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27 out of 31 people found the following review useful: Widmark Goes Psychotic Again!, 14 November 2006 Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States
This was a very interesting character study of three people: "LIly Stevens" (Ida Lupino), "Jefty Robbins" (Richard Widmark) and "Pete Morgan" (Cornel Wilde).The two guys are attracted to Lupino, who prefers good-guy Wilde. The scorned Widmark then gets his revenge. This film was a year after Widmark played sadistic killer "Tommy Udo" in "Kiss Of Death" and his character in this movie isn't too far removed from Udo. In both films, Widmark provides the spark when the story needed it.That's not to say the rest of the cast isn't good, too, but Widmark playing these psycho villains is just fascinating and just stands out. Another fine thespian is Celeste Holm, who also is in this picture but with a role that did not stand out. I can't even remember what she did in here, although it's been awhile since I've seen this. Hopefully, this film noir will be issued on DVD some day.
28 out of 36 people found the following review useful: " I told you she was different ", 3 November 2002 Author: Todd Honig from Hollywood, California
This is one of my favorite film-noirs. I could watch it every night and not get tired of it. What Ida Lupino was able to do with a cigarette, a few shrugs of her shoulder and a gravelly singing voice, well lets just say they there oughta be a law against it. The casting of this film could not have been better.Richard Widmark, Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde and Celeste Holm are all at the top of their game here. And to top it all off, it has one of the greatest bar-room brawls of all time. If you've never seen it, you're wasting valuable time here. Shut off your computer, go down to your local video store and rent it immediately. You won't be disappointed. Or better yet, try to catch it on a big screen somewhere.
22 out of 28 people found the following review useful: "Again, this couldn't happen again...", 22 November 2004 Author: jotix100 from New York
The main attraction here are the amazing performances by Ida Lupino, and Richard Widmark. Jean Negulesco was able to capture it all in this tale of passion gone wrong.Lily Stevens arrives at Jefty's Road House to entertain in the lounge area. Jefty, has offered her 250 a week, a sum that in Pete Morgan's estimation is a lot more than the place can afford. Pete offers money to send Lily back to Chicago because he senses she will bring chaos between him and Jefty, the man who has been generous to him and who, he feels, will fall again for this chanteuse of mysterious origins.Thus begins one of the best films of that era. It's a noir because of the elements, but actually it might be considered a semi-noir since it's not an obvious one. Ida Lupino had a way for 'talking' her songs at the Road House. She had a style that got to the lounge patrons that heard her sing. Her interpretation of "It's a quarter to three" is done faultlessly. Her voice, a combination of alcohol and the cigarettes she positions at the piano's lid while singing, contribute to create a portrait of the sultry woman she is. She sings "Again" twice; her rendition of that song makes it impossible for anyone else to sing it without comparing it to what Ms. Lupino did with it, much better!Richard Widmark was the favorite looney in the 40s. His acting was always an exercise on intensity. He always played the weird roles on the screen. In "Road House" he appears almost normal until he realizes that Lily will never love him. He has to get his revenge on Pete who has stolen Lily's affection away from him. Jefty will stop at nothing in order to get her back. Thus he accuses Pete Morgan, his loyal friend, of stealing the week's receipts.Cornel Wilde plays a passive role as Pete. He too falls for the charms of Lily, but at the same time, Lily wants him because she sees in him her own salvation from joints and a ticket to a normal life. Celeste Holm is the other principal. Her role is not as well defined. She should be resentful of Lily, but she is a kind soul who accepts the fact that Pete never loved her. Ultimately, she is the one who solves the puzzle of the missing money."Road House" should be seen more often.
24 out of 32 people found the following review useful: Silly Noir, 21 May 2009 Author: jpdoherty from Ireland
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
20th Century Fox's ROAD HOUSE 1948) is not only quite a silly noir but is an implausible unmitigated bore of a movie. Full of unconvincing cardboard characters it is blandly written by Edward Chodorov, who also produced, and is surprisingly directed by Jean Negulesco from whom one would expect a great deal more. Miscast is Ida Lupino in the leading role! Lupino, a lady who was capable of exuding about as much sex appeal as a blood orange, is here under the illusion she is Rita Hayworth playing the part of a sexy bar-room Torch Singer. Handsome Cornel Wilde as her lover is as wooden as usual and totally wasted is the talented Celeste Holm who's role is little more than a bit part. Then we have Richard Widmark who has the most ludicrously written part in the picture! When we first see him he is a nice O.K. guy who runs a thriving Road House. Then suddenly - and for reasons that are not sufficiently made clear - he becomes insanely jealous of his manager (Wilde) when the latter tells him that he is about to marry Lupino. You see Widmark wanted to marry her himself but - 1) He never proposed to her - 2) They never had a relationship (they don't even have anything that resembles a love scene together) and - 3)without telling anyone (including Lupino) he has obtained a marriage license. Wow! So how Widmark was to achieve something like wedded bliss with Lupino after such a "courtship" is anybody's quess. Huh? Well, when Widmark goes to pieces over the whole affair so also does the movie I am sorry to say. From here on the Widmark character turns unintentionally comical! His losing his marbles so early in the proceedings is totally implausible and unconvincing. He finally goes over the edge, becomes completely deranged and with a few Tommy Udo sniggers, he laughably goes gunning for poor Cornel Wilde before biting the dust himself.And if that isn't enough of a mess of a movie for you - the picture is also marred with a constant use of studio sets and indoor exteriors. There's not a single outdoor shot in the entire movie! Added to this - 95% of the film takes place at night.Besides an interactive press book and a photo gallery the extras also includes a featurette "Widmark & Lupino At Fox". Whatever prompted such a documentary is beyond me! As far as I know they were never before together in a movie at Fox or anywhere else! However this featurette is hosted by such heavy hitter know-alls as Robert Osborne, Eddie Muller, Rudy Belhmer and a few others who amazingly heap praise on this wearisome and cringe - inducing affair. All I can say then it must be me I guess. But "Road House" up to now was a forgotten and buried Noir and as far as I am concerned it should have remained so.Fox would do better if they issued DVDs of superior and thus far elusive Widmark movies like "Down To The Sea In Ships" (1949) and the colourful "Red Skies Of Montana" (1952).
22 out of 30 people found the following review useful: Intriguing Noir with a Sultry Performance by Ida Lupino, 24 October 2003 Author: Kalaman from Ottawa
A fascinating, quietly invigorating noir piece from director Jean Negulesco. Richard Widmark is fantastic as the owner of the roadhouse who spoils the marriage of Cornel Wilde and Ida Lupino in the quasi-idyllic setting located in the U.S.-Canadian border. There are two things that kept me fascinated by this odd and satisfying little noir. One is the sultry presence of Ida Lupino as the silky, smooth-voiced torch singer Lily (her rendition of "One for My Baby" is itself precious). Without a doubt this is one of Lupino's best performances. The other is director Negulesco's intriguingly stylish direction: the use of languorous long takes and deep focus, particularly in the misty, smoke-induced finale in the wilderness is quite haunting and expressive. This is the only Negulesco film I've seen. I'm looking forward to this other works.
22 out of 31 people found the following review useful: Behind a white piano gouged with cigarette burns, Lupino proves her mettle, 7 September 2004 Author: bmacv from Western New York
'...and then by bus to a throaty restless obsessed temptress 'thrush' slouched in mortal danger atop a white piano, singing the blues and chain-smoking, somewhere in the long, dark, wet and winding night between Chicago and 'the coast.' – James McCourt, "Mawrdew Czgowchwz"Jean Negulesco's Road House must have inspired that sentence (or rather fragment). With her voice shredded by Scotch and Luckies, Ida Lupino is the thrush, the canary, whose smoldering cigarettes leave a bar-code of burns scarring the smart paint of her white piano. She's been brought up from Chicago by Richard Widmark to lure paying customers into the cocktail lounge of his establishment – Jefty's Road House – up in the piney woods a few miles from the Canadian border. (On one side, it's a bowling alley – that kind of joint; the only game in town). In the past, Widmark has been known to engage no-talents who strike his romantic fancy. So when Lupino arrives, Widmark's boyhood pal and now Man Friday Cornel Wilde, cruel to be kind, tries to send her packing. He fails ('Silly boy,' she scolds him after slapping his face). But Wilde was wrong; Lupino brings down the house at her debut, with a gravelly, sprechstimme rendition of the Mercer/Arlen 'It's A Quarter To Three.' ('She does more without a voice than anybody I've ever heard,' marvels Celeste Holm, another worker toiling under Widmark's thumb.)Maybe it would have been better had she packed. Widmark assumes that Lupino's as mad about him as he about her and runs off to get a marriage license. But after starting off on the wrong foot, Wilde and Lupino find a grudging romance kindling between them, to Holm's chagrin – she assumed she was Wilde's girl. (The whole plot's based on unfounded assumptions.) When Widmark stumbles upon the truth, he frames Wilde for stealing the week's take. And that's only the start of Widmark's delusional plot to redress the wrong he thinks been done him, to an extent that Lupino turns on him: 'And you know what else? Your mind's gone. You're crazy, Jefty. Crazy!' Since, in film noir, that's about the worse thing you can say to someone with a mad little glint in his eye (and demented giggles to match it), Widmark goes totally unhitched....Like the following year's Beyond The Forest, Road House is an overheated melodrama set in the cool climate of hunting lodges and icy lakes where loons (not only the avian kind) call through the dusk. It's a pastoral backwater where routine passions build up to explosive force, without the many vents cities offer for release. (We see it in a drunken bear of a backwoodsman who comes violently onto Lupino, thinking her torch songs were sung not for a paycheck but expressly for him.)Negulesco was working at the top of his game in Road House, as was Widmark (though we had seen his gleeful psycho before). With his constitutionally dour manner (maybe it's just his face), Wilde was not one to set celluloid aflame, but the part of victim fits him; Holm, alas, has to grapple with a thankless, ill-thought-out character (it's an Eve-Ardenish part that needs another splash of vinegar). But Lupino gets one of her best roles, and runs with it. Scion of a British theatrical family whose roots go back to Renaissance Italy, she never received the star treatment or the prestige productions her talents deserved (she did, however, help to shatter the directorial glass ceiling). As Lily Stevens, world-weary chanteuse of a certain age, she stays the headliner in a dark, accomplished and entertaining movie. It's a late-show treasure that makes a television an appliance worth having.
12 out of 16 people found the following review useful: Tommy Udo in the Nightclub Business, 9 December 2005 Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York
Following up his sensational movie debut in Kiss of Death, Richard Widmark got another psychopathic role in Road House. His characterization of Jefty, the owner of a road house in the rural middle west near the Canadian border, is Tommy Udo once again, right down to the maniacal giggle. Good thing for Widmark he got out of that typecasting as soon as he could.The actors have to be good here because the story as some real big holes in it. Richard Widmark owns the Road House and his World War II buddy Cornel Wilde manages it. Widmark on a trip to Chicago hires a singer, Ida Lupino at a good deal beyond the normal rate. Of course Widmark has other things on his mind for Lupino.But it's Wilde that Lupino falls for and when they tell Widmark, he goes psycho on them, but in a coldblooded maniacal sort of way. He frames Wilde for embezzlement and then successfully pleads with the judge to suspend the sentence and commit Wilde on parole to Widmark's charge. The rest I won't say.Celeste Holm is in this film and I'm not sure what her function is other than to be a witness for Wilde and Lupino in the end. But worse than that she's a musical performer who could have been a believable singer. Ida Lupino croaked her numbers out like a bullfrog. The woman, talented actress that she was, could not sing.The song Again was introduced in Road House and if it could become a hit with Lupino's croaky singing of it, it must be a great song.A key piece of evidence also turns up rather conveniently in the end to destroy Widmark's nefarious scheme. A piece of evidence that should have been destroyed months ago as a matter of course. I won't say more.And I also cannot believe that Wilde would have agreed to the parole conditions. Where was his lawyer?Despite all the holes in this plot, the characterizations of Wilde and Lupino caught in a psychotic's jealous rage ring true. And Richard Widmark was a psychotic for the ages. Fans of the above players and I'm one of them should see this film. I wish these four had been given a better script.
11 out of 16 people found the following review useful: Excellent, original and unique, 9 August 2005 Author: MarieGabrielle from United States
Unlike many of the other film-noir films; the setting is a "sinister" bowling alley, which is more and more suspenseful, as you don't know what Richard Widmark will do next.Ida Lupino, Celeste Holm and Cornel Wilde are the perfect foils, setting off Widmark in this film; the settings alone are original; the acting superb, and I wish they still made them like this!!!!.You will enjoy the mystery, the cast of characters, and the final outcome of this movie. You definitely will not be able to predict what happens.Rent it as soon as you can for a dark, rainy night!.
9 out of 13 people found the following review useful: Widmark and Lupino are phenomenal, 21 June 2007 Author: mauricebarringer from United States
What a tremendously under-rated film classic. The wonderful Ida Lupino was as sultry and sensual as one could get, especially in the 1940s. How about the scene at the lake when she improvised and made her own bathing suit. I would have liked to see her in a bikini. She turned a routine role as a hard luck woman singer into a great performance.Richard Widmark is one of my all-time favorite actors. Why he has never received a Career Achievement Award from the Academy is mind boggling. No actor in film history has given so many memorable performances portraying sociopaths and psychopaths.I will skip the fine plot as so many others have explained it but will say that this is a great film noir that holds up exceptionally well even 60 years later. Cornel Wilde and Celeste Holm were also outstanding in less flamboyant roles. Holm was superb as the good hearted woman who was in love with Wilde who thought of her only as a good friend. Wilde gave a fine naturalistic performance as the stable and hard working good guy whom Widmark turned against out of jealousy and eventually hatred.The direction, screenplay and cinematography were also top notch, and "Again" is a classic song that has endured the march of time and is still played on jazz and oldie stations regularly.Come on Acadamy! Give the great Widmark a Career Achievement Award.
10 out of 15 people found the following review useful: Noir at its Best!, 22 April 2002 Author: (csdietrich@hotmail.com)
Currently I'm taking a Film Noir class in college and I must say this is one fine piece of work. Ida Lupino is so overwhelming there are no words to express it but Richard Widmark is surely the finest actor in Noir! He was soooooooo creepy - a real human monster. The fight scene in the bar was hysterically funny though. It looked like it had been lifted out of a Western. Cornel Wilde was also sensational and I wish I'd seen this before meeting him years ago.
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