Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I watched Fritz Lang's HOUSE BY THE RIVER, because I was curious about seeing Jane Wyatt in a Gothic noir. After all, most people remember her as the wife on TV's Father Knows Best.Also, I was curious about Lang directing a picture at Republic Pictures, a studio known mostly for its moderately budgeted programmers and B-films. Would it even be any good? Rest assured, it was.Lang's story is very atmospheric and makes good use of on-location exteriors involving a corpse floating down river. The set design for the mansion is intriguing, and Wyatt does a rather convincing job as a society wife who comes to discover that husband Louis Hayward is a nefarious murderer. On another note, I have a feeling that Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed HOUSE BY THE RIVER and borrowed from it when making PSYCHO. The way the body is wrapped up and 'drowned' in the water seems repeated in Hitchcock's film. Plus, there's a line where a character says the killer is like a harmless fly...and that is definitely repeated at the end of PSYCHO. Then there's the mansion-- it seems like a looming character in HOUSE BY THE RIVER, just like it does in PSYCHO.

A deranged writer (Louis Hayward) murders a maid (Dorothy Patrick) after she resists his advances. The writer engages his brother (Lee Bowman) to help in hiding the body...Richard Brody wrote, "Every detail of the film, from its opening shots of the nearby river and the wind in the trees, has moral resonance. Stephen promises to change, but from the moment that he listens lasciviously to Emily's bathwater sluicing down a drainpipe his bad end is already foretold —- and the elements of nature, the wind and the water, are the ultimate agents of his doom." How can I argue with such a poetic interpretation of this film? Whether intended by Lang to be so symbolic or not, Brody nails it and gives the film a new lease on life. While this may not be Fritz Lang's best work, or even his best noir, it is a fine piece of cinema with all sorts of moral ambiguity that deserves recognition.I watched the film on Netflix. It was not completely restored and the picture was full-screen. Perhaps a better version exists out there or could be made?

Fritz Lang directs this suspenseful Fidelity Pictures drama. Stephen Byrne(Louis Hayward)is a somewhat depressed writer due to a rash of rejection notices. While his wife Marjorie(Jane Wyatt)is away for the day, Stephen makes advances toward the pretty newly hired maid Emily(Dorothy Patrick)and when she tries to fight him off he kills her. The rattled writer, with the help of his brother John(Lee Bowman), manages to stuff Emily in a bag and dumps her body in the river. Byrne gets the inspiration he has seemed to be lacking of late and will start writing a book about the disappearance of the servant and also attempt to frame his brother for the murder. Very good sets and atmosphere. As Stephen goes out on the river and starts coming unhinged you can almost feel his desperation. Hayward and Bowman are the only actors that gets a chance to show their talent. Miss Wyatt is certainly attractive with little effort. Other players: Ann Shoemaker, Kathleen Freeman, Will Wright and Howland Chamberlain.

...is one of the creepiest lines I have heard from a movie. That single name, uttered snidely in the dark by Louis Hayward will make your skin crawl.I've seen House by the River at least 6 times. I don't know why I like it so much. It's a wonderfully well-done film but it creeps the heck out of me every time I watch it. Louis Hayward in the performance of his life plays a psychopathic wastrel of a writer in the late 1800's who tries to rape the housemaid while his wife is away, but accidentally strangles her. He cons his brother into helping him get rid of the body. He gets inspiration from this for a book, and his book is a success. But when certain people get in the way of his success, he turns the whole thing around in the most diabolical way possible.Out of all Fritz Lang's sound films, yes, even M, House by the River is my favorite. The Gothic atmosphere is so intense... the photography, the music, and acting all fit together perfectly. It might not be Lang's best American film but I think it's one of his most unique.