Nightmare

This is a splendid early wartime thriller, with the wonderful plot twist that a corpse with a knife in his back is found and disposed of, but then reappears the next day in the same place with another knife in his back. A Nazi spy code-named SI-10 turns out to be identical with the license plate of his Lagonda, in which a secret microphone/speaker is disguised as a dashboard cigarette lighter. This is the only film ever produced by Dwight Taylor, the well known screenwriter who also scripted this. The main appeal of this film however is the powerful presence of the intensely disturbed Diana Barrymore, who combines womanly charm and fascination with a violent streak so terrifying and uncontrollable that it has rarely been encountered so unequivocally on screen. So powerful is this unsettling violence in her nature, that her tragic life story and suicide all too amply confirm that it was not just acting. As an actress, she was a natural. What a pity that she was so self-destructively mixed up, since a major talent was lost to the screen. She could have been the greatest Barrymore of them all if she could have held herself together. Brian Donlevy does very well as the whimsical American who gets mixed up in this story because he has been 'bombed-out' in the London Blitz while dressed in his dinner jacket. There are no gag lines in this script. It is a dark and brooding work, made darker by the London Blackout of course. There are many highly tense moments, and this thriller really works.

Nightmare is one of those routine noir films with a wartime era plot from Universal that Alfred Hitchcock might have been able to put over. I saw elements of Saboteur, The 39 Steps and the later North By Northwest in the story.

What Nightmare does give us is a chance to look at Diana Barrymore in one of the few films she made. She certainly had the classical training that enabled her to cast as an Englishwoman who has just had her husband murdered. The husband is played by Henry Daniell and sadly he's on ever so briefly.

Daniell is working on discovering a 5th columnist in the wartime United Kingdom and he turns out to be in the family and titled. Brian Donlevy like any Hitchcockian hero sort of stumbles into the situation.

Nightmare is a good, but routine wartime espionage story. It's a no frills product from Universal which would not have afforded those added Hitchcock like touches to make it truly great.

Brian Donleavy is broke and at loose ends until his ship leaves for America, so he enters a private home to make himself some ham and eggs. The owner, Diana Barrymore, discovers him, and he's about to leave without a fuss, when she asks him to remove the body of her husband from his office. He's got a knife in his back. Donleavy disposes of it, but when he returns, Miss Barrymore high-hats him... until she asks him to remove the body, which is back where it had been. At this point, the police break in the front door, and the two flee the premises.

It's a great start to the movie from a story by Phillip MacDonald, but it soon turns into a retread of THE 39 STEPS, with a trip to Scottish mansion. Donleavy offers a solid performance as usual, but Miss Barrymore seems more confused and withdrawn than her role calls for... and that seems inconsistently written. She does photograph beautifully with George Barnes handling the cameras.

Brian Donlevy (Daniel) breaks into a stranger's house for a meal during a blackout. That stranger is Diana Barrymore (Leslie) and when she stumbles across him sitting down eating a meal in her kitchen, she asks if he is a burglar. His answer – "I might be". This guy is one cool customer. He has even taken his jacket off and hung it up. However, he is lured into a Nazi plot once he agrees to help Diana get rid of a body that she has upstairs. The film plays out as a Hitchcock-like spy thriller with a cast of familiar faces.

I enjoyed this film. It started off as a potentially spooky nightmare film and I had no idea where it was going, especially once Diana reveals her second discovery to Donlevy. Woah! The film keeps you watching as it keeps flowing and the lead actors are both likable. Donlevy provides the film with a funny ending. We all want to know what's in that bottle. Ha ha.

Back to the film's beginning. I had a friend who once walked into a stranger's house and helped himself to breakfast. When the resident girl came down to breakfast and got a surprise, she called her mother downstairs and they all introduced themselves. It was in the countryside and he'd got the wrong house. My friend then decided that he fancied the mum and started to peel potatoes for her with the ultimate aim of pinching her bottom. Donlevy has that same kind of cheek when it's meal-time. So, remember to hang your jacket up when you next sit down for a meal.

Brian Donleavy finds himself mixed up in a curious muddle of spy intrigue, as the corpse he initially agrees to help Diana Barrymore get rid of most unexpectedly returns next night to the same place with knife in his back and all, so they have to do away with it a second time, which proves more difficult, as this is an advanced spy intrigue still in the beginning of the second world war with Nazis all over the place working for Germany in Britain, particularly Scotland, as it appears later. It is not a bad film, although rather mediocre and superficial, but you must not miss the whisky war in the end. Diana Barrymore is beautful and makes the right impression as something enigmatical out of this world, while Brian Donleavy blunders on as usual with obligatory American rudeness. It's great entertainment but not much more, especially today, since the war and its initial perils are over since more than 75 years.