The Criterion Channel is hosting several horror films made before the Production Code was rigidly enforced starting in 1934 – calling it Pre-Code Horror.

Pre-Code films are fascinating in part because it sounds so tantalizing. Films made before the Code got away with a lot and they can be shocking to someone who watches a lot of films made under the scrutiny of the Code. But it isn’t like these films were employing hard-core nudity and extreme violence. They were still under the preview of the cultural morals of the time.

The Secret of the Blue Room is not particularly scandalous at all. The most worrisome moment in the entire film is when a young lady kisses her father and three suitors full on the mouth, but that seems more like an old-fashioned cultural moment than anything actually scandalous.

The woman, Irene von Helldorf (Gloria Stuart) is celebrating her twenty-first birthday with her father, Robert (Lionel Atwill), her suitor Thomas (William Janney), and two other dudes who’d like to get with her, Walter (Paul Lucas) and Frank (Onslow Stevens). For some reason, they celebrate the birthday at the stroke of midnight and then tell the story of the blue room.

It is a locked-up room inside the Helldorf’s mansion. Years ago three people on separate occasions died inside the room at exactly 1 in the AM. Men being men they all decide that they will each successively sleep in the room to prove their manliness to Irine and probably win her heart.

The first one disappears without a trace, the second is shot dead and Irene is attacked in the room one morning by a mysterious man. Somehow, through all of this, none of them think to do something logical like call the police. Or search the house for the strange man. Or systematically go through the room looking for secret entrances, or try to understand the mystery.

Eventually, they do report things to the police and an investigation of sorts does occur. None of it is particularly interesting, but it isn’t grown-worthy either. I find a lot of really old films have this effect on me. It is like watching a television series from my youth. I recognize that it’s not really all that good, but it is a pleasant enough way to spend an hour of your time (The Secret of the Blue Room clocks in at 66 minutes.)

It is a remake of a German film from 1932 and it was remade two additional times, once in 1938 and again in 1944. Which just goes to show that Hollywood was cannibalizing itself long before its current trend of only making films with existing IP.