Behind Locked Doors

A corrupt judge has taken refuge in a mental hospital to avoid prosecution; as long as he keeps pretending to be insane nobody can touch him. To get to him, private detective Ross Stewart tries the only route available: he has himself committed as a patient. His link to the outside is Kathy, a reporter posing as his wife. Budd Boetticher's early sixty-two-minute picture comes from the tightest-budget corner of noir. The corridors, the locked wards and the arbitrariness of the staff create the real tension: the man cannot leave when he wants to. The way the film pictures psychiatric institutions belongs to its period; patients are used as a source of fear, and that sits badly today. Boetticher would be remembered a few years later as a master of the western.