Night Editor

Catch that big crashing wave as spider woman Jill (Carter) reaches her own kind of climax. There's nothing like viewing a mangled dead body to get some spider women off, and Jill's some kind of cold-hearted 40's temptress. Too bad cop Cochrane (Gargan) doesn't run for the hills or maybe even his loving wife after viewing this little perverse episode. Instead, he covers up the murder he and Jill just eye-balled. After all, neither wives nor city fathers reward philandering husbands. So how is Cochrane going to clear his conscience once an innocent man is about to get fried for a murder the two illicit lovers know he didn't commit.

My guess is Night Editor was hoping to repeat the success of the noirish Whistler series, also adapted from radio. It didn't happen, but not because of a failure in this 60-minutes. Sure, it wraps up in conventional fashion, even if imaginatively done. After all, there was a stultifying Production Code in effect. Still, the other 55-minutes amounts to a nail-biting trip down black shadow lane. Actor Gargan may not show much emotion as the conflicted cop. But then he's got to keep his real feelings inside. Otherwise he might give it all away, which includes not just his job but wife and family, as well. So, how did he get mixed up with the blonde man-eater in the first place. Apparently it was from working on a prior case that involved Jill and her ritzy clueless husband. It appears she sets a mean trap for about every guy crossing her predatory path, including bank presidents.

No doubt about it, Jill's on the very edge of 40's perversity. Carter really looks the part of blonde ice-queen, even if nuance is not her strong point. I was hoping for some big-eye close-ups that made her similar role in Framed (1947) so memorable, but director Levin's camera stays mainly at a neutral distance. On the whole, it's the script and dark material that carry events.

Anyway, this early noir is a neglected must-see. I'm not going to say gem, since it doesn't quite rise to that level. Still, for sheer 1940's daring, Harold Smith's crafty little screenplay remains an eye-opener.

The nifty little B Noir is part of the Bad Girls of Film Noir series. The picture is really worth seeing just to see Janis Carter in action. Her frenetic desire to see the body after this guy had just bludgeoned this girl to death was a scene to remember. But she was really the ice lady that giveth and Janis Carter just kept on giving with her icy grip on the the cop and her ability to out maneuver just about everyone.

I had never seen Janis Carter in a B Noir movie but if this is what she is capable of then some of her others might be worth looking for. The words just one more kiss really take on true meaning with Janis Carter. But watch out for that ice pick.

William Gargan and Janis Carter star in "Night Editor," a 1946 B noir.

On a newspaper night shift, the people in the newsroom are told the story of Tony Cochrane, a police officer. This was the first in a planned series of night editor stories, which never happened.

Tony was a married man cheating on his wife (Jeff Donnell) with a married socialite, Jill Merrill (Janis Carter). One night, they're parking down by the beach, and they see a man beat a woman and run away. They both see his face clearly. Tony could have apprehended the man, and perhaps even stopped the murder (though it seemed to have happened very quickly) but he was afraid of being found out and losing his wife, son, and his job.

When the murder is reported, Tony has to investigate, not letting on that he was a witness. By now he's broken things off with Jill. He's surprised to see her name on a list of the dead woman's friends. He confronts her, because he suspects she recognized the man, but she won't tell him the man's identity. Things go from bad to worse.

This was pretty good and effective, with a nice ending. Gargan by then wasn't anyone's idea of a leading man, but was a good playing a cop. Gargan had a laryngectomy in 1960, after which he devoted his time to the American Cancer Society and used a voice box.

Janis Carter is a glamorous femme fatale here and plays a woman devoid of any conscience or compassion. In fact, when she learns the dead woman's face had been bashed in, she wants to see it. The idea is, she's married to an older rich man and likes slumming.

I wasn't expecting much from this two-noir disc from Netflix, but I would up liking both of them.

Night Editor was the proposed "pilot" for a series of B-movie programmers introduced by a bunch of graveyard-shift reporters working the police beat. The series came to naught, but this maiden effort bears watching. William Gargan is a basically decent married detective on the force who has been getting a little action on the side with rich dame Janis Carter, a haut-40s glamourpuss in the Claire Trevor/Helen Walker/Audrey Totter mold whose few performances leave us wondering why her career wasn't a lot bigger. Parked in a lover's lane one night, they witness a man bludgeoning his girlfriend to death with a tire iron. In the movie's most notorious scene, Carter reaches a pitch of erotic frenzy from this random act of sadistic voyeurism. Gargan then has to investigate the crime while keeping mum about the fact that he saw it happen. Of course it turns out that the murderer was not a stranger, but a well-to-do banker friend of Carter's.... Night Editor is a splendid example of why, in the early postwar years, audiences took to these dimly lit, zero-budget, quick-and-dirty crime dramas: They were unapologetically sleazy, they had no time for the sentimental gloss that Hollywood had confected, and they were shocking fun.

This is a superb film noir B picture. It stars William Gargan as a cop, and the sizzling dish Janis Carter as the femme fatale. And what a femme and how fatale! She is really something. What a pity she did not achieve the status in films which she clearly deserved. Here she plays a hyper-glamorous psychotic man-eater. Poor, bumbling homicide detective Gargan is no match for her. He succumbs, and succumbs, and succumbs. Well, one evening things get complicated. One has to remember that he is happily married to sweetie Martha, played with big loving eyes and a warm smile by 'Jeff' Donnell (she was born Jean Marie but was always called by the nickname of Jeff; see her also as Sylvia Nicolai in IN A LONELY PLACE, 1950), and adores his son. But there he is sitting in a car in a lover's retreat off the road, with Miss Glamour-puss, doing his usual succumbing, when another car pulls up and does not see them. The man proceeds to bash in the skull of the girl and then runs off, but not before they see his face very clearly in the headlights. It later transpires that Janis knows the man very well, but she says nothing at the time. Gargan starts to give chase but then realizes that he dare not do so because his involvement with Janis will come to light and his wife might leave him. So he endures an enforced silence and is then a member of the homicide team which investigates that very crime. A wrong man is accused and is about to 'get the chair'. Tension mounts. Should he do the right thing and stop the execution, at the risk of his career and his marriage? He wants to, but Janis is going crazier and crazier. She is so nuts that she makes statements like: 'I don't know why I do these things' as she tries to stab a man to death. Just the kind of girlfriend one wants! She is a rich socialite and highly sophisticated, thus intimidating the humble Gargan further. As he bitterly says to her at one point: 'You and I both add up to zero.' Every time he tries to leave her, she kisses him, which all goes to show just how dangerous kissing can be. After they have seen the murder, Janis gets a wild look in her eye and, in the midst of a seizure of psychotic excitement, says she wants to go and look at the girl's bashed-in skull and all the brains spattered all over the car because it excites her, and Gargan restrains her only with great difficulty. Janis really is very convincing in all of these scenes, and it is all pretty hair-raising. And so the story progresses. I must not reveal the ending. The next year, Janis went on to scare people further in FRAMED (1947).