Noite Candente

It's hard to watch a young Leslie Nielsen play a straight role in a drama. He does a good job here. The plot was a little bit unbelievable, but the actors all do a good job, except for the wife who seems to have been picked for this role because she is pretty. The townspeople were kind of like the town in Columbia where Pablo Escabar lived. They knew their local guy was a crook but he was their crook and didn't need any outside people to tell them that.

Late fifties Metro addition to the film noir genre, Ozarks-style, featuring Leslie Nielsen. A comedy, you say,--perish the thought! Nielsen was in his 'next-Glenn Ford' phase, and plays it straight down the line, no chaser, no jokes, and he's very good. This is an exceedingly well-crafted, offbeat little thriller about a big city reporter in over his head as he tracks down a legendary outlaw in an extremely backward, backwoods community. The sense of isolation is very well built up, as is the cluelessness of the man and his wife, who simply don't know what to do, or even how to talk to these people. Among the denizens of the backwoods are such choice Hollywood masters of the cretinous as Claude Akins and James Best. The po-faced Paul Richards plays an unhinged character; a nice piece of offbeat casting, this. Robert Wilkie manages to be both warm and frightening as the honcho bad guy. What makes the film work is its marvelous and all-pervading sense of not only the unknown but the unknowable, as we learn just how naive city folks can be when out of their element. It is literally a night movie, thus there is no question about it being film noir. Strangeness lurks everywhere on these back roads, where one might expect Robert Mitchum to turn up, or maybe Bonnie and Clyde, or maybe Jeff Dahmer. One never can tell. You think rural communities are idyllic? Think again. The biggest surprise and most charming performance in the film by far is by Edward Andrews, who normally plays smarmy, scheming or mean-spirited white collar types, often with a comic touch, totally absent here. In Hot Summer Night he is the local sheriff, and he is salvation itself. The movie just goes to show, for the umpteenth time, how far creative people can go with seemingly routine material; how it can be exciting and shocking and even, in its presentation, new. It also shows how fun it can be to see stereotypes played with, altered, turned upside down and inside out, both as to casting, locale and viewer expectation.

Tom Ellis and his murderous bank robbery crew have their hideout in rural Ozarks. Newspaper reporter Bill Partain (Leslie Nielsen) and his wife are on their honeymoon in a nearby cabin. He's in between jobs after a newspaper merger. When he gets a tip on the robbers, he decides to investigate but finds the locals less than welcoming.

It's interesting to see Leslie Nielsen as the young leading man. He has a stoic sincerity to his performance but he has trouble showing fear. That's the missing element which keeps the tension at a lower level. He doesn't feel like he's in danger despite the fact that his character is definitely in danger. All in all, this is an interesting little noir.

Unusual. Despite pacing problems and pockets of clumsy dialogue, it has some good insights into the criminal mind as well as the minds of those who feel the need to mythologize outlaws that literally get away with murder. It's bolstered by a wise, unsentimental performance from Jay C. Flippen as a hard-nosed con rolling the dice one last time, and Paul Richards' strange turn as a neurotic, scarily unpredictable gunman. (He is involved in a bizarre, never-saw-it-coming act of violence about half way in that really gets your attention - to put it mildly.) Leslie Nielsen is fine as the out of work newspaperman desperate for a good story, but Colleen Miller is barely adequate as his new bride. You never buy that she would marry someone without a job, nor can you accept his decision to stir things up with the locals on their honeymoon so soon, especially in her presence. She comes across as mystifyingly accepting of the situation, and at times seems to be in some kind of a trance-like state.

But its strengths outweigh its flaws. The script is gutty and resourceful and the director, David Friedkin, creates a sense of real isolation, a feeling that this small, dingy town isn't so much a whole different planet as much as it is a kind of black hole. If you ever get caught in it, you can be sure you'll have a devil of a time getting out. Good suspense and an exciting finish. Always fun to uncover curious little efforts like this. Definite cult possibilities.

Newlyweds Leslie Nielsen and Colleen Miller are traveling through the Ozarks in search of a story. He's a recently laid off reporter and what he's looking for is an interview with a John Dillinger like criminal who is from there and is a local legend. And the town is very protective f that legend.

It takes a while but Nielsen finds the legend played by Robert Wilke. He gets his interview. But quite suddenly Nielsen becomes the story.

A lot of familiar character players turn in some top drawer performances. No stars in this film give it a nice authentic ring. if I had to choose one it would be Paul Richards ho made a career of playing deranged individuals. Richards may have got a career role here.

No frills for ts B film, but a great cast and story.