Blind Alley

When I wrote a review of the remake of Blind Alley that starred William Holden I had not yet seen this nor had investigated the Broadway play from where this film came from. I've come to some interesting conclusions as a result.

Chester Morris plays the killer role in Blind Alley which is a combination of The Petrified Forest and The Desperate Hours and the viewer will recognize parts of both those classics. Morris and his gang are on the run having just busted out of prison where they took the warden hostage and Morris kills him. He then takes refuge at the lakeside home of Ralph Bellamy and wife Rose Stradner who happen to be entertaining guests at the time.

Bellamy is a psychiatrist who teaches and after Morris coldbloodedly murders Stanley Brown one of his students he thinks the only way to save his and everyone else's lives is to get into his head. Bellamy is a cool customer doing this, especially with friends and family's lives at stake.

When Lee J. Cobb played the part of the psychiatrist in The Dark Past he was detached almost clinical in the way he probed at Holden. Bellamy is not looking at this as an experiment and now having seen both films I can say Bellamy's interpretation was superior.

Blind Alley originated as a play on Broadway by James Warwick with a 119 performance run in the 1935-36 season. Looking at that cast I saw that George Coulouris played the psychiatrist and this is one instance where we are so unfortunate that he did not do either movie version. Coulouris would really have been special in the part.

This film is a real sleeper from Columbia Pictures, don't miss it if ever broadcast again.

Based on a 1935 Broadway success, this film presents an early "psychological" approach to depicting a cold-blooded criminal, here played by Chester Morris, an excellent and very versatile actor, ably supported by a fine cast including Ann Dvorak and Ralph Bellamy. My wife, Yuyun Yuningsih Nollen, and I are currently writing the first-ever book on Chester Morris, which hopefully will correct any oversights that have been made about this performer and introduce a new generation of classic film fans to his extensive body of work, on film, television and radio. Morris also was a well-respected star on stage, following in the footsteps of his father, William Morris, and sharing the profession with his younger brother, Adrian, who unfortunately died far too soon.

Director Charles 'GILDA' Vidor's psychological crime drama has a few interesting touches as hard-boiled gangster Hal Wilson (Chester 'BOSTON BLACKIE' Morris) breaks out of jail, kills the warden and, together with his gang, hides out at psychology professor Dr. Shelby's (Ralph Bellamy) riverside home and holds him and his dinner party guests hostage whilst awaiting the boat to take them across the river to freedom. During a long dark night of the soul - and after Wilson has demonstrated his trigger-happy nature by murdering one of the male guests who stands up to him - Shelby manages to psychoanalyse the violent hoodlum and discovers what made him who he is. If this sounds somewhat familiar to crime movie buffs it's because it was remade nine years later as THE DARK PAST (with, respectively, William Holden and Lee J. Cobb in the principal roles of gangster and shrink) when the post-War trend for psychoanalysis may have lent it greater resonance. The culture clash elements in BLIND ALLEY would probably have resonated more with an audience of the day familiar with the narrative and thematic tropes of the earlier THE PETRIFIED FOREST but what makes this interesting today are some interesting stylistic touches like Wilson's recurring nightmare shown in reverse negative and his final recovered memory revealed in subjective I-camera point of view. Otherwise, the film never really betrays its origins as a stage play and often feels rather static and talky even with a running time of just over an hour. Still, it's interesting to see a couple of now almost forgotten 30s stars like Chester Morris and Ann 'SCARFACE' Dvorak as the hard-boiled gangster and his moll as well as a film attempting to do something different with the crime movie staples of the day even if it all inevitably seems a shade simplistic and formulaic in these more morally compromised times. However, it's an elusive title these days and is still recommended to fans of vintage crime movies who get the chance to see it.

Blind Alley (1939)

*** (out of 4)

Columbia thriller based on a 1935 Broadway play has Chester Morris playing a gangster who escapes from prison and eventually takes a psychiatrist (Ralph Bellamy) and his family and friends hostage. Soon the psychiatrist starts to work on the gangster to try and break him down so that everyone can make it out of the situation okay. This is an extremely well made and well acted "B" film that manages to be very entertaining from start to finish. What really sets this film apart from others like it are the performances by the two leads. Morris, due to his Boston Blackie films, has become one of my favorite actors and I think this is the best work I've seen from him. The character he plays is pretty much cold-hearted from start to finish and is just as dark as the character he played in Three Godfathers. There's no charm in this character and Morris really comes off as a very threatening figure. He also manages to be very convincing during the mental breakdown scenes when the doctor starts to work him over. Bellamy, another one of my favorite "B" actors, is also very good. His calm, cool and collective nature and that wonderful voice really pays off well here against Morris. Ann Dvorak from Scarface turns in fine support as the gangster's girlfriend. There are a couple very interesting aspects worth noting. One is an underlined child molestation that Morris suffered as a child. This isn't thrown out into the open but it isn't hinted at, which I'm surprised got by the Hayes Office. Another interesting segment is the dream sequence where we see a dream that is constantly haunting Morris. This was shot with a reverse negative and the look is very good and eerie. This film was later remade as The Dark Past.

I saw this movie when I was seven, 'way back in 1939. I had never seen anything like the dream sequence and the psychiatrist's explanation. They both were shot from the camera's viewpoint, something I wasn't to see again until Robert Montgomery's version of Raymond Chandler's "The Lady In The Lake. This stuck in my cerebellum since. The remake, "The Dark Past," with Wm. Holden wasn't quite as good, but then I was older and more sophisticated when I saw that one. And, anyone who says Chester Morris couldn't act obviously hasn't seen "The Big House," "Three Godfathers" (not the John Wayne one), or any of the Boston Blackie movies. P.S. Where are the Boston Blackie movies?