Review of Don't Bother to Knock (1961) by Paul F — 07 Oct 2004

*sigh* Another movie not in the RT database. How could they possibly not include a crummy, mostly-forgotten TV-movie remake of a classic film? Is [i]How to Marry a Billionaire[/i] in this thing?

I'd never seen [i]Don't Bother to Knock[/i], best known for having Marilyn Monroe play a frumpy psychopathic babysitter, until yesterday. Earlier this week, Fox Movie Channel aired both it and the above-eluded to TV remake, [i]The Sitter[/i], though they inexplicably aired [i]The Sitter[/i] first. So I had to tape both films, then wait until the next day before I could watch them in the proper order. Oh, the complicated life I lead. It's a wonder I have time to work.

[i]Don't Bother to Knock[/i] is kind of the granddaddy of psycho babysitter films, a genre that's been spun off into films like [i]The Hand That Rocks the Cradle[/i], [i]The Babysitter[/i] (the bad Shatner one, not the even worse Alicia Silverstone one) and [i]The Housekeeper.[/i] The film may have also inspired the babysitters-being-harassed-by-psychos genre of [i]When a Stranger Calls[/i], [i]Tricks or Treats[/i] and [i]Eyes of a Stranger, [/i]so I'm honestly a little ashamed I never saw the film until now.

Monroe plays Nell, a young woman living with her uncle after being released from the mental institution she was sent to after having a nervous breakdown following the death of her husband in WWII. Her uncle (expert nervous character vet Elisha Cook Jr.) works as an elevator operator at a local hotel, and when a couple is need of a babysitter for the evening (the dad is Jim Backus!), he suggests Nell, knowing she needs some sort of income.

Now, Nell is supposed to be kind of dowdy, which they do by having Monroe wear a brunette wig and dress in less-than-flattering clothes, at least until she puts on her employer's nightgown. It's a good attempt, but still manages to be only slightly more believable that strapping a rag onto Catherine Deneuve's head in an effort to make her look like a factory worker in [i]Dancer in the Dark[/i]. Some stars just can't, well, not be stars.

Meanwhile, airline pilot Jed (Richard Widmark) flies into town to visit his lounge singer girlfriend (Anne Bancroft!) who's trying very hard to dump him. He doesn't take it well, and ends up watching Nell through his window, eventually making his way into the room where she's babysitting the precocious little girl.

Roy Ward Baker (before his career careened into British horror) infuses the movie with a fair share of tension, especially since for a good portion of the film, you're not entirely sure that Jed isn't about to go as bonkers as Nell. (I mean, it's Richard Widmark.) The highlight is a very effective sequence where Nell looks as though she's about to push the little girl out of an open window, and knowing that production codes of the time probably wouldn't let that happen doesn't make it any less tense.

The thing is, there's really not all that much to it. The characters don't have that much depth to them, so it never manages to be a psychological drama, and it's not dark enough to be classified as "film noir." Still, it's an entertaining 76 minutes that will pass by quickly enough to be worth a look.

And it's certainly much better than [i]The Sitter[/i], a slipshod TV-movie that puts Kim Myers in the Monroe role. I thought she looked familiar at first, like a young Meryl Streep or the woman who played the would-be girlfriend of the gay guy in [i]A Nightmare on Elm Street 2[/i]. I then discovered it was the girl from [i]A Nightmare on Elm Street 2[/i]. I'm so good.

[i]The Sitter[/i] takes all the elements of [i]Don't Bother to Knock[/i] and mixes them up in a mad scramble, then desperately attempts to put them back together again. An aunt has been added to the equation, the couple in need of a sitter is now an author rather than a journalist, the lounge singer is gone, the pilot is now an insurance salesman (I guess this was an attempt to make him seem more exciting?) and the once comic-relief dog lady character is turned into a dog training expert whose dog is, we're led to believe, killed by Nell halfway though the film, though nothing ever becomes of it.

The reasoning behind Nell's psychological weirdness is different too. No longer is she looking for her lost love. Now, she's obsessed with having a family, and instead of being icy to the little girl, she bonds with her, taking her out of the hotel to play three-card monte with [i]Breakin' 2[/i]'s Adolfo "Shabba-Doo" Quinones (!), buy a dress, go to a toy store and generally do everything Ferris Bueller would do if he was an 8-year-old girl. Meanwhile, the parents are stuck at a dinner that seems to take place over several days a la [i]Le Grande Bouffe[/i], the only explanation for so much being able to happen while they're away.

While the acting is generally okay, especially character actor Eugene Roche stepping into Elisha Cook Jr.'s sweaty shoes, the whole thing reeks of being re-written during the course of the production. Nell now seems completely nuts from the get-go, the parents mention that their daughter is "upstairs" when they left her in a completely different building, there's a maid that seems to want to clean the room in the middle of the night(!) and, of course, there's that dog sub-plot that goes nowhere. It's no wonder that writer/director Rick Berger hasn't done a thing since then.

Yep, the sheer stupidity of the sub-Lifetime [i]The Sitter[/i] made me appreciate [i]Don't Bother to Knock[/i] so much more. [i]DBtK[/i] may not be a perfect film, but at least it's a coherant one with a few thrills. Viewers of [i]The Sitter[/i] might find themselves too involved with how inane everything is to even come close to getting interested in any of the characters.

(The Sitter is the second thing I've seen this week in which players beat the three card monte dealer. Y'know, maybe you should figure out how the three card monte scam works before becoming a dealer? Or writing it into a movie? The hint is in the word "scam.").