House of Secrets

Plot synopsis:
Marion Ravinel is married to Dr. Frank Ravinel, an arrogant abusive doctor. Together they run a physical rehab spa at what was once Marion's family home in New Orleans. But a congenital heart condition forces Marion to curtail her activities. The condition is controlled with medication but she must still use a wheelchair at times. Frank is brusque and rude to the staff, especially Laura Morrell, a physical therapist. After witnessing Frank strike Marion, Laura befriends her. Both women are afraid of Frank, although Marion professes to still love him and keeps hoping he will change.Among the spa employees is Evangeline, an elderly African-American woman who has known Marion all her life. Frank has tried without success to evict Evangeline from her apartment on the premises. He considers her a bad influence on the clients because of her belief in voodoo. But she insists that Marion's parents promised her a home for life.After learning that Frank is planning to sell the property behind her back, Marion confronts him. He is physically abusive and Laura comes to her aid. Frank threatens both women. It turns out that he has a hold on Laura. She served time for killing a man who tried to rape her and is actually on parole. If she violates her parole, she will have to return to prison. Frank is aware of this and frequently threatens to turn her in on trumped-up charges. Although Marion is somewhat taken aback to learn that her new friend is a murderer, she eventually agrees that it was justified.Evangeline is afraid for Marion and warns her to be careful. Laura convinces Marion that neither of them are safe. She proposes murdering Frank and disposing of his body. Marion is horrified but when she is once again subjected to her husband's physical abuse, she agrees to Laura's plan.The women drive to a house on the bayou owned by Laura. The plan is to lure Frank to the house, knock him out with drugs, and drown him in the bathtub. It is Mardi Gras and everyone is celebrating. The neighbors, who are acquainted with Laura, are having a noisy party. No one will notice Frank's arrival. Marion gets cold feet at the last minute but Laura tells her it is the only way they can ever be free of Frank. Reluctantly Marion agrees. She telephones Frank and asks him to come to the house so they can talk things over. To her surprise, Frank knows the house belongs to Laura and he appears to have visited there before.Laura tearfully confesses to having an affair with Frank. She insists he forced her into it and threatened her. By this time Marion is not sure what to believe. She no longer trusts Laura but feels it is too late to back out. When Frank arrives and is served lemonade containing narcotics, Marion knocks the glass from his hand. She cannot bring herself to kill the man she once loved. Frank taunts her and pours himself another glass. This time she lets him drink it. He falls asleep. With difficulty, Laura and Marion drag him to the bathtub full of water and put him in. He appears to drown. Laura orders Marion to lie down and rest, fearing she will have a spell with her heart.The next morning, they roll Frank's body in a canvas and drag it to Laura's car. After they have him inside and the door closed, Laura's friend from next door appears. He is disappointed that they are leaving. Then he notices water pooling next to the car door. When he offers to look inside and see what is leaking, Marion curtly orders him off.The women drive both cars to a lake. Frank's car is pushed in and they watch it sink. Then they return to the spa. It is early and no one is about. They drag Frank's body to the man-made pond and roll it in. Evangeline sees them but says nothing.Soon everyone is looking for Frank. It is unlike him to miss appointments with the clients. While watching a VHS tape of Mardi Gras, Marion spots Frank in the crowd, wearing the costume that was specially made for him. She faints and is confined to bed. Another doctor at the spa warns her that her blood pressure is sky-high and she should be in a hospital but she refuses. She is disgusted with Laura and wishes they had not done it.The next morning Frank's car is brought home by his uncle, who saw him the day before. Laura and Marion are shocked but manage to act normal. Marion learns from the uncle that Frank is staying in town at a hotel. She goes there and apparently just misses him. His cigar is still smoking in the ashtray. But how can any of this be real since she saw Frank's corpse? Laura knocks the handyman's tools into the pond, forcing him to drain it. There is no sign of Frank. This brings on another heart spell for Marion.Then she hears a report on TV of an unidentified body of a man turning up. Summoning what little strength she has, Marion goes to the police station and tells them she thinks the man is her husband. Sgt. DuBois takes her to view the body but it is not Frank. Sensing she has found a friend, Marion confesses everything to DuBois. He is skeptical but agrees to pay a call at the spa.After examining Frank's car, DuBois finds traces of mud under the hood. The canvas that Frank was wrapped in is discovered in a cistern. He visits Marion, who is still confined to bed, and tells her he thinks Frank is alive and pulling a fast one on her. This would mean that Laura was also in on it. He promises to get at the truth.Marion is awakened by someone on the lawn outside. It is Frank, dressed in his Mardi Gras costume. He beckons Marion to follow him. She does and he leads her down the road to a cemetery. Then he disappears in the crowd. Breathing heavily, Marion manages to return home. She goes to the bathroom for her heart pills and sees Frank's body in the bathtub, just as it was that night on the bayou. He rises from the water just as Marion collapses. Her pills scatter everywhere and Frank's shoes crunch them as he walks across the room. He checks Marion's pulse but there is none. She has died of a heart attack. Frank goes into the bedroom where Laura is waiting. He tells her Marion is dead and they fall into each other's arms.At Marion's funeral, DuBois confronts Frank and Laura. He has deduced that Frank murdered Marion to get his hands on her property. But he cannot prove it and Frank knows this. DuBois promises to be their worst nightmare, which they find amusing.That night, Frank and Laura serve an eviction notice on Evangeline. She casts a spell and talks to Marion. She apologizes for not being able to save Marion but Frank and Laura were too strong for her. Then she calls Marion to come forth and take her revenge.Laura and Frank are asleep when he is yanked from the bed by Marion, who appears to be very much alive. She slaps him around the room until he begs for mercy. Then he wakes up. It is morning and Laura is in the shower. Frank smiles with relief until he finds Laura dead in the bathroom. She has been strangled with a pendant belonging to Marion. An expression of horror is on her face.The police are called and Frank is arrested for the murder of Laura. He insists that Marion came back and killed her but no one listens. Evangeline looks up and sees Marion standing in the bedroom window, smiling and happy. DuBois sees her too but when he looks again, she is gone.

Tags: revenge, cruelty, murder

Review:
Diabolique ripoff.
The big screen and television never tire of recycling the plot of the classic French film, Le Diabolique.
This is the second (at least) TV movie based on the Diabolique plot, the other that I know of being Reflections of Murder with Tuesday Weld and Joan Hackett from some years ago.
Diabolique was remade as a feature film with Sharon Stone and the gorgeous Isabelle Adjani in the early '90s.In this version, the school has been changed to a medical clinic and there's some voodoo thrown in for good measure.If you haven't seen any of the other movies, you will find the story intriguing.
If you have, you may still find it interesting.
After all, this is one of the classic stories of all time.
But see the original, which stars Simone Signoret.
I saw a rotten print of it and loved it anyway..
An Ole Classic Favorite!.
I really love this movie, it would be awesome if in real life those who do reap what they sow like they did in this movie.
I loved Cicely Tyson she really adds that special touch to the movie..
Same movie as Diabolique with Sharon Stone.
Last night, I couldn't sleep and turned on the tv, catching this movie.
It seemed so familiar, yet I was sure I'd never seen it before.
Turns out, I had seen Diabolique with Sharon Stone.
Exactly the same movie with just a couple of variations such as location and names.
See both and compare.
I liked them both..
Brazen Ripoffs.
I liked this movie and it gave me the "heebie-jeebies" when I first saw it.
(I spook easily)It has the classic elements of a good old fashioned Southern ghost story.
Throw in a little voo-doo and a New Orleans cemetery and it doesn't get much better.
However, having recently seen "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte" with Olivia DeHavilland and Bette Davis, there are certain elements that are brazen ripoffs from the DeHaviland/Davis work.
Makes me think less of the more recent of these two films.
Odd and eerie seeing Ms. DeHavilland playing such an ugly, selfish and mean character...she will always be Melanie Wilkes in my mind.
It took me a minute to recognize Agnes Moorehead as Velma....she looked completely different from her role as Endora on "Bewitched.".
Would have been really good but.......
I liked the plot, it was a good movie to watch on a Sunday morning, but Melissa Gilbert's character drove me nuts.
All her weakness and sniveling enabled her husband and his honey to carry out their plot.
Even though she got her revenge in the end, watching her do everything wrong throughout most of the film was hard for me to watch..
Do do that Voodoo that you do so well.
(Some Spoilers) Murder and madness is mixed in with a little of the supernatural in "House of Secrets" and the ending, even though it wouldn't knock you off your feet,has a nice and surprising twist to it.Inheriting her parents Southern Plantation Marion Lambert Ravinel, Malissa Gilbert, can't keep up with the daily grind of the place that's been converted into a sanatorium by her late father Mr. Lambert.
Having a bad heart Marion let's her husband Dr. Frank Ravinel, Bruce Boxleitner, run the place but he's running it into the ground.
He's Secretly having the Mansion turned into a casino behind Marion's back has his frail and sensitive wife throw a fit when she finds out about it.Marion is also very angry at her husbands attempt to throw the maid Evangelin,Cicely Tyson, out of the place because of her knowing what the doctor is up to and working with her knowledge of the black arts and Voodoo to put a hex on him.
This in order to stop Ravinel from destroying the Plantation which she and her parents and great-parents worked at all their lives, and which is the only home that she knows.Working at the sanatorium is nurse Laura Morrell,Kate Vernon,who Dr. Ravinel got out of prison for the murder of a man who tried to rape her some eight years ago.
With Laura having to have a job in order not to break her parole she's more or less being blackmailed by the good doctor to stay at his medical facility, even though she just about had it with the abuse she's taking from him.
With Dr. Ravinel about to sell out his medical profession to become a part-owner of a casino and throwing everyone in the sanatorium out in the cold Laura, together with Marion, concocts this plane to murder Dr. Ravinel and make it look like it was an accident.
Getting Dr. Ravinel to come over to Bayou Country during "Fat Tuesday" week to pull this "perfact crime" off the doctor almost blows the entire plan when he tell Marion, as she gave him a glass of drug laced lemonade, how much he loves her.
Marion moved by his sudden show of affection for her then purposely knocks the glass out of his hand to keep him from drinking it.
Back to "normal" now Ravinel, mad at her spilling the lemonade on his clean suit, becomes more like his old self again by smacking Marion across the face so hard that he knocks her to the the ground and almost out cold.
Marion quirky changes her mind and give him another drink, which Ravinel asks for, that soon puts him to sleep and on queer street.
With the dancing and partying going on outside of the house both Marion and Laura take the knocked-out Dr. Ravinel to the bathroom and deep-six him in the water filled bathtub drowning him .
Sending his car to the bottom of the nearby swamp the two take Ravinel's body back home and drop him into the pond on the plantation grounds to make it look like he got himself drunk and fell in and drowned.
Everything worked to perfection but there turned out to be just one small problem:The next morning Ravinel's body just disappeared into thin air!
Even more strange his car, that was underwater in the swamp, popped up back at the plantation driven there by Ravinel's cousin Vincent, Michael Aubley, who said that Ravinel is in perfect health and staying at a hotel back in New Orleans.
Who was drugged and later drowned by Marion and Laura?
What happened to Ravinel's,if it was really him, body at the bottom of the pond?
How did the car that Ravinel drove to the bayou and was later submerged there get itself out of the water?
And most of all what was Vicent talking about in him seeing and talking to Ravinel hours after he was supposedly killed by the two women?
The second half of the movie is somewhat contrived and nowhere as good as the first half.
There's a number of twists in it that are not that surprising but the ending is a bit of a shock.
It has a lot to do with Evangaline who we see at the beginning of the film telling the story, in flashback, to the officer in charge at the murder scene Sgt. Joe DuBois,Michael Boatman.
Not at first believing a world of what Evangaline told him Sgt. DuBois has a quick change of mind when he looks up at the bedroom widow and sees something or someone thats not, in all logic, supposed to be there!