Can insane people fall in love? Okay, I hear you! Sure, one might say only the insane fall in love. Whatever your experiences are with falling in love, never a too rational endeavor, we will see it play out in our film today. Kind of. Set in an insane asylum, always a good metaphor for the society we live in, a private eye is falling in love...and not with Tor Johnson. Tor Johnson? The guy from "Plan 9 from Outer Space"? Yep, he's in it...but fear not...he won't be falling in love. Our feature today is 1948's "Behind Locked Doors," directed by Budd Boetticher.
Corrupt Judge Finlay Drake (Herbert Heyes) is now a big ally of the mob. Wanted, he is in hiding. His buddy, Dr. Clifford Porter (Thomas Browne Henry) runs an insane asylum and fixes up a luxury room in the locked ward for the judge. No one will look there. Some good investigating reporting work by the sultry Kathy (Lucille Bremer) follows the judge's hot GF, Madge (Gwen Donovan) to the asylum at night and theorizes she is there to see the judge. Now Kathy hires hunk private eye Ross (Richard Carlson) to pretend to be insane, get admitted to the asylum, and snoop around for the judge. He does, only because Kathy is really pretty and he wants to kiss her a lot. Once in the asylum, Ross sees weird stuff...I know, it's a loony-bin...but beyond that, other weird stuff. A brute attendant, Larson (Douglas Fowley) roughs up, or has roughed up, inmates that yell and misbehave.
Ross sees the locked ward is off limits to all but Larson and Dr. Porter. Inmates who scream or snoop too close to the locked ward are taken into it by Larson and put in a cell with Tor Johnson who believes he is a heavyweight boxer. Tor pummels them, sometimes to death. Meanwhile the pretty Kathy, posing as Ross' wife, keeps snooping and every few days comes to see Ross. Now Kathy has a line when Madge is due back for a nighttime visit. Sadly, Dr. Potter and Larson are on the verge of figuring out that Ross is a plant. Fearing the press, or the cops are on to the judge's whereabouts, they act. Yep, Tor Johnson is part of their plan to do away with Ross. Uh oh again, Kathy has fallen in love with Ross and knows he is in peril, so she...well, see the movie and see how a nubile babe acts when the man she loves is in trouble.
Will Tor Johnson pummel Ross? What exactly is the judge doing in the locked ward in addition to hiding from authorities? Will the beautiful Kathy save her man, or will she find herself in Tor Johnson's cell? This is a good one and perhaps an all too obvious metaphor about falling in love. See "Behind Locked Doors" and sample a world filled with the insane.
All good questions, but the one who intrigued me more is "What exactly is the judge doing in there?"
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