Don't Bother to Knock (1952) - Monroe as unstable allure in slight film

♥♥♥

One of the extremely salacious posters for Roy Ward Baker's Don't Bother to Knock, which makes Marilyn Monroe's sex appeal the main selling point

QUICK REVIEW:

A little girl is to be looked after in a big New York hotel by a young woman, SPOILER who invites a strange man inside and reveals herself as mentally utterly unstable.

Don't Bother to Knock presents a well-intentioned but inelegant story told with a noirish, post-WWII atmosphere. Marilyn Monroe (The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)) shows some versatility in the film as a woman SPOILER who may want to kill a child! Elisha Cook Jr. (Magnum , P.I. (1981-88)) is good as uncle Eddie, and Anne Bancroft (The Graduate (1967)) makes her unremarkable screen debut here.
Daniel Taradash (From Here to Eternity (1953)) wrote the screenplay, based on Charlotte Armstrong's (The Witch's House (1963)) 1951 novel Mischief, and the film is directed by Roy Ward Baker (The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), uncredited). It still holds some interest but isn't really good.

Watch the original trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 1.5 mil. $ (North America only)
= Unknown
[Don't Bother to Knock was released July 18 and runs just 76 minutes. It is recorded as a B film, probably with a relatively low budget of less than 0.5 mil. $, which would make the film a hit just based on its domestic performance, - and Monroe's allure probably accounts for it. 4,186 Rotten Tomatoes users have rated the film 3.6/5.]

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