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Policeman's daughter, out on Lovers' Loop late one night with her secret boyfriend, is kidnapped by a somewhat simple-minded behemoth with a mommy-complex. Curiously old-fashioned and corny bit of police business masquerading as a gritty noir (and advertised as a juvenile delinquent flick: "18...A nice girl...How did she fall so far?"). As the lonely, tormented abductor, Raymond Burr actually manages a thoughtful performance, however this case is wrapped up so quickly (with the movie clocking in at a scant 75 minutes) that neither Burr nor victim Natalie Wood has a chance at carving out a three-dimensional character. Wood, who faints from a slap across the face, is made to be the stereotypical weak female, while over-protective father Edmond O'Brien and police captain Brian Donlevy overact mercilessly. Poor screenplay, by David Dortort--adapting a book by Whit Masterson, the uncredited "All Through the Night"--doesn't seem to know much about police procedures or personalities, and the sequences set at the station are hopelessly mediocre (what with an eyeball-rolling desk sergeant and a hilariously overeager police psychiatrist). Though distributed by Warner Bros., this doesn't have the solid production values usually associated with the studio; it feels cheap and under-populated, like an early episode of "Dragnet", with only Burr's forceful work and a decent climax putting it above typical television fare. ** from ****

Seeing Raymond Burr as a quirky psychotic takes some getting used to after years as ultra- respectable Perry Mason. Still, he does well in the role, his bulky frame and sad eyes perfect for an overgrown mama's boy. Since Harold (Burr) can't have a normal romantic relationship, he hides in a lover's lane to watch others. Except one night, he panics and kidnaps young Elizabeth (Wood). Now the cops (Donlevy and O'Brien) need to find them before he panics some more.

Actually, the film is about that favorite teen topic of the mid-1950's—bad parenting, e.g. Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Note how loony Harold's problems are blamed on an overbearing mom (Veazie). At the same time, Elizabeth's ducking around lover's lanes is blamed on an over-protective dad (O'Brien), while spinster sister Madge (Lawrence) stands as an older version of what Liz will become thanks to Dad. Both parents' fears appear based on keeping offspring away from the opposite sex, another hot topic of the time. Note too how the script makes clear from the beginning how Liz and her beau Owen (Anderson) are headed for marriage, which makes their petting acceptable to the mores of the time.

The movie itself is an okay suspenser, more like a TV play than a feature film. Still, it's a first- rate cast, including those two old pro's Donlevy and O'Brien, while director Tuttle keeps things moving. Had the movie been made a few years earlier, I suspect its noirish overtones would have replaced teen angst with full-fledged noir.

"A Cry in the Night" starts fast: an idealized fifties couple parked in a convertible at the local Inspiration Point, a conked boyfriend, a kidnapped teenage girl (inevitably, the police captain's daughter). From there it fans out into a number of ideas, most of which wander into the dark and disappear, none of which are delivered with any particular inspiration.

We get the question of personal responsibility and "getting involved" when no one else on the scene responds to Natalie Wood's cries for help- from which the title derives- with anything more than mockery. We get the question of how a monster is made when we meet Raymond Burr's horrific and self-absorbed mother. We get the idea of Natalie Wood, victim, fighting to survive by forging a personal connection with her captor. We get the idea that her home life was another form of captivity. Nonetheless, all we really get is a police chase, and it's a pretty mundane one.

From Raymond Burr, we get an interpretation of an unstable but very human mentally-challenged person that builds in places on Lon Chaney Jr.'s performance in "Of Mice and Men", but is still just an unconvincing sketch. From nearly every one else, we get a lot of scenery-nibbling where chewing is called for: Edmond O'Brien, as the missing girl's father, takes his anger level to about a seven and is always willing to stop and quibble about minor distractions. Natalie Wood does a fine job, but knowing what she had been through personally by this time in her young life makes her character's situation more than a bit painful.

Perhaps fortunately, sexual tension is greatly minimized by the era of the film: it's there, eventually, but a much more overt rape threat might truly have demonized Burr's character and thus done a disservice to people who were already marginalized in society.

Unsurprisingly, the subplot in which the Taggart family problems are brought to light by the ordeal at hand is absurdly simplistic and about as subtle and deft as a sledgehammer.

It all moves briskly enough, and Burr's creepy lair is a plus, along with the exciting situation, but there's a much better film in this material. To see a fairly similar story in far more skilled hands (only a year earlier), check out William Wyler's "The Desperate Hours".

When Raymond Burr's face (grotesquely lighted by John F. Seitz) looms out of the shrubbery at Lovers' Loop, he adds A Cry in the Night to his long string of films in which he cemented his reputation as the noir cycle's most indispensable and unforgettable creep. He's prowling the petting grounds looking for a girl, and doesn't care how he gets her. Assaulting the male half (Richard Anderson) of a necking couple, he kidnaps the other (Natalie Wood), spiriting her off to a den he's fixed up in an abandoned brickyard. This time, though, there's a catch to Burr's villainy: He's a dim-witted hulk, a childish monster akin to Lennie in Of Mice And Men.

The police mistake the dazed Anderson for a drunk and lock him up. Only when a doctor suspects concussion does his story emerge, leading captain Brian Donleavy to mobilize a dragnet for Wood and her abductor. As it happens, Wood's father (Edmond O'Brien) is one of their own, a hot-headed, rigid cop out for blood - he throws a punch at the already reeling Anderson. Meanwhile Burr plies Wood with apricot pie and sequined gowns, as she desperately tries to flee. A break in the case comes when Burr's mother calls in to report her 32-year-old son missing....

Along with Burr, A Cry in the Night unites stalwarts of the cycle Donleavy and O'Brien; even the familiar voice in the opening narration belongs to Alan Ladd, who appeared in this director Frank Tuttle's This Gun For Hire 14 years earlier. The movie stays a pretty standard police procedural, albeit with a few intriguing touches. It offers as subtexts some period glimpses into dysfunctional parenting. His spinster sister, another victim of his vigilance against beaux come a-couring, accuses the overprotective O'Brien of driving Wood to Lovers' Loop and hence to peril.

Even less wholesome is Carol Veazie as Burr's doting, sweet-toothed mother. Managing simultaneously to suggest Dame Judith Anderson, Jean Stapleton and Doris Roberts, she shuffles around drinking coffee in her horse-blanket bathrobe, whining about that missing slice of apricot pie. Nineteen-fifty-six, some may recall, was the high-water mark of a national panic about `Momism,' a threat deemed scarcely less perilous to the republic than the international Communist conspiracy; Veazie endures as one of its most formidable operatives (her successors would include the unseen Mrs. Bates in Psycho, Angela Lansbury's Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate, and Marjorie Bennet's Dehlia Flagg in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?).

Early in the movie, before the tight walls of his world come tumbling down, O'Brien pours himself a beer and waits for the nightly movie on TV. When it starts, he sighs, `Another one of those cop pictures,' and switches it off. There he was, in the Indian Summer of the noir cycle, and couldn't care less. Couldn't he have forseen that, almost 50 years later, there would be an avid audience for those cop pictures - even the ones starring him?

Alan Ladd's Jaguar Productions made this film for Warner Brothers and Ladd made sure a lot of friends got work here. A quick glance of the credits will show that almost the whole cast worked with Ladd at some point in their careers. And in a prominent role as the boyfriend of Natalie Wood is Richard Anderson who was at one time Ladd's stepson-in-law being married to Sue Carol Ladd's daughter by a former marriage. Alan Ladd always liked having familiar faces and friends working with or for him.

A Cry In The Night is about a cop's daughter being kidnapped by a deranged peeping Tom in a lover's lane. Natalie Wood is the daughter and Raymond Burr is the kidnapper and he slugs Richard Anderson and steals his car as well as Natalie in his getaway.

The curious thing about A Cry In The Night is that both victim and perpetrator have serious parent issues. Wood is the daughter of an overprotective father who happens to be a police captain played by Edmond O'Brien. Burr's bad luck to kidnap a cop's daughter because the whole police force of the town is after him now, working 24/7. She's afraid to bring Anderson home to meet the folks because no one is good enough for daddy's little girl.

But that's nothing compared to what Burr is dealing with with Mumzie Dearest played by Carol Veazie. An overprotective mother has left Burr with social problems, an inability to relate to the opposite sex. At times Burr exudes menace and at times and sometimes the same time Burr is so childlike he's pitiable. No doubt Burr's character was inspired by Lennie from Of Mice And Men. In fact I'm surprised Raymond Burr never considered doing a remake of that John Steinbeck classic. He would have been wonderful in the part. When he's on screen Burr steals the film and when he's off you're waiting to see him return.

At the time the film was being made Raymond Burr and Natalie Wood were on some studio arranged dates. Very arranged because after his death we learned that Raymond Burr was a closeted gay man. Natalie Wood found that out earlier than most of us, but in a recent biography she said that she enjoyed Burr's company.

Brian Donlevy has the role of the no nonsense police captain overseeing the manhunt. A Cry In The Night holds up well after over 50 years and could use a remake today. If it was remade, who would you cast?