FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Bill Slocum I was really impressed by the first five minutes of "Fear In The Night." Then the rest of the film happened. My short take: Mood alone is never enough.Film lovers enjoy debating whether an old movie qualifies as "film noir." No need here. From the murky circumstances to a sleepwalking main character to constant dream sequences cutting in abruptly, this is noir, alright. It even has keywords "fear" and "night" in the title.But man does this film draaaaag.Vince Greyson (DeForest Kelley) is a bank teller who wakes up to the gradual realization that he just killed someone. Who and where, he doesn't know. But he does know he has marks on his neck, blood on his wrist, and a strange key in his pocket that weren't there before. Enlisting the help of police detective Cliff Herlihy (Paul Kelly) who happens to be his brother in law, Greyson discovers what it is to have "an honest man's conscience... in a murderer's body."A great premise, yes, from a short story by Cornell Woolrich (billed as "William Irish" in the credits), and with some smashing effects work. But the story wastes too much of its short running time on conversations between Greyson and Herlihy about whether he imagined it. An intrusive narration by Greyson explains what we are seeing on screen, as if director Maxwell Shane had no confidence visuals alone would do the trick. I suspect this was done in editing after the producers realized how hard the film would be to follow otherwise.Of the leads, DeForest Kelley gives an uneven performance. At times he is effective in portraying real fear and guilt; other times he overacts badly. Much of the time he sleepwalks, because that's what the script calls for. Did they want a Kafkaesque anti-hero or more of a conventional everyman rising to a challenge? He suffers from a lack of clear direction.Paul Kelly is much better, a studio pro who radiates some needed strength and reason. But he is saddled with some dumb moments, too. Like why does he get the bright idea of sending his shaky brother- in-law into a dangerous situation without police backup?When Greyson tells his story, Herlihy's first response is to wave it off: "You've just been stretching your nerves thin, kid." Then, after Greyson takes him to the house where it happened, Herlihy transforms into Dirty Harry, slapping the poor kid around and calling him "lower than the lowest rat we ever brought in for knifing someone in an alley." I give Kelly credit for making his about-face play at all, but it leaves a weird aftertaste.I don't hate this movie; the visual dynamics are strong throughout. Shane's track record was pedestrian, but that opening suggests real vision at the helm. How did they get all those mirrored-room shots without exposing the camera? We watch Greyson stumble around, looking submerged as he fights with a man who seems as asleep as he. Then the scene breaks up, and there's this fantastic swirl of light and fog that literally leaves him dumped on his bed.After that, though, you feel Shane struggle to match the surrealism of those opening moments. Occasionally, he succeeds, like in a harrowing episode where Greyson finds himself on a ledge, fighting Herlihy to throw himself over. More often, the results are just silly, like Greyson fainting at the sight of nail polish on his wrist.The conclusion is especially rushed and unsatisfying, featuring the most unbelievably powerful mesmerist since Dr. Caligari hung up his shingle. Everything is tidily resolved, including Greyson's ridiculously one-sided relationship with a long-suffering girlfriend.Good film noir plays with convention, but not by discarding such things as logic and convincing motives. "Fear In The Night" does, making it a noir film only a die-hard noir lover could love.

bkoganbing If you've seen the remake of this film under its original story title Nightmare than you pretty well know what this story is. In fact the only difference I could tell is that in Fear In The Night protagonist DeForest Kelley is a bank teller whereas Kevin McCarthy in the remake is a jazz musician. The remake was shot in New Orleans while this one has the old standby Los Angeles as the scene of activity.In any event DeForest Kelley is bothered by a persistent and nagging nightmare that he killed somebody. Only no murders have been reported in the metropolitan area. But on a Sunday drive with his brother-in-law Paul Kelly and sister Ann Doran, Kelley leads them to a house and shows enough to his brother-in-law to know that something happened. You see Paul Kelly is a homicide detective.At some point and I can't lest I spoil one of the best scenes of the film Paul Kelly starts believing his brother-in-law. The man responsible is Robert Emmett Keane though how he is responsible I can't say again lest I give the whole film away. It was quite an interesting scheme Keane had to rope an innocent in to do his dirty work.My criticism of Fear In The Night is the same I had of Nightmare. Some good performances and a nice suspenseful story. But it was also done on the cheap even for a noir film.Fans of the noir genre will love it though.

merrywater This is a sadly forgotten, but fantastic film noir gem released in 1947, and based on a story by the renowned author Cornell Woolrich . The opening is an amazing and surrealistic dream sequence up along with, say, Polanski's dream sequence in Rosemary's Baby. Straightforward plot, good though perhaps not great actors, and decent directing. It was a low budget production which is apparent, albeit not a nuisance.A remake was made by the same director nine years later. The original had a tenser atmosphere which corresponded well to the surrealistic formula. On the other hand, the remake had Edward G. Robinson starring in a supporting role.An unnecessary detail in the remake was a musical ingredient that was extended to the protagonist being a musician. The upbeat jazz music, absent in the original, actually interfered with the tense atmosphere. However, this was the style in the mid-fifties cf Hitchcock's remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (also released in 1956) that featured one of this year's greatest hits, Que sera sera. Contrary to Hitchcock's successful remaking, Fear in the Night surely didn't need one, and the remake - Nightmare - isn't more of a classic today than its original version.

Robert J. Maxwell Spoilers.DeForrest Kelley narrates the opening and, intermittently, much of the rest of the story. He begins with something like, "A glowing face seemed to come towards me out of the darkness." On the screen, we see a glowing face seem to come towards us out of the darkness. A bit later the narrator tells us, "The room began spinning." On the screen, the room begins spinning. I guess the director, Maxwell Shane, must have given up at about the point at which the narrator tells us, "My heart was beating like a jackhammer." There isn't an abundance of imagination on display in this rather interesting story of an innocent nobody who is hypnotized into taking part in a burglary during which he's forced to kill a man. He wakes up the next morning believing it to have been a nightmare, except that there are some strange objects in his pockets and a smear of blood on his wrist. He explains his unease to his brother-in-law who is an officer in the homicide department. That would be Paul Kelly. Kelly dismisses it irritably and tells Kelley to pull himself together. But Kelley is unable to do that and fills the rest of the film with the pungent odor of sweaty fear. This was his film debut and he's neither good nor bad, just another actor with ordinary talent. You could probably find someone at about his level in any play, maybe "Our Town," produced at a community college in some sleepy town somewhere in Arkansas.The story is from Cornell Woolrich, a strange guy -- homosexual, boozer, recluse, and amputee. He wrote a lot of pulp stuff that was adapted into radio plays and films -- "Rear Window," "The Bride Wore Black." Well, it's a living, or at least it was when people still read books. He may have been the equal of James M. Cain when it came to prose style, in the sense that neither had any. Reading either of them will remind you of reading a newspaper. Raymond Chandler at least tried for some insane poetry, no matter how idiosyncratic it was. You know Chandler's oft-parodied line: "Her hair was the color of gold in old paintings"? You won't find anything resembling that in Cornell Woolrich or in this adaptation.The budget must have been very low. Aside from Paul Kelly, there are only one or two recognizable faces, such as Charles Victor's and Ann Doran's. There is little outdoor shooting. The sets are mostly skimpy. But the director sometimes goes ape over on-screen effects. The ancient iris is replaced by an expanding star, for instance. And the nightmare sequences -- wow. By the way, this guy's nightmares make a lot more sense than mine do. No glowing faces seem to come towards me out of the darkness. Aside from the sex elements, which I don't mind as long as they don't involve those funny animals, they often seem to involve my running away from some horrifying manticore or something, intent on eating me alive, while I try to flail my way through a vast swamp of molasses. I'm told that dreams of appearing naked in public are common but I've never been bothered by them, and as far as this movie goes, I'd prefer seeing DeForrest Kelley stabbing someone with an awl to watching him run through Port Authority with no clothes on. In fact, that's a pretty disgusting image.The musical score is perfunctory and the direction is functional, no more than that, with one or two exceptions. Here's one of them. Kelley calls in sick and his teller's window at the bank is filled by the young lady who loves him. The director shows her replacing his name plate with hers at the window and for a moment she holds the two names side by side and smiles down at them. It's a small moment but someone had to think of it. More like it would have helped.The element of hypnosis is not new but still fascinating because, even now, no one knows exactly what's going on in the hypnotic state. I studied the subject in graduate school and I've used it as an adjunct to therapy and it works fine in certain limited contexts. But it remains a mystery. Surgery has been performed using no anesthetic other than hypnosis. What we see of hypnosis on the screen is possible, but barely.