The Shuttered Room

I will go ahead and knock out a point right away. I find obnoxious troublemakers who follow Oliver Reed’s unstable leader rather tiresome. They trap Gig Young up in a fish net and bound his legs to his wrists with a cord, take his convertible for a joy ride while yee-hawing and carrying on. Oliver Reed made all types of characters intense and hot-tempered. Gig Young has a gorgeous wife from an island with a deranged twin that is kept locked up in a room for the safety of anyone that might come across her. In this movie Reed runs around, barely able to stay still, is at times so intense he could crack walnuts with his ass cheeks (yea, not too original, but the truth the nonetheless), his face damn near convulsing he gets so worked up, but volatile dangerous does a movie make. There’s a late scene where he’s chasing some tail (Gig’s blond beauty of a wife, played by Carol Lynley), sets a teddy bear on fire (not sure what he planned to do with it, maybe burn Carol with it?), calls out to her in a rage, and encounters someone even more violent and hazardous then he is. 

All of this and seeing Gig use martial arts on Reed’s droogs, leaving them laying in the dust, does indicate that The Shuttered Room isn’t boring. I have to say I’m not a Gig Young fan at all even though They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is one of my favorite all time movies. That movie worked because Gig seemed to fit that mold of evil man, exploiting desperation for his own benefit, with ease. As a hero (the American from New York who married a foreigner definitely easy on the eyes and a fresh-faced, young trophy wife with a notorious childhood she has blanked out…), he never seemed like a natural fit to me. He does try, I'll give him that.

The movie has one of those “twins are psychically linked” scenarios which produces a freak out for Carol where she’s the “normal” Susannah character experiencing what her sister is while chained in the loft (that’s pretty much what it is inside the old farmhouse where she’s kept) as it starts to burn. God, how many of these films end with a giant building burning to the ground? Lots. Reed and his doofuses act like a pack of untamed, unmannered animals, wild and unpredictable. Reed is all upset because Aunt Agatha (Flora Robson) promised the “windmill” house to him not expecting Susannah to return home to the poor island of her birth. Gig’s Mike Kelton and Susannah, however, plan to turn it into a summer home, to fix her up and make the place presentable. It’s a nice idea but certain factors, such as Reed and his bunch of idiots and the misfit chained in the shuttered room, will interfere.

David Greene, the director, knows how desirable Carol is and makes sure we do to. Thanks, David, is all I can say because she is a looker. A doll. But she gets to have a little fun with the “other sister”, a total opposite, a haggard little animalistic girl in rags. Greene incorporates the POV to see through the eyes of what peers from the shuttered room or gets free momentarily at the beginning to frighten Susannah as a little girl. Reed’s Ethan and others on the island (even Agatha to a small degree) are every bit the poor “country bumpkins” that creep out the city folks in these kinds of movies. 

Well, I guess you could say this is one of those under-the-radar movies I imagine, kind of sneaks up and bites you. It is part of a double feature with the more “distinguished” (well, I guess…) Roddy McDowell vehicle, It (I haven’t watched this one, so I could be wrong, but it has a reputation while I stumbled on The Shuttered Room…). Might be worth a peek if just for Reed’s fans.