Never Open That Door (1952)

No abras nunca esa puerta (1952)

aka Never Open That Door

directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen

80 minutes

in Spanish with English subtitles

This movie was originally intended to be an anthology of three stories all based on short stories by Cornell Woolrich. Three stories were filmed. All three were released but only the first two are contained within this feature.

The first story is titled Alguien al teléfono or Somebody on the Phone. It stars Ángel Magana and Renée Dumas.

Raúl Valdez (Ángel Magana) sees Luisa (Renée Dumas), his sister, meeting with a man he doesn't recognize. Raúl sees Luisa give the man something of value. He later tries to ask her about it. She is reluctant to tell him anything.

Raúl presses Luisa again for information after he learns that she has emptied the bank account they share. She finally comes clean and tells him that she has run up some gambling debts. Luisa kills herself minutes later by jumping from her bedroom window.

Raúl goes for revenge. He tracks down the man with whom he saw Luisa meeting and kills him but soon thereafter it becomes clear that he may have killed the wrong person.

The second story is titled El pájaro cantor vuelve al hogar or The Hummingbird Comes Home. It stars Ilde Pirovano, Roberto Escalada, Norma Giménez, and Luis Otero.

Rosa (Ilde Pirovano) who is blind and has her niece Maria (Norma Giménez) living with her, mourns the loss of her son Daniel whom she hasn't seen in eight years. One day Daniel returns without warning. He has brought two men with him, one of whom is badly injured.

Rosa is bothered by Daniel's disrespectful behavior towards her. She grows even more troubled when she learns that Daniel and the other two men just robbed a bank.

The third man dies. Daniel and Juan bury him. They fall asleep soon after that. after drinking quite a bit. Rosa sneaks into their rooms, takes their pistols, and locks them in. She sends Maria to go get help. Rosa is ready to kill them if they try anything funny.

Daniel and Juan break out of the rooms where they were sleeping. Juan is ready to kill Rosa but Daniel is not. The two men fight. Rosa overhears their argument and changes her mind about Daniel and is proud of him once again.

One of the two men gets killed in the process of the fight. Rosa believes it is Juan and lets the survivor leave. Maria returns and discovers that it was Daniel who was killed and is left wondering how to break the news to her aunt.

Thoughts

I saw this movie as part of the 2024 edition of the Noir City DC film festival. It was the front half of a double feature. The back half was If I Should Die Before I Wake (1952) which was originally intended to be the third story in this movie.. 

I enjoyed both of these stories. I wasn't sure if there was a link between them. I kept wondering if Raúl was going to show up during the second story. He did not. It would have been helpful to know that when I started to watch the movie.

I gave away the ending to both stories because I feel that the endings were ambiguous or inconclusive. They leave you something about which to speculate. The brilliance of the film versions of both stories is that part of the what makes them so good is the visual and aural elements in them. I can't give that away without going into the sort of details about which I feel that it is pointless to share in written form.