Behind Locked Doors is directed by Budd Boetticher and has a screenplay by Malvin Wald and Eugene Ling, the film stars Richard Carlson and Lucille Bremer.Ross Stewart(Richard Carlson)is a private investigator who's hired by reporter Kathy Lawrence(Lucille Bremer)to find a corrupt judge. Kathy believes the judge is being hidden at a local sanatorium, she asks Ross to pretend to be a manic depressive and they'll pretend to be married so she can ask for doctors help and get him admitted to the sanatorium. Once inside it's hoped he can locate the judge. Once inside he faces the danger of really going insane and not being discovered.This is a very good Noir that deserves a great deal more attention. The plot with him going undercover in the sanatorium is interesting, there is real emotional and psychological risk there and it makes for some really tense moments. Carlson and Bremer are both very good.

Behind Locked Doors is directed by Oscar "Budd" Boetticher and written by Eugene Ling and Malvin Wald. It stars Richard Carlson, Lucille Bremer, Douglas Fowley, Ralf Harolde, Thomas Browne Henry, Herbert Heyes, Gwen Donovan and Tor Johnson. Music is by Irving Friedman and cinematography by Guy Roe.Private detective Ross Stewart (Carlson) is coerced into going undercover at the La Siesta Sanitarium in search of a corrupt judge that reporter Kathy Lawrence (Bremer) believes is hiding out there. Getting himself committed under the guise of being a manic depressive, Stewart finds more than he bargained for once inside the gloomy walls of the asylum.Clocking in at just over an hour in length, Behind Locked Doors is compact and devoid of any sort of flab. Firmly a "B" asylum based pot boiler of the kind film makers always find fascinating, it's a picture dripped thoroughly in noir style visuals. This not only pumps the story with atmosphere unbound, it also allows the economically adroit Boetticher to mask the low budget restrictions to make this look far better than it had any right to be.Cure or be killed!Narratively it's simple fare, undercover man uncovers sadistic humans entrusted to care for the mentally ill. The "inmates" are the usual roll call of the unfortunates, the criminally inclined or the outright hulking maniac. There's a good male nurse who we can hang our hopes on, we wonder if our intrepid protagonist will survive this perilous assignment, and of course there's a love interest added in to spice the human interest factor.Cast performances are effective for the material to hand, but without the said visual arrangements of Boetticher and Roe the characterisations would lack impact. The camera-work shifts appropriately with the various tonal flows of the story, angles and contrasts change and with the picture almost exclusively shot in low lights and shadows, the Sanitarium is consistently a foreboding place of fear and fret. And not even some rickety sets can alter the superb atmospherics on show. 7/10

A nasty little noir by Budd Boetticher. The story involves a woman's hiring a struggling private detective to have himself committed to a private psychiatric hospital. A corrupt judge is holed up there.Richard Carlson is good, very good, as the main character. The supporting cast is excellent. It's a tough little story.Don't expect an expose like "The Snake Pit" or metaphor like "Shock Corridor." The sanitarium itself is one of the problems: Would a private sanitarium really have such sadistic, violent staff? It comes across much more like a state psychiatric hospital.Also, the rationale behind the woman's action is never really clear.However, it's a very scary movie, with no fat at all. The character's loss of his true identity once he's behind the doors is reminiscent of another small, though better, movie: "My Name Is Julia Ross." In passing, I wonder whether that movie, "When Strangers Marry," and the entire Republic noir catalog still exist. The first two are superb little movies that pack tremendous wallop. "Julia Ross," though atypical of the genre in many ways, may be my single favorite film noir. Where are these movies? And why don't we ever see the Republic noirs of the 1950s? That, however, is a digression. This movie is very well worth seeing. It's very tense and exciting and has fine character development.

This little b movie , made for next to nothing has more suspense & interest than most of todays so called big films we were completley enthralled especially by Lucille Bremer. a very beautiful actress who had too short a careersee this little gemJay Harris