After so much post-Psycho typecasting, it’s downright refreshing to see Anthony Perkins playing someone nice and normal in Someone Behind the Door. In the obscure thriller, he’s a timid, crippled florist threatened by the — oh, who’m I kidding? I can’t pull one over on you! He’s so totally bonkers! Again!
Perkins is Dr. Laurence Jeffries, a brilliant brain surgeon whose latest patient is known to us only as “the stranger” (Charles Bronson). That’s because he’s a total amnesiac. Jeffries performs research on the stranger, but not the kind for which physicians are awarded massive grants. After assuring the stranger he’s not Victor Frankenstein, Jeffries invites him to his home, where he performs a “personality transplant.”
That’s the snazzy way of saying, “I’m going to make you think that my wife is really your wife, and then tell you that she’s been nailing some dude that isn’t me — er, you — and that you should do something about it, thereby letting me off the hook.” Oooooh, Mrs. Jeffries (Jill Ireland, of course), you are in troubbbbble!
With so few people in the cast and most of the film taking place in one spot, Someone has the feeling of a great — okay, a pretty good — stage play. It’s a game of psychological one-upsmanship in the style of Sleuth or Deathtrap, but a couple levels below in the brains department. Bronson proceeds past his acting ability’s comfort zone in the finale, but I’m sure as hell not going to tell him that. —Rod Lott
“But I’m sure as hell not going to tell him that.”
Especially since doing so will require that you perform a seance first.