Watch The House Across the Lake For Free

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

best movie i've ever seen.

Admirable film.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Another excellent VCI DVD features the 1954 "House Across the Lake" (or "Heat Wave"), in which Sidney James gives one of his best dramatic performances, thanks no doubt to the astute direction of Ken Hughes.Ken Hughes has adapted his own 1952 novel, "High Wray" (sic - the name of the Forrest mansion or "house"), and skilfully used his real locations and studio sets to convey enough noir atmosphere to overcome the somewhat acute shortage of actual action. Of course, the rest of the players led by Hillary Brooke and super-attractive Susan Stephen (with effective cameos by Paul Carpenter - of all people! - and Peter Illing) also help no end. The central character, "Mark Kendrick:", is played by Alex Nicol as a bit of a no-hoper, but that's exactly what his persona is supposed to be, so I guess we can't complain on that score!

At a time when noir production was converting to TV, Lippert hooked up with England's Hammer Films. (And that's before Hammer hooked up with Dracula and Frankenstein.) Judging from this effort, budget minded Lippert got a lot more bang for their buck overseas. Compared with traditional noir, the settings here are much more naturalistic than expressionistic. There's little of the usual menace of light and shadow. Instead, most scenes are shot on location with natural lighting, except for the climactic fog-bound sequence. This undercuts atmosphere and mood, staples of standard noir. As a result, it's the fateful story that's highlighted. And since the story is narrated in flashback, it seems the outcome is pre- determined in some metaphysical sense.Sure, you've seen the story before, as others point out. A rich man's slutty wife (Brooke) conspires to kill him with key help from a luckless fall guy (Nicol). Sounds like Double Indemnity (1944) even down to the double-cross. Still, the screenplay is good enough to hold interest. And was there ever a more stately ice queen than Hillary Brooke. It's hard to see her ever unwinding enough for intimacy. And therein lies a problem. Too bad the film couldn't show some stage of real melt from her, like a dash of undress or even mussed-up mascara. Nicol too is pretty low-key for a guy obsessed. But then this is 1954, not exactly the anything goes of more recent vintage. In my book, it's luckless Sidney James who steals the film, with his nicely modulated peek at a doomed man. I like the way the script only later fills in why he's so seemingly indifferent to his wife's very public affairs. That way we're left really curious for a well-timed period.Anyhow, the movie's much better than the lowly two-stars out of four that TCM rates it. Then again, maybe I'm just a sucker for any noir with a well-turned ankle.

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.

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.