Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Leofwine_draca THE HOUSE ACROSS THE LAKE is one of the film noirs that Hammer Films regularly made before they hit paydirt with THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN in 1957. It's a low budget movie, filmed at Bray Studios, watchable enough in itself without ever equalling the heights of greatness that Hammer reached once they remodelled themselves as a horror studio.The film stars regular American import Alex Nicol, who was no stranger to appearing in British B-fare (A STRANGER IN TOWN and THE GILDED CAGE are two others I've seen in him and he seems to give the same performance in each one). He plays an everyday character, a washed-up and boozy writer who rents a house on the lake and soon becomes involved in the lives of the rich couple living opposite.Hillary Brooke is another import, playing the adulterous wife who secretly despises her rich husband. Brooke is an odd choice to the part; slightly too old and difficult to see what men would find so alluring about her, although she excels when playing the nastier side of her character, something Hitchcock noticed when he cast her in THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. The real stand-out is Sid James in a rare non-comedic role as the sympathetic husband, just looking for friendship in a lonely world. James is fantastic, he really is, and he made the film worth watching for me.Otherwise, this is predictable stuff, involving love triangles, adultery, and of course the inevitable murder. Other than James, the characters aren't very nice which spoils things a bit, although it's hard to criticise THE HOUSE ACROSS THE LAKE too much as there's nothing intrinsically bad about it; it's just that so many pictures like this was made it threatens to get lost amid the rest.

LeonLouisRicci This is one of those Hammer B-Movie Noirs. The Studio made a Handful before it Hit Pay-Dirt and became the House of Horror. The Film-Noir Ingredients in this Darkly Lit and Narrated Story are Pure Pulp and Noir Gold. As Alec Nicol (Mark Kendricks) Pounds away at His Typewriter and Laments about Unpaid Bills and Writer's Bloc, it is the Stuff of Penny-A-Word Prose on Cheap Paper.The Audience is Drawn into the World of High Class Blondes (Hillary Brooke) Married to Elderly Men whose "Two step has got a little slow.", and a Down on His Luck Sap, who Will Play One Every Time (except maybe Sam Spade).The Tone of this Thing Rings the Noir Bell and it is Low-Budget, but that doesn't really Matter. This one has the Look and Feel of Reel Noir and it is one of the Better in the Series from the British Studio. It's got a Verbal Style, Nicol's Voice is Velvety and Desperate, and that is sure to Please Fans of the Genre.Although Film-Noir was beginning to Lose its Edge by 1954, this is Virtually a Copy of the Style from the Forties and it's a welcome Trip Back from the Police Procedural to a more Up Close and Personal Downward Spiral with Fem-Fatales and Guys with Smoky Bourbon Breath.

J. Spurlin An American writer (Alex Nicol), down on his luck, meets his rich neighbors who also live by the lake. He befriends the ailing husband (Sid James) and falls in love with the duplicitous wife (Hillary Brooke).Ken Hughes directed "The House Across the Lake" (with the irrelevant American title of "Heat Wave") from his own screenplay based on his own novel. I guess he is the only one to blame for the story's blatant rip-off of James M. Cain (particularly "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Double Indemnity"). But at least he rips off the best, which means this crime thriller is more engaging than most of the films included in VCI's "Hammer Noir" DVD collection.

funkyfry Never having heard of this one even from the noir "experts" I didn't expect too much but I think it's a very cool little film, very literary in style (writer Ken Hughes was also the director) and full of human weakness and treachery. It's about an American writer of dime novels (like the Joseph Cotten character in "The Third Man") who allows his self-proclaimed weakness for promiscuous blondes to get him involved in a sequence of events that ends in murder. The film was produced by Anthony Hinds for Hammer Films which at that time was largely a distribution house and not a film producing entity, but it also included later Hammer horror big shot Jimmy Sangster as the assistant director.The American writer is played by Alex Nicol, who did a very good job in my opinion. He showed real star power and it's a shame that he never really got a chance to star in too many other films. There's a strange hitch in the character, in that he's apparently a very smart and self-aware man who nonetheless allows himself to get into situations that he knows will end up hurting him because of his addiction to a certain kind of sex. He manages to perform in such a smooth way that we never really think too much about the contradictions in his character. The other really notable performance is from Sid James (an Ealing Films alumnus) who's very convincing as the world-weary rich man who's still in love with his cheating wife Carol (Hillary Brooke, who looks a bit like Nina Foch). There's a scene of the two of them drinking bourbon playing billiards that reminds me very much of the scene towards the end of Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut." James is perfect at conveying the character's defensive world-view -- he feels beset by all the many people who come to him for financial help and is glad to have a drinking partner in the writer, Mark, who seems uninterested in money and women. Sadly the truth is that Mark does have a money problem and he does have a sex addiction, but neither of those really interferes with his feelings of friendship and almost brotherhood towards Beverly (James). That gives the movie a lot more texture than it otherwise would have had.A lot of the suspense in the movie is based around the question of when and why Beverly will be murdered, for we've already been told in the prelude that he has been killed and that Mark holds Carol responsible. Another interesting aspect is a sort of a red herring that's presented in the person of Beverly's daughter from his first marriage, Andrea (Susan Stephen). She's exactly the type of blonde that Mark should be interested in, but he shows absolute disregard for her from beginning to end of the film.I think it's a movie that should be seen more often -- exactly the kind of seedy, low budget affair that's not afraid to be intelligent. You don't see movies like this anymore.