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Except for a wobbly beam or two—notably some unlikely melodramatics at the end—House is a well-constructed movie. Into its making went an intelligent screen play by Playwright Philip (Anna Lucasta) Yordan; some distinguished lighting effects and camera work by Milton Krasner; and Director Joseph (A Letter to Three Wives) Mankiewicz's talent for handling atmosphere and sets as effective projections of character. Meatiest character, of course, is arrogant old Monetti, a role which Robinson plays (Italian accent, organ-grinder mustache and all) with bravura and obvious relish.
The Red Menace (Republic), Hollywood's first full-length ABC of U.S. communism, is like most primers: earnest and elementary. In fact, it is so elementary that it hardly gets beyond spelling out the ideological equivalent of cat.
What it does spell out with plodding insistence is a wildly improbable blueprint of a Communist Party cell which for sheer indiscretion and moral decay would surprise even the FBI. Fashioned in the image of Hollywood gangsters, the hard core of the cell includes a couple of strong-arm goons who stand guard over the indoctrination classes, a party scout who looks like a prosperous bookie, and a bigtime commissar who welcomes nonparty members into the secret sessions of his local politburo.
The Red Menace is full of clichés and stock characters who eventually see the error of communism. By the last reel, there are hardly enough cell members left to stir up a rumpus in a tea cozy. The picture might get by if it were either good entertainment or good propaganda, but it is inept on both counts.