Leslie Banks again as a villain, this time set upon foiling the emergent and glamorous Lilli Palmer, makes an enticing prospect. It is another Edgar Wallace adaptation. If his best-selling novels - sometimes dictated over a weekend - are little read now, screen versions of these yarns can remain diverting. The Door with Seven Locks has the premise of a fortune left to a young boy to be kept in trust by a lawyer who has the seven keys to unlock the vault when the time comes. This brings rightful heir Lilli Palmer in conflict with the wonderfully bearded, cloaked and monkey-owning Banks whose evil disposition manifests itself in murder (deadly pipes are used) and curatorship of his museum of torture devices,. (An iron maiden springs into action along the way.) Add to this a foul-tempered servant played by Cathleen Nesbitt (with whom Rupert Brooke had been smitten a quarter-century earlier) and all is set for suspense.
How disappointing that this soon dissipates, the promising premise lost amidst scenes which become unduly long and talkative. It is a film which has its moments, and leaves one eager to read what Lilli Palmer made of it in her acclaimed mid-Seventies memoir of a career which began with the little-known likes of this after being driven from a troubled Europe.