SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

jcappy There's been a slew of bad cops in film noir, but none quite like Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) in "The Prowler." He's the cop no woman ever wants to call when she needs help. You might say he's a prowler cop, or better still a glorified stalker.But alone at midnight in her big hacienda, and frightened by a possible peeping tom, it's Susan Gilvray's (Evelyn Keyes) fate to call for the police. This is Garwood's Entry. Cocky, smug, indifferent, intimidating, womanizing, his looming presence and prowess accentuated in the dead-of-night shadows by his tight-fitting black uniform, he comes on more like a sneaky Nazi than a law enforcer.It's obvious that Garwood is not Frank Chambers (John Garfield) in "The Postman Always Rings Twice," whose single motive, despite the plot twists in the end, is to win over the beautiful wife of a much older, doddering, roadside burger joint owner. No Garwood here almost instantly sizes up the whole situation in a few minutes. His master plan is for the possession of a wife, the defeat of her rich, radio celeb husband, who he immediately names a wimp to his rescuing knight, and to seize from him the means of financing his dream Las Vegas motor court.And unlike Frank Chambers, too, he gets no help at all from the young attractive wife. Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) here is the precise opposite of Lana Turner's femme fatale in "Postman." She is genuine inside and out and incapable of plotting her way out of her marriage. To boot, she is most powerfully herself whenever she sees through and stands strong against Garwood's wiles, intents, and lies. In fact, mostly her relationship with him is underwritten by varying degrees of resistance. If she's a pushover, a dupe, or ingratiating at times, it's either because her character mode has been switched over to plot mode., or because she's up against a man who is well-practiced in the arts of romantic deception, and masculine manipulation.Garwood is not only in stark contrast to Susan, but to his police partner, Bud Crocker (John Maxwell), his wife Grace, Susan's in-laws, and almost all the characters he encounters. They're generous-spirited and almost saintly by comparison. But, ironically, it is he who lives in the Hotel Angela. Here he has a large muscle-builder poster on his wall (he drinks milk rather than booze), and a dominant black shooting target with a bullet-riveted torso from his champion sharp-shooter days. In this room, he lazes about in self-absorption, toys with his plots, as he does with things like shavers and phone receivers—and Susan herself, whose defeats he celebrates by tossing spitballs into the light globe above his bed, reminiscent of his heroic basketball days.In short, he's a snark despite his expansive front. He peeps in Susan's windows, he repeatedly alarms her with his police search lights, and he pops into her life on the merest whim. She is nothing more to him than a conquest and a medium to defeat her prestigious husband. The murder he accomplishes and the one he attempts are both too vile for words. And when Susan utterly exposes him, this self-pitying bore can only answer: "I'm no worse than anyone else." In the end, unlike Frank Chamber's (Garfield) "dust you are" lover's death in the presence of a forgiving priest, Garwood gets buried ignominiously in dust. Susan, unlike Cora Smith (Turner), who dies along with her unborn baby, in a car accident, emerges from a traumatic childbirth with a new baby girl companion, the baby that Garwood assumed would be his son. Ha!

seymourblack-1 In "The Prowler", an adulterous affair born out of greed and betrayal leads inexorably to murder as a manipulative man pursues the wealth and status that he believes have only been denied to him in the past because of "lousy breaks". His cynicism is perfectly exemplified when he says, "so I'm no good, but I'm no worse than anyone else", and his ambition to own his own motel in Las Vegas is attractive because it offers him the chance to be able to earn money even when he's sleeping. This sordid tale contains numerous elements that are immediately recognisable as being similar to "Double Indemnity", "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and a number of home invasion movies but it's also brilliantly directed, extremely tense and full of interesting twists.After a woman who lives in an affluent neighbourhood of Los Angeles reports the presence of a prowler on her property, a couple of cops call by to investigate. When the older, more experienced Bud Crocker (John Maxwell) interviews Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes), his partner, Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) checks around for any obvious evidence that might help to identify the intruder. Although no evidence is found, Susan seems reassured by the officers' prompt response and the advice that she's been given about how to avoid attracting peeping toms in future and the police officers leave. Shortly after, Webb returns, ostensibly to make a follow-up call and this proves to be the first of a series of nightly calls that he makes to Susan's house.It transpires that Susan is a lonely, bored housewife who spends her evenings alone because her husband is a night-time radio D.J. She doesn't particularly like Webb at first but after they discover that they both came to California from Indiana and she remembers seeing him during his time as an accomplished basketball player, she warms to him and they embark on an affair.Webb had been attracted to Susan because of her looks and her obvious wealth but one evening after seeing her significantly older husband's will, he becomes aware that she'll be the recipient of an enormous inheritance after his passing and so concocts a plan to kill John Gilvray (Sherry Hall). His plan works perfectly but Susan is immediately horrified because she believes that he's murdered her husband.In the coroner's inquest that follows, Webb's account of the circumstances under which he killed his victim are believed by the jury and Susan also feels compelled to lie in support of his evidence because to do otherwise could expose the fact that they were having an affair and she might be suspected of being an accomplice. A verdict of accidental homicide follows and so does Webb's next plan to convince Susan that he's genuinely innocent of the crime.A short time later, after Webb has brought Susan around to the belief that he's innocent and he's finally left the job that he despises, the couple get married and buy a motel in Las Vegas but just at the point where he thinks that all his scheming has finally paid off, Susan tells him that she's four months pregnant and the implications of this information becoming widely known sends them into hiding in a desert ghost town before a series of further twists follow.One of the creepiest features of "The Prowler" is the way in which John Gilvray's voice always seems to be present during the couple's affair and is even heard after his death when they're hiding out in the desert. His regular way of signing off his broadcasts with the words "I'll be seeing you, Susan" is similarly disturbing and makes her betrayal seem even worse. The insinuation of voyeurism that Joseph Losey's direction emphasises at the very beginning of the movie and the way in which Webb is then shown framed by the bathroom window a little later, are both wonderfully executed and inherently sleazy.Webb and Susan were both dissatisfied with their lives and were desperate for something better but their union didn't ultimately achieve what they'd hoped it would. Van Heflin is totally believable as Webb and Evelyn Keyes does a great job in giving out the mixed signals that are symptomatic of someone who's in constant turmoil because her desires and her sense of guilt are constantly in conflict with each other.

bob the moo Lonely housewife Susan Gilvray calls the police when she thinks she sees a prowler outside her bathroom window late one night; her husband works as a late night radio presenter and thus she is alone. The police check it out and can do very little but one of them, Webb Garwood, returns later that night to "check in on her". Finding common ground with her, they share a few more evenings of "checking in" as a relationship grows between them. Eventually the pressure builds on Susan to divorce her husband but this poses all sorts of problems and Webb starts planning alternatives.I watched this film without knowing much about it beyond the title; so when the main characters are introduced I really didn't even know if they were the main characters or not, or where the film was going with them. Part of the reason I felt like this was that I didn't think the characters worked and I couldn't get into the relationship between them. From the very start Webb is really creepily overly familiar and pushy and he is this way to the point that I didn't believe that Susan would let him stay in the house. This continued across the whole first half of the film and I never really believed it. Webb occasionally is friendly and normal but as a character he really doesn't have the charisma to sell this intrusion and rapid affair. The character of Susan sort of helps because she is timid, lonely and slightly nervous – so as a dynamic maybe this is why such a pushy guy would make inroads as he does.The plot gradual turns to darker twists but even at this point I didn't buy it. The actions and motivations of the characters felt like things that were written rather than things that these characters would really do – in particular some of the bigger plot points felt like a matter of moving the story along. The second half is a bit better because events drive the narrative and as such these engage more easily, but it was a shame that the first half was weak because this is the core of the film. The two-hander with Heflin and Keyes should have been as thrilling as the later events but the writing of the characters don't give them the material to work with and neither really nail the relationship dynamics between their characters.This is the problem with the film and it is one that it never escapes. The central relationship never feels convincing and because this is where all the events stem from, they are built on weak foundations. The events of the second half provide some interest and pace but generally it is not a great film thanks to it not getting the basics right from the start.

Neil Doyle The most unsettling thing about THE PROWLER is the way Van Heflin inhabits the role of a corrupt police officer who worms his way into the life of an innocent woman (Evelyn Keyes), a bored housewife trapped in a loveless marriage with a jealous older man.From the very first scene, we know that Heflin is going to set a trap for this woman and that eventually she'll succumb to his dubious charm merely to break the cycle of loneliness she's used to. The plot sustains interest up until the cliffhanger of an ending in which all hell breaks loose.But along the way, there are several glaring faults in the script. Keyes falls in love much too quickly, needing him at her side so desperately that he concocts an accidental shooting to get rid of her hubby. And from then on, her motivations for lying at the inquest are shaky, to say the least. Credibility begins to slip as we lurch toward a very effective ending which won't be revealed here.In the meantime, the performances are professional, with John Maxwell excellent as a loyal friend and Wheaton Chambers fine as a reluctant doctor. Joseph Losey gets all the suspense he can out of the script, but in the end the bleak low-key photography and sparse sets gives it the feel of a hurried programmer rather than an A-film.