Someone Behind The Door (1971)

A neurosurgeon (Anthony Perkins), living in England, has been aware for awhile that his wife (Jill Ireland) has a lover (Henri Garcin) in Paris. When a rapist and murderer (Charles Bronson) with a severe case of amnesia comes under his care, he concocts a plan to make Bronson think he's married to Ireland and convinces him to kill her lover. But the amnesiac is an unreliable walking time bomb. Will Perkins be able to execute his plan before the time bomb goes off? Directed by Nicolas Gessner (LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE), the film's premise is intriguing enough to overlook the preposterous, flimsy plot but there are so many loopholes in Perkins' murder plan that an intelligent man should have considered that one can't accept the ludicrousness of it all. Perkins (his screen persona forever linked to PSYCHO) is so creepy as the doctor that he seems crazier than Bronson who plays the amnesiac as a case of arrested development. Only Ireland as the wife seems recognizably human. The film's unusual open ended denouement might have had a stronger punch if the preceding hadn't been so inept. Still, I have to confess that I was hooked for most of the running time.