plays a quirky crime-scene photographer who collects ghoulish photographs of real-life murderers and serial killers, while Casey MacGregor looks a likely suspect as the brawny, silent gardener infatuated by Rebel Randall's vivacious vixen, a high society gal with champagne tastes on a beer budget (and who bears a striking resemblance to Paulette Goddard or Hedy Lamarr).Predictably, the sleuths manage to out-pace the clueless detective (Raffetto), closing the case in record time (61 minutes, in fact, Chandler solves the mystery in 50 minutes), and not a moment too soon as far as I was concerned.
Lightweight and lacking suspense, it's not a howler, just an average B-picture mystery displaying little originality or excitement..
It's in the Chemistry.
These old whodunit movies depend on good chemistry among the characters.
The leads in this one seem a bit lacking.
The plot is fun and keeps us guessing.
There doesn't seem to be much threat overhanging the cast, so it doesn't exactly keep us on the edges of our seats.
The movie begins nicely with a young woman using a flashlight (pretending it's a gun) to hijack a ride with a young man.
He crashes the car and she disappears.
After hunting her down, they become allied in a murder case.
They are possible suspects much of the time, but it never seems to be serious.
This makes what they do rather bland and uninteresting.
The girl is a little too one dimensional and the male lead quite dull.
There is a courtyard that looks a little like a contemporary shopping mall.
There are seven shops and everyone is a suspect.
The title makes me think of foreign intrigue.
It's not that, though some of the peripheral characters are interesting.
Unfortunately, it's relatively forgettable when all is said and done..
Woeful.
The seven deadly doors open off a very pretty open courtyard.
Right away I was scared— probably because I could have actually paid money to see this mess.
If you can figure out the plot, the physics department may have a place for you.
Poverty row PRC really cut more than corners with this one.
The sets are few, and dark for more reason than atmosphere.
For a supposed mystery, there's about as much suspense as watching a clock tick.
But then it is 1944, and wartime audiences need any kind of escape.
That's probably why usual sidekick Chick Chandler gets a shot at the lead and shows why he was better as a sidekick.
He seems not to be taking anything too seriously.
The highpoint may well be half-dressed Rebel Randall's shimmy and shake that unfortunately doesn't come til near the end.
Otherwise, there's nothing to recommend in this woeful programmer..
Everything but the kitchen sink ....
This starts out kind of nicely.
A woman screams in the dark.
(The whole thing was dark in the print I saw.
It was not only hard to see but also hard to hear.) People then rush about.
A couple suspects are immediately established.
But it's downhill from there.
But it's downhill from there.
We have mad scientists.
We have mummies.
We have everything but a coherent plot.On the other hand, the major players are good.
Chick Chandler is pretty decent as the male lead.
(I can't call him a noir protagonist: Though this is a PRC movie clearly done very cheaply, it is not film noir.) June Cylde is good, too.
And the other female lead is also.
And hat a name the actress went by: Rebel Randall!.
Seven doors to boredom..
Unfortunately a boring flick, and obviously the only way to see it is the butchered bootleg Public Domain version, which is so blurry and dark that at times you have hard time making out where the screen is.
The leading actors are a nuisance.
The man spends most of his screen time trying to appear nonchalant, charming and sexy, forgetting totally what the film is about and that he is a murder suspect because of some dame who played him for a goose to start with.
The dame herself merely walks through the flick, being dignified if she's not busy appearing cute.
It's a rather badly written stuff, never interesting or witty.
No good camera work, no memorable soundtrack, no glamorous actresses or atmospheric sets.
It only scratches the surface of the genre, and nothing happens if you miss this totally missable flick..
The cabbie and the model.
Only in the cinema could the romantic relationship of a model and a cabbie ever could happen.
They don't usually happen even in film unless the cabbie is an exiled prince or something like that.
But in Seven Doors To Death cabbie Chick Chandler hooks up with model June Clyde to solve a big mystery with several deaths involving jewels and the ownership of an apartment complex.Chandler's dragged in unwillingly at the point of a gun by Clyde who commandeers him and his cab.
She's fleeing a murder scene and Chandler's cab is totaled.
After that Chandler declares himself a detective and of course solves the mystery.The courtyard apartment complex looked something like the one in Rear Window where Jimmy Stewart watched the parade of life.
Of course Rear Window is a far better film.The cheap and tacky sets and inferior sound mark this PRC release.
But most of all I couldn't accept the premise or Chandler as a romantic lead..
Rebel to the Rescue!.
Any movie with Rebel Randall is a must movie (that's her on the jacket of the Alpha DVD) and in this one she not only has a really sizable part for once but even gets to do a buzz of sizzling dance steps!
By contrast, the nominal heroine, June Clyde, is almost a nothing.
I saw the movie only an hour ago and already I've forgotten all her scenes except the opening in which she jumps on to the running board of Chick Chandler's jalopy, (a roadster named "Genevieve", would you believe?).Mr Chick Chandler himself is hardly chic, nor would he rate on a ten thousand names list of the most charismatic guys in the movie world, but at least I can remember what he looks like.As for the rest of the players, poor old George Meeker, typecast as usual, tries his best to look nasty, but Edgar Dearing has abandoned his policeman's motorcycle for this one and looks out of place as a shopkeeper.Director Elmer Clifton, with the able assistance of his cameraman, has arranged some dark and half-spooky atmospheric effects, but his efforts are sunk  partly by his own script and partly by his shoe-string budget..
"...take your choice, behind one of those doors is a murderer"..
So let's see, there were the photographer, the furrier, the deranged knife dealer, and the perfume shop lady.
I don't know if gardener Tim actually qualified to be a store owner, so that leaves the story a few people short on the 'Seven Doors' theme.
I guess you could make a case for Mary Rawling, but then again, she was in line to inherit the entire Hamilton mini-mall where those store fronts were, and not an actual business person.
So chalk up the title to a bit of poetic license, the more doors to death the merrier I guess.Boy, you really have to pay attention to what's going on here, and even with that, it's a hard story to follow.
There's some business about an Egyptian hope chest and missing jewelry thrown in, and I'm not sure how it all ties together with the body in the basement.
Oh yeah, and they went to a lot of trouble to have the actual murderer remove the victim's thumb prints by peeling off the skin from his fingers.
This was more elaborate than Charlie Chan ever had to deal with, but I'm sure he would have solved the crime as well.
Actually, he had a fingerprint mystery too, but it was a lot easier to follow (1946 - "Dark Alibi").Catch this one for the odd dance routine in the middle of the story by the perfume lady, Mable De Rose.
I had never heard of the performer portraying the character, an actress by the name of Rebel Randall.
A quick check of her IMDb credits shows that she's still alive and approaching ninety!
Goes to show you how tough you had to be to make this flick!.
A shot in the dark; a murder to solve..
Low budget mystery.
A shot rattles out of the dark and a woman is seen running from that direction.
A young architect Jimmy McMillan(Chick Chandler)discovers a dead body that goes missing.
The woman in a hurry, Mary(June Clyde), is linked to the death scene; but it is McMillan that has to try and solve the case to avoid serious suspicion.
Suspects are six shop owners in the vicinity of the crime scene.
All the atmosphere of Film-Noir; but not quite the real thing.
This flick musters just enough to be a decent low budget mystery/drama and is a nice little escape.
Other players include: George Meeker, Michael Raffetto, Milton Wallace and Rebel Randall..
Promising title, barely watchable movie.
"Seven Doors To Death" is a very murky film, in both senses of the word: visually and in content.
Sometimes we are practically looking at a black screen, especially during in scenes set in cellars, basements, etc.
But it's also very hard to know who is who, to keep the story straight, and what's even worse, to care.
The writer-director of this movie has over 90 credits on IMDb, so it's hard to know how he could have gone so wrong in this case.
Then again, the fact that he directed 9 (!!) films in 1944 alone probably means he didn't have enough time to afford the proper care to every one of them.
I'd give this forgettable mystery * out of 4 - and that's only for Rebel Randall's leggy and scrappy femme fatale..
Apparently written by a lemur!.
This terrible movie comes from PRC—a tiny independent film studio known for making,well,crap.
Their budgets were always low, the writing usually pretty bad and their talent usually unknown.
When the term 'Poverty Row' was created to describe low-budget film studios that usually rented space in real studios at night to make their films, they must have had PRC in mind.
Now this does not mean that all their films were unwatchable—their horror films with the likes of George Zucco were great fun.
But you certainly did not expect art from PRC!
This mystery film frankly irritated me—much more than usual.
That's because the writing was so nonsensical and shabby that I found watching the film a real chore.
In fact, after a while I found myself no longer paying attentionit was that bad.The film begins with a lady pointing a gun at a man's head and making him drive.
When she instructs him to turn while making her getaway, his car crashes.
The man naturally goes to the policewho do locate the lady but don't seem to care that she pointed a gun at a man's head and hijacked his car!
And, what's crazier, is that although the man is mad and insists he will sue her for the damage (after all, the police didn't even arrest her!!), she acts like it's all his fault and refuses—saying "you are the one who had the accident"!
Then, he smiles and tells her to forget about it!!!
What part of a threat to murder a man and destruction of his car didn't he, the police or the writer understand?!
Frankly, at this point I was sick of the film and rarely have I ever seen a situation so muddled and stupid in a film.
It only seemed to get worseand I wonder if the film was actually written by a lemur!.
Behind one of these doors is a murderer!.
And it isn't you with the time you killed watching this.
There's a major difference between complex and convoluted, and this poverty row thriller ends up being the later.
Some of these "Z" grade thrillers stand out because they grab you from the very beginning, but this PRC programmer instantly creates so much confusion that you feel the need to start it all over again to make sure that you didn't miss anything.
That's because the unremarkable set-up (a murder discovered near a series of shops and an apartment complex) doesn't help.In spite of a genuinely spooky atmosphere, the film lacks in performance, pacing, and overall thrills.
The art direction of the complex is actually quite well done.
The film's pacing makes the film seem much longer than its single hour.
As far as the acting is concerned, it really comes off as a country community theatre re-doing old melodramas with a present day setting.
THis is one time when PRC does stand for Pretty Rotten Cinema.