The Shadow on the Window

This film has the feel of a TV drama made into a B film. Saw it on cable recently as a curiosity since a young Jerry Matthews was in it. The drama, directed by William Asher, was a surprise.

The film is a police drama where a young mother, working as a free lance secretary for a farm owner, gets tangled in a break in that ends badly. Her young son, playing innocently outside watches the whole thing. What young Petey witnesses produce in his little mind a trauma that makes him run from the scene until he is found by two truckers going to market.

The movie was a product of the era in which takes place. Betty Garrett, as Linda, is perfect for the part. Also good was Phillip Carey, an actor that never had great opportunities in films. The scene stealer is Jerry Matthews, who played Beaver in the old series.

When the film begins, a group of punks are tormenting some people at a farmhouse. Soon, they kill the old man who lives there and the lady who is visiting (Betty Garrett) is being held captive...and all this is seen by her very young son (Jerry Mathers) who has been playing outside. Naturally, the boy is traumatized and he wanders off in a catatonic haze. Eventually he's found wandering along a highway and the kid is taken to the police. The boy is recognized-- -he's the son of one of the cops! The woman, apparently, is the cop's ex-wife. Can the police figure out where the woman and these sickos are in order to rescue her?

This is a tense and reasonably well made film. I particularly like the scene where the woman attempts an escape--it's surprisingly brutal. Well worth seeing and currently posted on YouTube.

I'd actually call this one a 5.5. Pete Atlas (Jerry Mathers) is playing in the yard of a house where his mother is working. He looks inside through a window and sees three young hoods fighting with the old man who lives there and sees them ultimately kill him in that fight which is part of a robbery in progress. The hoods don't know about or see the boy. Pete is traumatized by what he sees and starts wandering down the highway where he is picked up by two truckers who can see he is in shock, worry about him just walking down the middle of a busy highway, and take him to the local police department, and are then on their way.

It so happens that Pete's dad, Tony Atlas (Philip Carey) is a detective at that police department, and wonders what has happened to his son, who refuses to speak. Because Tony and his wife Linda have been separated for eight weeks, he knows that Linda has been working part time as a stenographer, but has no idea where. And the truckers that picked up the boy and could tell him the location are long gone.

Meanwhile, back at the house where the hoods robbed and killed the old man, they are pondering what to do with Linda, the witness they were not expecting to the murder they were not expecting. Jess (John Drew Barrymore) is the cold blooded one who outright says the only thing to do is kill her. The second mainly wants to save himself, and the third has a moral core and just does not want to kill but is afraid of Jess. So this is the very claustrophobic at times hard to watch part of the film where Jess is shocked! shocked I say! that Linda does not want to get romantic with somebody who sees her as a future murder victim.

Meanwhile, outside the house, the entire department - led by Pete's dad - is trying to figure out where Linda is. The police procedural part is a welcome diversion from what is going on in the house with the hoods. Barrymore sure looks the part of an amoral killer. In fact he played several of them. He just doesn't really have the acting chops for the job. Jerry Mathers doesn't get a chance to do much with this role, the same year he will leap to stardom in "Leave it to Beaver".

The standout here is Betty Garrett as the witness/hostage to the three hoods. Mainly known at that time as the comic relief in the MGM musicals of the late 40s and early 50s, she shows she can really hold her own in a drama as she tries to talk the hoods out of doing away with her, as she hopes time is on her side.

Home invasion movies were popular during this period (1950's), maybe as a way of injecting fear into audiences from comfortably expanding suburbs. Here three young hoods invade an old man's home, kill him, while traumatizing the young son with his mother who's there as a stenographer. Unbeknownst to the hoods is that mom's the wife of a cop sergeant, so when the speechless boy is found, a police hunt is launched, led by the agonized husband father. So what will the quarreling hoods do with hostage mom as the cops close in.

It's an interesting cast with Barrymore Jr. as the murderous hood, Corey Allen from Rebel Without a Cause (1955) as the conflicted gang member, and Jerry Mathers of Leave It To Beaver (1957- 63) as the unfortunate boy. Also, probably shouldn't overlook actress Garrett as the mom, whose budding musical career was stymied by the Hollywood blacklist.

All in all, the flick's a pretty good suspenser of the sort that would soon transfer to TV, maybe The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Barrymore makes a convincingly nasty hood, while Garrett bears up as the terrified mom, even as Mathers manages a frozen face as the traumatized boy. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised his performance helped get him the defining Beaver role. There're also some good action sequences like the chase over rooftops that help pick up the indoor menace scenes. Also, battling among the three hoods offers interesting personality clashes, especially the woman-protecting Joey. Is he really stupid or just quietly enigmatic. On the whole, however, the 76-minutes is nothing special, but should keep watchers entertained as the crime drama plays out in fairly suspenseful fashion.

"The Shadow on the Window" is a rather anonymous and insignificant 50s drama/thriller, but it's engaging enough for as long as it lasts, thanks to a few interesting story ideas and a decent cast. I'm sure that director William Asher envisioned making a fantastic hostage thriller with film-noir echoes, in the vein of "The Desperate Hours" that was released two years earlier, but he eventually had to settle for a modest B-movie without spectacular action footage or Humphrey Bogarts in the cast. Little 7-year-old Petey accompanies his mother to a large and remote farmhouse. It's her first working day as a secretary for a wealthy, elderly businessman, while Petey plays outside in the garden. Unfortunately enough, three ruthless young thugs decided that today they would invade the home of the old man and rob him. Just when little Petey looks through the window, he witnesses how the man is brutally killed by the assailants. Petey promptly goes into a severe state of shock, runs off into the streets and gets picked up by friendly truck drivers. While his mother is kept hostage by unprepared but extremely dangerous criminals, Petey is reunited with his father – and police detective – Tony Atlas but he remains in shock and unable to explain what is happening to her. It's definitely a good plot for a tense and forceful "race-against-the-clock" thriller, but the screenplay nevertheless suffers from a couple of defaults and clichés. I really don't understand, for example, why the hoodlums remain in the house or why one of them has to be a sensitive one. The leader of the pack, John Drew Barrymore, tries really hard to look handsome and nihilistic, and he probably dreamed of becoming the next James Dean. The little kid who portrayed Petey, on the other hand, became quite famous thanks to his role in the TV-series "Leave it to the Beaver".