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This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Sadly after watching this thriller, based on the French novel by Jacques Robert "Quelqu'un derriere la porte", I can only say that it didn't stand the time. It's very slowly and has nothing to offer. To make it even worse Anthony Perkins isn't really great here and Jill Ireland is only for a few moments in it. Even Charles Bronson, an actor I do like didn't gave his best performance here.To make it even worse the version I saw was out of sync and had a lot of drops and hiss on the sound. Not even that, it also had a few reels with the wrong colour temperature. It was on official DVD but looked clearly as a VHS rip of bad quality. Anthony tries to give a creepy performance as in Psycho (1960) as doctor Laurence Jeffries who has bad things in his mind with the amnesiac unknown man (Charles Bronson) to make him believe that his wife Frances Jeffries (Jill Ireland) is in fact the unknown man's wife and is cheating on him so she has to die. But Anthony somehow just can't give us a creepy or even believable performance. Charles Bronson is okay but he was here in a period that he wasn't really cast in blockbusters. He just came from Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) and was casted as a man with few words but much action. Here he has a lot of words and no action and you can see that it wasn't his thing. He was casted in European flicks but after this one he went back with his wife Jill Ireland to US soil to make a few hard-edged crime and western dramas starting from 1972. Of course the big break through came in 1974 together with his wife in the controversial revenge flick Death Wish. The audience couldn't get enough of tough guy Bronson while his flicks became more and more violent. He was a late bloomer in Hollywood but what an actor he became. Someone Behind The Door has a title that is never explained and isn't one of the three main actors (Perkins, Ireland, Bronson) most famous flick. Gore 0/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 0/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

I'd always been interested in watching this one (which occasionally turns up on late-night Italian TV) due to its star combo; now that I've caught up with it, I found it to be an intriguing if deliberately-paced psychological puzzler – where, as was the case with the later THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (1976), director Gessner demonstrates himself an unsung master of the offbeat and provocative thriller. Leads Charles Bronson and Anthony Perkins work very well off each other; while the latter has played this type of role before (it's what he does best, yet given enough subtle shadings to retain an element of surprise), the former credibly stretches his range with his amnesiac role (duped into committing murder by Perkins' scheming cuckolded doctor).Most reviews I've read seem unable to swallow the central premise – that Perkins would devise the perfect crime by 'brainwashing' Bronson into believing himself to be a totally different person – but I feel that it works most of the time mainly due to the excellent leads (nearly falling apart at the climax but picks up again nicely with the ending, as Bronson's memory is suddenly jolted back through ironically similar circumstances and his real-life spouse Jill Ireland confronts on-screen husband Perkins with his failure as both doctor and man). The film, then, concludes on a marvelous note – a series of close-ups, alternating between Ireland and Perkins, that follow the rhythm of a beating heart (though the effect is somewhat dissipated by going on too long).My viewing of SOMEONE BEHIND THE DOOR came via a public-domain print on a budget DVD I rented (which slapped this Bronson title together with two other lesser vehicles – GUNS OF DIABLO [1964] and COLD SWEAT [1970], both also watched recently). I'd like to own the Gessner film someday; at least, I know it's available in widescreen on a bare-bones disc from Lionsgate – though I wonder how long it will stay in print...

Bronson's fans would be very surprised ,had they the opportunity to see this Nicolas Gessner movie.He's not here the he-man they expect.He plays an amnesiac,caught like a fly in a cobweb by shrink Perkins.In this kind of thriller ,Perkins' "psycho prestige" works and it makes the audience feel he's watching a Hitchcock ersatz-which is not that much bad after all,a Hitchcock ersatz may be much better than a genuine X....... thriller.The main problem lies in the fact that most of the time,it seems like a filmed stage production.Hitchcock could easily get away with such works as "the rope " or "dial M for murder".Gessner has not his genius and his directing becomes sometimes ponderous. Hitchcok's lessons will be much better applied on "sleuth" ,Mankiewicz's triumph the following year,and to a lesser degree,on Penn's "dead of winter" (1987).Late Jill Ireland plays the female part ,as it was often the case in those days,as far Bronson movies were concerned.Nicolas Gessner continued his work with American actors on his follow-up which would be a long time coming (late seventies) "la petite fille au bout du chemin" (the little girl who lives down the lane)and featured Jodie Foster and Martin Sheen.It was probably his best .Then he worked abroad without great success.His most notable work was for French TV "le château des oliviers " (early nineties,with Brigitte Fossey)which gained the audience's approval.

Someone Behind the Door is based on the French novel by Jacques Robert "Quelqu'un derriere la porte". In the novel the neurosurgeon (played by Anthony Perkins) is a writer and the Mystery Man 'behind the door'(Charles Bronson) is a fictitious character from the novel he's writing. The novel's fantasy world of writing became the movie's realistic and dramatic psychological duel between Perkins and Bronson.