Pesadelo

I had a feeling of deja vu as I watched this, and I soon realized it was a remake of Fear in the Night, a 1947 film starring DeForrest Kelley.

This film stars Edward G. Robinson, Kevin McCarthy, Virginia Christine, Connie Russell.

A young New Orleans jazz musician Stan (McCarthy) dreams that he's involved in a murder. He wakes up holding a button, a key, and he has blood on him. He's convinced he committed murder without realizing it. He approaches his brother-in-law Rene (Robinson), a police detective, who brushes it off as a nightmare.

One day, while on a picnic, Stan, Rene, Rene's wife (Christine) and Stan's girlfriend Gina (Russell) are caught in a rainstorm. Without realizing how he knows, Stan directs them to a house. There's a mirrored room as in his dream, and the key fits a closet.

Rene realizes that somehow Stan was involved and accuses him of lying and demanding to know the whole story. Stan swears it was all a dream, and he doesn't know what happened. When the sheriff comes along and tells them there was a murder in the house, Rene wants more information, believing Stan is a killer.

Neat story by Cornell Woolrich, who wrote "Rear Window." Edward G. Robinson is great as always as a man determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Kevin McCarthy, who worked until he died at 96, is adorable in this.

Some fantastic singing by Connie Russell -- it's worth watching the film just to hear her -- in what would be her last film. After a long career on stage, films, and clubs on two continents, she retired when she became a mom.

Very entertaining. The end is wonderful, and really puts it a cut above "Fear in the Night."

Kevin McCarthy, a jazzman from New Orleans, has a nightmare. He dreams he was in a strange room and committed a murder, only to find out the next morning that there are clues he actually did it. Terrified, he goes to his brother-in-law (Edward G Robinson) to ask for help. Edward G doesn't believe him at first, but soon the evidence begins to pile up. The rest is too good to reveal. Kevin McCarthy's performance right on the heels of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is flawless - the terrified victim - again. Eddie G's character as the cynical, hard boiled homicide dick is one of his best. The story riveted me from start to finish and director Maxwell Shane set just the right tone. Watch for the final scenes in the mirrored room. The atmosphere shots of New Orleans in the 50's transports us back to another time. It's a mystery - a drama - a thriller. Do not miss it.

If you can get past the improbable key to the mystery, the rest of the movie has some good, strong points. The first twenty minutes plunge us into McCarthy's nightmarish events that may or may not have actually happened. We don't know for sure and neither does he, but there are the scratches on his arm. Did he kill those people or not. The surreal effects are impressively done.

McCarthy delivers a gripping performance, as good as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (also 1956), and much better than expected for a B-movie. In short, he makes us believe that his dilemma, however improbable, is real and not just a story construct. Without that intensity drawing us in, the movie would, I think, amount to little more than a mildly interesting walk-through.

The New Orleans locations provide a clever anchor to the real world, and a good setting for the colorful jazz scenes. However, a 63-year old Robinson is at least 10 years too old for the brother-in-law part even though he manages the cop role well. And can we really believe the chance occurrence onto the scene-of-the-crime mansion in all that unfamiliar backcountry. Unfortunately, the script requires more than just an ordinary suspension of disbelief. Too bad the script couldn't work in more bayou scenes. Those coming at the end are really creepy and nightmarish in their own right. Too bad also that the excellent McCarthy made so few films, preferring, I gather, stage productions instead. All in all, an interesting if regrettably flawed little movie.

Maxwell Shane remakes his own 1947 film Fear in the Night but with a better known cast and more money. Adapted from Cornell Woolrich's novel, story has Stan Grayson (Kevin McCarthy) as a New Orleans clarinetist who dreams he has committed a murder in a heavily mirrored room. Upon waking he finds clues that suggest he actually may have killed a man and frantically turns to his police detective brother-in-law, Rene Bressard (Edward G. Robinson), for help. But it doesn't look good for Stan...

Fear in the Night is a good film, and so is this, but if you have seen the earlier version then this feels very much perfunctory. The opening titles are superb, as melted candle wax plays host to the roll call shown in moody dissolves. We jump into Grayson's dream, again this is very well constructed on noirish terms, and from there on in it's a competently crafted visual film noir picture with good tension and splendid jazzy interludes.

However, nothing else makes it stand out, it just sort of exists as an exercise in late noir cycle film making, a pic that doesn't want to even try to push boundaries. The cast are dependable in performances, but nothing to really grab the attention, though Shane does work near wonders to cloak the characters in various levels of paranoia or suspicious machinations. New Orleans locales are a bonus, with cinematographer Joseph Biroc excelling at sweaty close-ups and the utilisation of shadows as foreboding presence's.

It all resolves itself in a haze of improbability, but as most film noir fans will tell you, that's actually OK. Yet this is still a film that's far from essential viewing for the like minded noir crowd. More so if you happened to have seen the 1947 version first. 6/10

******SPOILERS****** Unbelievably heavy handed movie that telegraphs it's story to the audience so directly that you think it's a commercial for Western Union. Musician Stan Grayson, Kevin McCarthy, walks around most of the time in a zombie-like induced state and when he's conscious with his eyes bulging out of his head and looking like he's going into cardiac arrest at any moment that you want to run to the nearest phone and call 911 for help.

Waking up one morning at his room at the Hotel New Orleans from a nightmare that he had about him being a hall of mirrors and getting into a fight where he kills someone in self-defense Stan then opens a door and falls into a dark and bottomless pit. Stan looks in the mirror and sees marks on his throat and blood on his arm as well as having both a key and a button from the man's suit that was in his dream.

The movie tries to be both hip and cool when it comes to Stan's mental state and how it was manipulated by the killer Dr. Belknap/Harry Britten, Gage Clarke, in a pseudo/psychological manner that was very common in films about mental issues back in the 1940's and 50's but seeing it now it comes across as both silly and amateurish.

The movie also tries to make a big deal about the killer being a doctor who is an expert in psychological studies just by judging from the books that he has in his private library, but at the same time make him physically violent. He runs over his wife with a car and shoots it out with the police in order to kill him off at the end of the movie.

Edward G.Robinson, Det. Rene Bressard, is very good in the movie as Stan's brother in-law and New Orleans police detective. Rene at first suspects Stan of the murders but then, like a good detective should, when he sees where the evidence leads him realizes that there is more to the murders then what he at first thought.

Kevin McCarthy seems to overact in the movie, or better yet was over-directed, by passing out about a half dozen times and coming across as being brain-dead even when he wasn't under hypnosis. The movie tells the audience that you can't do anything under hypnosis that you won't do when your conscious like murder at the same time we see Stan being told to drown himself in the swamp by Dr. Belknap and then willingly do it.

Granted Stan tried to kill himself earlier in the film by jumping from the fifteen floor of the Hotel New Orleans but that was when he thought that he was a murderer. By the time he was told to drown himself he already knew that he didn't commit any murders so there was no conscious or subconscious reasons for him to do it. Stan was eventually saved from drowning by his brother in-law Rene.

Virginia Christine, Sue Bressard, was very good as Stan's sister and Rene's pregnant wife who developed a hearty appetite because of the condition that she was in and Gage Clarke, Dr. Belknap/ Harry Britten, was effective as the highly educated murderer. Connie Russell, Gina, as Stan's love interest had really nothing to do in the movie but stand around and look pretty, she did sing two songs.

The movie "Nightmare" can be forgiven for it's heavy handedness since it was the norm in movies about psychiatric issues back in those days, 1955, but at the same time can't be taken seriously by anyone watching it now in 2004.