The Night Runner

"The Night Runner" is a confusing movie. It's not sure if it should be a nice film about mental health with a positive message or if it should be a story inspired by "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"! I personally think it should have taken one path or the other...but unfortunately it tried to be a little of both and the results are only okay at best.

Roy (Ray Danton) has been hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital for a couple years. After all, he is moody and has fits of anger that make him dangerous. However, the hospital is over capacity and needs the beds and Roy is discharged sooner than his therapist wishes.

What follows is Roy's moving to the Los Angeles area and his trying to adjust to life on the outside. He seems like he's trying hard to make it and you want to see him succeed. He has a lovely girlfriend and a job. However, about midway through the film, he goes berserk and murders someone with only moderate provocation...and here's where it seems that the film is no longer about mental illness and rehabilitation but is more a horror-suspense movie.

As I mentioned above, the film tries to work both sides and the overall story is sadly impacted. It could have worked either way, with him being a dangerous menace or him getting his life together...but not as it was. It forgets realism and just goes for thrills and frights...complete with 'looney' sound effects! As a result, the film is just okay when it could have been so much more.

I can't say I am too familiar with Ray Danton, but his dashing good looks and considered performance go some way to keeping this sad and complicated melodrama out of the doldrums. We know from the start that he has been released from a psychiatric hospital (initially against the advice of his doctor who was rather brow-beaten into changing his mind by his board colleagues). It is fairly clear that this man, "Roy", is prone to less lucid moments and his past does limit his opportunities in his new, bustling, environment. "Roy" takes a bus up the coast and along the way alights at a garage where he quite quickly befriends "Hank" (Harry Jackson) and "Amy" (Merry Anders) and decides to take a chalet at a local motel. This is where he encounters "Susan" (Colleen Miller) who's the daughter of the owner "Loren" (Willis Bouchey). There are definite sparks between the young couple, and soon they are all but courting with their friends from the garage. A letter arrives and is read by the father that could change all this - it details the nature of the illness and causes him to lose his temper with his visitor and a rather calculated red mist descends... This is quite a savage indictment of the treatment of mentally ill people who are released, ill-equipped and with no ongoing treatment plan, into a society that is equally ill-equipped to deal with people requiring understanding, tolerance and compassion. At times "Roy" is like a young child exposed to an adult environment where emotions are running high (even when they are not) and Danton plays that character quite effectively. Miller provides for quite a decent foil too and the writing and direction leave much of the man's increasingly overwhelming predicament to our imagination. It is terribly over-scored, far too much heavy and loud music to create a tension that is doing fine by itself, and the pace isn't always the best but otherwise this is a surprisingly thought-provoking low-budget drama that is certainly worth a watch.

I don't recall seeing much of Ray Danton before, and certainly not in the lead role but I have to say I kind of enjoyed him. He has a great voice and I'm wondering why he never made more of a name for himself in the movies. The story is kind of basic but I guess this is a circumstantially unique telling of it. There are a few moments of mild suspense but mostly of curiosity. The story does develop and has some momentum but not as much perhaps as everyone involved was hoping for. The pacing is even which is good but it didn't quite build to the degree I was expecting. Despite some reservations with The Night Runner it did provide me with some easy, relaxed entertainment and as such think it's one worth checking out.

Ray Danton is in a psychiatric asylum; under pressure, he had cracked and tried to kill some one. His psychiatrist thinks he is getting better, but not yet ready to be released. The supervisors point out the overcrowding, the fact he is carrying more than three times his recommended patient load, and asks how much good he can do Danton or his other patients. And so Danton is released. He tries to get a job as a draftsman, but when asked about the two-year gap since his last employment, he runs. At a bus stop near the ocean, he finds the people friendly, so he moves into a motel run by Willis Bouchey and his daughter, Colleen Miller. He starts to feel better, and falls in love with Miss Miller, and perhaps she with him. But how long can this return to normalcy last?

Abner Biberman's last movie as director -- he continued to work on episodic television until the early 1970s -- is a well-meaning study with a plea for better psychiatric funding. It's directed in a dry fashion, and Danton is pretty good in the lead role, aided by George Robinson's subtle lighting changes and a score that well reflects the moods of the lead.

A patient released prematurely from a mental hospital tries to find a new life at a roadside stopover.

I can't imagine more than ten people saw this little oddity in a theatre. I expect the movie's risky downer material got made because it was so cheap to produce. Reviewer bmacy's right —the budget is rock bottom, a few shots of the Malibu coastline, an office interior, and that's pretty much it, along with a minimal cast. So why has the movie stayed with me over the years, instead of being just another forgotten cheapo.

The film's not a minor gem—that would be too much of a stretch. Instead, I think Danton's performance manages a level that truly disturbs, especially with the tight script and noirish background. Catch the occasional little motion or grimace betraying Roy's (Danton) inner turmoil as he struggles with a society full of minor pressures. It's a carefully calibrated performance that shows how an emotive "more" can be expressed by a judicious "less". And since Roy is basically a likable guy, his plight becomes doubly affecting as he tries to blend into a normal life. That last lonely shot of him is, I think, one of the more disturbing to come out of the generally cheerful 1950's.

On a different note—I suspect Hitchcock, also at Universal at the time, caught this minor production since the project bears certain key similarities to Psycho (1960). Consider, for example, the roadside motel, the disturbed personality, the brutal murder, along with the symbolic use of birds, in this case sea gulls. Nothing really hangs on the comparison, except maybe the notion that a widely acclaimed classic managed to grow out of an obscure seedbed. Anyway, this little oddity has its own peculiar virtues, so catch up with it if you can.