The House Across the Lake (AKA: Heat Wave) is directed by Ken Hughes and he also adapts the screenplay from his own novel High Wray. It stars Alex Nicol, Hillary Brooke, Sid James, Susan Stephen and Paul Carpenter. Music is by Ivor Slaney and cinematography by Walter J. Harvey.

American novelist Mark Kendrick (Nicol) is living in England and trying to finish his latest novel. When he is invited for drinks at the house across the lake, Mark becomes entangled in the web of a beautiful blonde...

OK! This plot is hardly new and film noir boasts some truly excellent pictures where a man is duped into a downward spiral by a femme fatale vixen. In that respect, this Hammer Film Production can't compete, either in production value or quality of narrative, yet this is still worthy of inspection by the film noir faithful.

Nicol's (looking like a poor man's Sterling Hayden) Mark Kendrick and Brooke's Carol Forrest are classic noir characters, he tells us his weakness is women, his constant narration sombre and hapless, she's an icy cold bitch of considerable sting. And with Sid James moping around forlornly as the rich husband who is ill of health and broken of heart, the characterisations are vibrant and performed to a good standard to draw us into the play.

The air is ripe with pungent pessimism, we know from the off that Mark is in trouble, and sure enough the tale contains treachery, death and moral murkiness. Unfortunately the visuals don't quite match the mood of plotting. The lakeside shots are well done, and Kendrick's cottage with the venetian blinds briefly offer up some promise of noirish disharmony, but mostly the picture is filmed in standard black and white and a trick is missed to elevate the piece to better heights.

Visual missed chances aside, this is a good low budget Brit noir that gets in and does the job well. 7/10

Alex Nichol and Hillary Brooke were not exactly household names in Hollywood. This is not to say they were unsuccessful. No, they both had many TV and movie appearances to their credit. But they also never quite were leading man and leading lady material. And, like other second and third-tier actors at the time (such as Richard Basehart),they were lured to Europe for starring roles in lesser productions. "Heat Wave" is a lower-budgeted British thriller--and the Brits were happy to have some Americans in the leads as it would increase the marketability of the film. In other words, folks in the States might be more likely to book this in their theaters.

Mark is sitting at a bar getting drunk when he's approached by someone. He seems to know who it is and buys that person a drink and begins telling his story. It seems he was home alone one evening working on his book when he got a phone call from the folks living across the lake. Although he doens't know them, he's invited to a party they are having. Once there, he sees the lady of the house is a hottie--but also a philandering woman. As for the husband, he's a whipped man and spends most of the evening playing pool with Mark and telling him his marital problems.

Later in the film, the evil wife, Carol, begins making advances towards Mark. He's clearly turned on by her, but she is bad--and he resists her allure....for a while. Eventually, however, they begin seeing each other and Mark KNOWS it's wrong...but he can't stop. Carol promises he can have her if only her sickly husband was out of the way.

Does this sound familiar? Well, if you love film noir, you probably recognize this as a reworking of the plot from the classic "Double Indemnity". It's not exactly the same...but darn close. While it lacks originality and is clearly derivative, it IS well acted and has a nice mood overall. Worth seeing even if a bit familiar.

By the way, cheers to Miss Brooke. She not only played a great femme fatale, but you'd have thought she was British due to her accent. You'd have never guessed that she was American through and through.

THE HOUSE ACROSS THE LAKE is one of the film noirs that Hammer Films regularly made before they hit paydirt with THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN in 1957. It's a low budget movie, filmed at Bray Studios, watchable enough in itself without ever equalling the heights of greatness that Hammer reached once they remodelled themselves as a horror studio.

The film stars regular American import Alex Nicol, who was no stranger to appearing in British B-fare (A STRANGER IN TOWN and THE GILDED CAGE are two others I've seen in him and he seems to give the same performance in each one). He plays an everyday character, a washed-up and boozy writer who rents a house on the lake and soon becomes involved in the lives of the rich couple living opposite.

Hillary Brooke is another import, playing the adulterous wife who secretly despises her rich husband. Brooke is an odd choice to the part; slightly too old and difficult to see what men would find so alluring about her, although she excels when playing the nastier side of her character, something Hitchcock noticed when he cast her in THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. The real stand-out is Sid James in a rare non-comedic role as the sympathetic husband, just looking for friendship in a lonely world. James is fantastic, he really is, and he made the film worth watching for me.

Otherwise, this is predictable stuff, involving love triangles, adultery, and of course the inevitable murder. Other than James, the characters aren't very nice which spoils things a bit, although it's hard to criticise THE HOUSE ACROSS THE LAKE too much as there's nothing intrinsically bad about it; it's just that so many pictures like this was made it threatens to get lost amid the rest.