I liked this movie. First of all it is a great oldie. Black & White & the cast was wonderful. Clifton Webb makes the best bad guy. & William Bendix also makes a good bad guy. Lucy was a little out of it like the other email said but she was still good. And I loved the ending. Great pay back
"You want a nickel? Here...now SHUT UP!!!"
This very complex film noir is hard to follow the first time you see it. In fact, the only noir I can think of that's more confusing is "The Big Sleep". Many Lucille Ball fans are probably curious about this movie because it's one of her few dramatic roles. However, this is not one of her memorable performances. It's not ALL her fault, though. Her character in this just isn't very exciting (very pretty, though!). Other reviewers have gone over the plot, so I won't waste time. There are two performances that make this worth seeing: William Bendix and the always impressive Clifton Webb. Webb, who always made the perfect villian (like in the classic "Laura"), is great once again, and William Bendix says the best line of the whole movie: "You want a nickel? Here...now SHUT UP!!!" As you can guess, he says that to a little (bratty) kid. This is not one of the excellent examples of film noir, but the good news is that it DOES get better and much more understandable with repeated viewings. The FOX vhs is a huge dissapointment, though. The sound quality is horrible, and at times you have to turn the volume to max just to hear what they're saying! Don't waste your money on this over-priced video. My advice is to either rent it or wait until it's released on dvd.
DEFINITELY BELONGS IN ONE'S FILM NOIR LIBRARY!
Why? Because of a script which constantly rivets one's attention, and with many a surprise along the way.
And because of the sterling performances, especially by a young and gorgeous Lucille Ball and the ever professional Clifton Webb, almost recreating his role of Waldo Lideker in the top-notch classic film, "Laura." His acting is superb in both films.
Cathy Downs, who usually did not play glamorous women, shines in her role of an unhappily married (to an older man) woman. Dressed in gorgous gowns, and with untypical deep brunette upsweeped hair, I barely recognized her in this fragile, true- to-form, performance.
Mark Stevens also fares well as the much beleaguered private detective trying to start a new life in the Big Apple. He has just the right amount of spunk and sincerity.
And let's not forget the legendary-by-now cast of character actors: William Bendix terrific as usual, Donald McBride in a brief scene, Reed Hadley, Constance Collier and even Ellen Corby in another brief scene.
Perhaps not as great or blockbusting as "The Maltese Falcon" or "Murder,My Sweet," this film has a truth of its own and Ms. Ball's performance is something to write home about!
The long-awaited emergence of Nightmare Alley into the light of DVD should achieve two things: make a legendary film noir available to a new generation, and restore the horrific charge to the lately watered-down term geek, a concept that once had the power to give people very bad dreams indeed.
To his lasting credit, Tyrone Power--20th Century Fox's extraordinarily handsome but not terribly interesting star of the '30s and '40s--begged for the chance to play Stan Carlisle, the predatory charmer who snakes his way through this bracingly unwholesome story. A spieler for--and lover of--carnival mind reader Zeena (Joan Blondell), he displays uncanny skill at "reading" the susceptible rubes, including a tough sheriff who turns to jelly after Stan psychs him out. Once Stan's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tyrone Power - Joan Blondell - Coleen Gray Director(s): Edmund Goulding DVD Release Date: Released the 07 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Laura will always be director Otto Preminger's most beloved movie, but he gets closer to the essence of film noir in this fascinatingly slippery item about a psychiatrist's wife whose weakness for kleptomania makes her prey to an oily hypnotist, con artist, and manipulator par excellence. The fashion-plate wife (dresses, robes, and peignoirs by Oleg Cassini) is played by Laura herself, Gene Tierney. The mellifluous conniver is Jose Ferrer, coming off like the illegitimate son of Waldo Lydecker ("I'm so glad you're here--you make Tina's party seem an almost human event"). Among other things, Ferrer would probably like to get Tierney into bed, and a good many people--including Richard Conte as the caring husband--come to believe he has. But that's not the extent of his ambitions,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Richard Conte Director(s): Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 06 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"What's the use of having a war if you don't learn from it?" The speaker is Alec Stiles (Richard Widmark), a menthol-sniffing asthmatic in a snap-brim hat who's nailed down the organized-crime franchise for a burg named Center City, and who runs it "scientifically," using methods he picked up in uniform during WWII. He can even tap into the databanks of the FBI. Which, by coincidence, is gearing up to bring his mini-crime wave to an end. Street with No Name invites us to sit back and watch both sides deploy their methodologies at each other.
The semidocumentary crimefighting/spybusting thrillers of the late '40s are fascinating for their blend of institutionalized rectitude (the FBI is totally trustworthy and awesomely competent), authentic locations ("filmed where it... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Mark Stevens - Richard Widmark Director(s): William Keighley DVD Release Date: Released the 07 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"Somewhere in the Night" is an exemplary title for a film noir, and the shellshocked pilgrimage of an amnesiac WWII veteran through an L.A. shadow-zone of hotels, bars, steam baths, sanitariums, and creepy private dwellings casts an uncanny spell. The plot is so byzantine, and the interlayering of the banal with the bizarre so pervasive, we may occasionally feel we've wandered into a Raul Ruiz mindgame in the guise of a '40s mystery-melodrama. The situation is primal: a man searching for his own identity, dreading what that identity will prove to be, yet so monastically dedicated to his mission that he won't reveal his dilemma to anyone even when it might ease his quest.
The script is shot through with contradictions and improbabilities, though these loom more glaring in retrospect... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Hodiak - Nancy Guild Director(s): Joseph L. Mankiewicz DVD Release Date: Released the 06 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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