"Beware! These are the eyes of a hypnotist!"
Clarinetist Stan has a nightmare about killing a man in a mirrored room. But when he wakes up and finds blood marks on himself and a key from the dream, he suspects that it may have truly happened.
Edward G. Robinson
Rene Bressard
Kevin McCarthy
Stan Grayson
Connie Russell
Gina
Virginia Christine
Sue Bressard
Rhys Williams
Deputy Torrence
Gage Clarke
Belknap / Harry Britten
Marian Carr
Madge Novick
Barry Atwater
Captain Warner
Meade 'Lux' Lewis
Meade
Clarinetist Stan has a nightmare about killing a man in a mirrored room. But when he wakes up and finds blood marks on himself and a key from the dream, he suspects that it may have truly happened.
Stan Grayson is in a Jazz Funk. Maxwell Shane remakes his own 1947 film Fear in the Night but with a better known cast and more money. Adapted from Cornell Woolrich's novel, story has Stan Grayson (Kevin McCarthy) as a New Orleans clarinetist who dreams he has committed a murder in a heavily mirrored room. Upon waking he finds clues that suggest he actually may have killed a man and frantically turns to his police detective brother-in-law, Rene Bressard (Edward G. Robinson), for help. But it doesn't look good for Stan... Fear in the Night is a good film, and so is this, but if you have seen the earlier version then this feels very much perfunctory. The opening titles are superb, as melted candle wax plays host to the roll call shown in moody dissolves. We jump into Grayson's dream, again this is very well constructed on noirish terms, and from there on in it's a competently crafted visual film noir picture with good tension and splendid jazzy interludes. However, nothing else makes it stand out, it just sort of exists as an exercise in late noir cycle film making, a pic that doesn't want to even try to push boundaries. The cast are dependable in performances, but nothing to really grab the attention, though Shane does work near wonders to cloak the characters in various levels of paranoia or suspicious machinations. New Orleans locales are a bonus, with cinematographer Joseph Biroc excelling at sweaty close-ups and the utilisation of shadows as foreboding presence's. It all resolves itself in a whirl of improbability, but as most film noir fans will tell you, that's actually OK. Yet this is still a film that's far from essential viewing for the like minded noir crowd. More so if you have happened to have seen the 1947 version first. 6/10
After a former model is drowned in her bathtub, Detective James Halloran and Lieutenant Dan Muldoon attempt to piece together her murder.
A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.
When actress Diana Baring is found in a daze beside her colleague’s murdered body, all evidence points to her guilt. During the trial, juror Sir John Menier doubts the verdict, but yields to pressure. Haunted by remorse, he launches his own investigation.
Two Los Angeles homicide detectives are dispatched to a northern town where the sun doesn't set to investigate the methodical murder of a local teen.
Jane Marple solves the mystery when a local woman is poisoned and a visiting movie star seems to have been the intended victim.
Frank Johnson, a sole witness to a gangland murder, goes into hiding and is trailed by Police Inspector Ferris, on the theory that Frank is trying to escape from possible retaliation. Frank's wife, Eleanor, suspects he is actually running away from their unsuccessful marriage. Aided by a newspaperman, Danny Leggett, Eleanor sets out to locate her husband. The killer is also looking for him, and keeps close tabs on Eleanor.
A woman recovering from a nervous breakdown tries to convince her husband and and the local London police that she has witnessed a murder in the abandoned house next door.
A law student's theory about the recent deaths of two Supreme Court justices embroils her in a far-reaching web of murder, corruption, and greed.
It took Peggy Heller a long time to recover from the trauma of a brutal physical assault, suffered in her youth. When she married Robert, he provided her with the love and reassurance she craved for and the two settled down in a pretty house in the grounds of the public school where Robert was a master. But the headmaster of the school is not what he seems and Peggy is convinced he means to harm her - is her fear a figment of her tortured imagination or are there forces at work that intend to manipulate her anxieties with fatal consequences?
Davey Gordon, a New York City boxer at the end of his career, falls for dancer Gloria Price. However, their budding relationship is interrupted by Gloria's violent boss, Vincent Rapallo, who has eyes for Gloria. The two decide to skip town, but before they can, Vincent and his thugs abduct Gloria, and Davey is forced to search for her among the most squalid corners of the city, with his enemy hiding in the shadows.