Tony Mastroianni Review Collection
Perkins Sorry About Film -- So Is Critic
Cleveland Press January 8, 1972
When Anthony Perkins was in Cleveland a few months ago we talked about several movies he had made in Europe but which had not yet been released here.
I told him I had just been to a screening of "Someone Behind the Door." He said that he was sorry I had seen it. I allowed as how I was kind of sorry too, and we went on to other things.
"Someone Behind the Door" is a good idea in need of a script writer. The dialog is unbelievably bad when it isn't just trite. Development of the plot depends strongly on chance and coincidence with neither the script nor the sluggish direction being brilliant enough to hide the deficiencies.
Perkins plays a psychiatrist who happens on an amnesia victim (Charles Bronson). Pretending to help him, Perkins plants in Bronson's mind an identity and background complete with cheating wife.
The wife (Jill Ireland) is his own and he plans to turn Bronson into a revengeful murderer.
The picture limps along so badly that the seams show. Bronson plays his part broadly and Perkins looks alternately boyish or wild eyed. Both deserve better.
