The Red House (1947)
“Stay out of the woods, and away from the red house.”
Streamed free from the Internet Archive · no signup, no cost — this film is in the public domain.
Synopsis
The Red House is a rural gothic noir that swaps the usual rain-slicked city streets for shadowed forests and isolated farmland. Edward G. Robinson stars as Pete Morgan, a peg-legged farmer who lives with his sister Ellen and their adopted teenage daughter Meg. When Meg's classmate Nath is hired to help with chores, Pete reacts with violent panic to the boy's plan to walk home through the old woods, insisting they hide a dangerous red house no one must find. The young people's stubborn curiosity unravels a buried crime and drives Pete toward a terrifying breakdown. Director Delmer Daves and an uncredited Albert Maltz adapt George Agnew Chamberlain's novel into a brooding tale of obsession and repression, lifted by Bert Glennon's atmospheric photography and a haunting Miklós Rózsa score featuring the unearthly wail of the theremin.
Cast
About the Director
Delmer Daves — Delmer Daves, who would later become known for intelligent Westerns, directs The Red House with a patient eye for landscape as menace, turning fields and forest into a psychological map of guilt. He frames Pete's secret as a wound at the center of the land itself, letting the natural world carry the dread the city would normally supply in noir.
Why It’s Free: The Public-Domain Story
The Red House is in the public domain in the United States. The film was registered for copyright by Thalia Productions on February 7, 1947, and that copyright was never renewed during the required 28-year term, so the film passed into the public domain.
Behind the Scenes
Produced by Sol Lesser and shot in the spring of 1946 around Sonora, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, the film marked the final feature appearance of actress Ona Munson and a career breakthrough for singer-turned-actress Julie London. It premiered in Palm Springs in December 1946 before its wide 1947 release through United Artists.
Did You Know?
- Miklós Rózsa's score uses the theremin played by Samuel Hoffman, echoing his celebrated work on Spellbound and The Lost Weekend.
- The screenplay was co-written by Albert Maltz, later blacklisted as one of the Hollywood Ten, who went uncredited on the film.
- In 2019 Paste magazine named The Red House the best horror film released in 1947.
Reception & Legacy
Reviewers welcomed the film as adult-minded horror, with The New York Times praising its mounting tension, its uniformly good cast, and Daves's fluid direction. Later critics embraced its genre-defying mix of noir, melodrama, and ghost story.
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