Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

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

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

writers_reign Let's begin by getting the few squawks out of the way; for no discernible reason the story is set in New Orleans yet not one single person in the cast employs a Southern accent or indeed anything other than an Eastern accent of the kind we'd expect to find in Manhattan. New Orleans of course is celebrated as the cradle of jazz and protagonist Kevin McCarthy is indeed a muso BUT he plays clarinet in a large SWING orchestra - led, in fact, by the great Billy May who also has a speaking role and plays trumpet, as he did in real life. Nothing wrong with that, in fact in my case it's a bonus EXCEPT New Orleans is synonymous with Dixieland and a Swing outfit on Bourbon Street would be like Turnip Greens at the Four Seasons. Those cavils to one side we're left with a taut, nourish entry which holds the attention all the way.

Robert J. Maxwell It begins with Kevin McCarthy's nightmare. He murders a man with the help of a terrified woman, in a room full of mirrors, and then falls into a black hole before waking up in a sweat. It really doesn't look too promising. The print on YouTube is flat with high-key lighting, like "I Love Lucy." But at least McCarthy doesn't wake from his nightmare by shoving his face into the camera lens.Dreams are hard to describe in print and even on film because a fictional narrative has to impose some sort of logic on them. Here, McCarthy must step into a hole in order to fall into it. In real dreams, you just fall. There is no hole and no logic. Falling is statistically frequent in dreams. So are flying and being naked in public, but the most common dream is of being pursued. I'm especially fond of the ones where I'm being chased by some unseen ogre and find myself running in slow motion, as through a swamp of molasses. I speak to you as your psychologist. That will be ten cents.The literalness doesn't stop with the nightmare. McCarthy gets out of bed to find that he has bruises and blood from his dream fight. "All of a sudden the room started spinning" -- and the room spins and spins and resolves into the bell of a trumpet.McCarthy's semi hard-boiled narration carries us through an explanation of how he actually came to kill a stranger, which he did. There are a lot of interludes with Billy May and his band. McCarthy is his arranger and clarinetist. May was kept pretty busy on tours and in television during the big band era, in which he was associated with names like Les Brown and Ray Noble. Meade "Lux" Lewis shows up for a cameo, a pianist who more or less began boogie woogie. You can hear him on YouTube.I've seen the earlier version and wasn't especially impressed by it. I thought it might make a good Alfred Hitchcock hour. Except for its location shooting in New Orleans, this later version doesn't represent a vast improvement. It's not one of Kevin McCarthy's best performances. He's a weakling and a nervous wreck from beginning to end. I suppose, though, that he's as handsome as his sister was talented and sensual, the writer Mary McCarthy ("The Group", etc.). Mary had a way with words. Of Lillian Hellman, she noted that "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."

dougdoepke If you can get past the improbable key to the mystery, the rest of the movie has some good, strong points. The first twenty minutes plunge us into McCarthy's nightmarish events that may or may not have actually happened. We don't know for sure and neither does he, but there are the scratches on his arm. Did he kill those people or not. The surreal effects are impressively done.McCarthy delivers a gripping performance, as good as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (also 1956), and much better than expected for a B-movie. In short, he makes us believe that his dilemma, however improbable, is real and not just a story construct. Without that intensity drawing us in, the movie would, I think, amount to little more than a mildly interesting walk-through. The New Orleans locations provide a clever anchor to the real world, and a good setting for the colorful jazz scenes. However, a 63-year old Robinson is at least 10 years too old for the brother-in-law part even though he manages the cop role well. And can we really believe the chance occurrence onto the scene-of-the-crime mansion in all that unfamiliar backcountry. Unfortunately, the script requires more than just an ordinary suspension of disbelief. Too bad the script couldn't work in more bayou scenes. Those coming at the end are really creepy and nightmarish in their own right. Too bad also that the excellent McCarthy made so few films, preferring, I gather, stage productions instead. All in all, an interesting if regrettably flawed little movie.

sol ******SPOILERS****** Unbelievably heavy handed movie that telegraphs it's story to the audience so directly that you think it's a commercial for Western Union. Musician Stan Grayson, Kevin McCarthy, walks around most of the time in a zombie-like induced state and when he's conscious with his eyes bulging out of his head and looking like he's going into cardiac arrest at any moment that you want to run to the nearest phone and call 911 for help.Waking up one morning at his room at the Hotel New Orleans from a nightmare that he had about him being a hall of mirrors and getting into a fight where he kills someone in self-defense Stan then opens a door and falls into a dark and bottomless pit. Stan looks in the mirror and sees marks on his throat and blood on his arm as well as having both a key and a button from the man's suit that was in his dream. The movie tries to be both hip and cool when it comes to Stan's mental state and how it was manipulated by the killer Dr. Belknap/Harry Britten, Gage Clarke, in a pseudo/psychological manner that was very common in films about mental issues back in the 1940's and 50's but seeing it now it comes across as both silly and amateurish. The movie also tries to make a big deal about the killer being a doctor who is an expert in psychological studies just by judging from the books that he has in his private library, but at the same time make him physically violent. He runs over his wife with a car and shoots it out with the police in order to kill him off at the end of the movie.Edward G.Robinson, Det. Rene Bressard, is very good in the movie as Stan's brother in-law and New Orleans police detective. Rene at first suspects Stan of the murders but then, like a good detective should, when he sees where the evidence leads him realizes that there is more to the murders then what he at first thought. Kevin McCarthy seems to overact in the movie, or better yet was over-directed, by passing out about a half dozen times and coming across as being brain-dead even when he wasn't under hypnosis. The movie tells the audience that you can't do anything under hypnosis that you won't do when your conscious like murder at the same time we see Stan being told to drown himself in the swamp by Dr. Belknap and then willingly do it. Granted Stan tried to kill himself earlier in the film by jumping from the fifteen floor of the Hotel New Orleans but that was when he thought that he was a murderer. By the time he was told to drown himself he already knew that he didn't commit any murders so there was no conscious or subconscious reasons for him to do it. Stan was eventually saved from drowning by his brother in-law Rene. Virginia Christine, Sue Bressard, was very good as Stan's sister and Rene's pregnant wife who developed a hearty appetite because of the condition that she was in and Gage Clarke, Dr. Belknap/ Harry Britten, was effective as the highly educated murderer. Connie Russell, Gina, as Stan's love interest had really nothing to do in the movie but stand around and look pretty, she did sing two songs. The movie "Nightmare" can be forgiven for it's heavy handedness since it was the norm in movies about psychiatric issues back in those days, 1955, but at the same time can't be taken seriously by anyone watching it now in 2004.