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"Without Warning" from 1952 is a low-budget production that concentrates on the drudgery of police work.

It stars actors I'm not familiar with, including Adam Williams and Meg Randall; Edward Binns plays a police detective). The film is done in a very natural style.

The search is on for a serial killer (Williams) with a penchant for killing young blondes with pinking shears. The police are frustrated with a lack of evidence; slowly but surely, they come closer to tracking down the killer.

At one point they send in an undercover police woman - lucky for her, the perp realizes they're being followed. This wrecks the undercover operation, as he's not likely to try and pick up another blond.

Figuring out from soil samples that the killer may be a gardener, police begin to canvass gardening businesses that may have sold the pinking shears.

The film concentrates on forensic work - today it seems simplistic, but back then, it was cutting edge. The focus is on the hard work that police do - no glamor, just a lot of worn shoe leather.

I'd been aware of this film's existence for some years, and although I never imagined it to be a classic, it did seem promising, given the highly competent Levy-Gardner-Laven team (The Rifleman, The Monster That Challenged the World, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue), and Adam Williams, a young character actor (The Big Heat, North by Northwest, The Space Children)I've always enjoyed.

On the most basic level, Dark Sky Films has put together a splendid, bargain-price DVD presenting a 35mm print that is flawless, except for a single, brief "cut" in the film stock late in the story. Otherwise, this b&w thriller is pristine, even shimmering, without speck, scratch or other visible flaw. Where has this print been all these years--Fort Knox? I was stunned by its beauty. A photo gallery is a pleasing extra, and the menu is imaginatively augmented with visual and audio snippets. Open the case and the inner sleeve is decorated with original ad art and a scene from the film.

As a murder thriller with strong overtones of police procedural (complete with v/o narration by the fabulous Reed Hadley), Without Warning is superior stuff, with effectively understated performances, smart, concise direction and plenty of suspense and surprise, including a shock moment near the beginning that will knock you back in your chair.

Williams is creepily attractive (or maybe attractively creepy) as the quiet, psychotic killer of women, with character vet Ed Binns appealingly dogged as the working-stiff police detective assigned to bring the monster to heel. Meg Randall is pleasant and convincing as the central female character(who ends up in considerable peril), and there's a nice turn (in this UA release) by pretty Columbia contract player Angela Stevens (Three Stooges shorts, Creature with the Atom Brain, lots of westerns), as a good-time girl who comes to a bad end.

As other reviewers have commented, Without Warning also is an invaluable visual and aural record of vanished Los Angeles, particularly Chavez Ravine. As archaeology alone, then, the picture is fascinating.

I can't emphasize enough the pleasure and satisfaction Without Warning provides. It's worthy on multiple levels; grab it!

This film noir is a typical Hollywood B picture of the early fifties, made on a low budget and with obscure talent. However, it works very well. It was the first film directed by Arnold Laven, whose subsequent career, which lasted until 1985, was mainly in American television series, although his second film was VICE SQUAD (1953), starring Edward G. Robinson and Paulette Goddard, so he was moving up from B status already. None of the actors in this film ever achieved significant status. The story concerns a psychotic serial killer, well played with suitably demented expressions and a great deal of tension by Carl Martin, who was jilted by a blonde of a certain type, so he repeatedly seeks out blondes who resemble her, in order to kill them and thus get back at her. From the beginning of the film, there is no secret about who the killer is, and we see him at work, stalking and stabbing the women to death with his garden shears (he is a professional gardener). The film is thus all about how they can identify and catch him, since his fingerprints are not on file and there are so few clues. The film lapses from time to time into a 'police procedural drama', but only briefly, and I suspect it was originally designed as one but then they decided to cut most of that out and just get on with the story, which was a good idea. For those who like early fifties noir, this film has a great deal of interest, is well made, and holds the attention.

Like THE SNIPER and HE WALKED BY NIGHT, this film follows both the police and the serial killer they're trying to catch. And it lives up to that standard of quality. As usual, the procedural elements are the weakest parts, with nice attention to detail but rather dry and routine (the corny voice-over, the forensic evidence, the false confessions, the rounding up of the usual suspects, the psychological profiling, the dead-end leads and near misses). But the film absolutely shines when dealing with the killer. Adam Williams (recognizable as the baby-faced baddie from NORTH BY NORTHWEST) is creepy without being at all silly, an air of quiet danger hangs over him. There's a thick tension and dread as he stalks his victims and evades the authorities, with those conflicted moments when you almost don't want him to get caught. The supporting performances are not as memorable, but overall quite solid without anything to complain about. The photography is generally excellent, with terrific use of close-ups and a lot of good location work. Nice score as well. Well-paced and riveting film with some very fine qualities, a nice hidden gem. I'll be buying this one.

This is the oldest sort of serial killer stories ( not based on a true story ) that i have seen ans it is a more than good suspence thriller abouth a killer that only murders blonde beautiful women because his ex was blond and now he hates them . unfortunately this back up story is only be given us by the specialist who gives advice to the police . It would have been even better to see some sort of back up story from the murderer his past or something like that . The suspence is well writen and a few chasing scenes are very good .