Fear in the Night (1947)

Touches You

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This story starts like an episode of Dr Who with kaleidoscope images just like in the beginning credits. It's a blatant copy. The director was obviously a fan. It's a dream sequence from which Deforest Kelley (Vince) then wakes from and has to work out what the hell has just happened. He's dreamt that he killed someone and things pretty much point to the fact that he actually has gone ahead and killed someone as per dream. Paul Kelly (Cliff) is there to help him work things out.Deforest Kelley is Dr Leonard McCoy aka Bones from Star Trek. He looks young in this but he's recognisable. Hey Bones, what's going on in your head? There is one scene where Paul Kelly threatens to punch out Bones and you see that he has done this thing before. Actually, he has – he was sent to prison in real life for punching someone to death and got 10 years for manslaughter. This film is made after his release and so nobody really wants to mess with him.The film zips along and tells the straight narrative without any complications. It's not believable at all but go with it for some hypnotic enjoyment.

What the movie lacks in believability it makes up for in sheer visual imagination. That opening sequence is a real grabber. Just what the heck is going on with the fuzzy focus and dreamlike images. People are going here and there in front of a bank of mirrors. Then, all of a sudden, someone hands Vince a drill. But Vince doesn't stick it into a chunk of wood. Instead he plunges it into a man's heart! Good thing Vince wakes up in bed, maybe sweaty, but at least inside a focused reality. Must have been a bad dream, but then why the bloody wrist and where did that weird key come from. From what we see, it's almost like he's come back from a strange parallel world.So did Cliff actually kill someone or was it just a bizarre subconscious. Good thing he's got Mr. sober-sides Cliff as a cop brother-in-law. Maybe Cliff can figure it out since it's driving Vince nutty. Trouble is Cliff thinks his in-law really did kill someone, but in the interest of family harmony resists turning him in. So how will all this weirdness turn out, and what's suddenly the big deal about a candle.Kelley really nails his part as the hapless Vince. Catch his many shaded expressions as he suffers through the nightmare. Paul Kelly too nails his part with a no-nonsense demeanor that keeps things anchored. But the real star is the production itself that manages to dangle us between two worlds with the many off-center effects. Sure, too much storyline stretches over the edge. Still, it's pretty gripping stuff, straddling the murky line between noir and horror. The premise was loaded enough to get re-made a few years later, Nightmare (1956). But this one, I think, is better. So don't let it slip by.

OK, this is a little film noir from 1947. You can stream this one for free on Netflix or for free at Archive.org. Fear in the Night is about a man (Vince) who has a terrible nightmare in which, he kills a man in a strange mirrored room.When he wakes up he discovers that he has blood on his wrist on bruises on his neck just like in his dream. Slowly Vince begins to realize that he may have actually committed the murder that he dreamed about. In a panic Vince enlists the aid of his brother in law Cliff and the two of them try to figure out what happened before Vince is arrested for murder.You can tell right away that this was made on a modest budget and some of the acting is pretty atrocious but, it's an interesting crime drama and was an enjoyable watch.This movie was re-made with the same director in 1956 with Edward G. Robinson. This time it was called Nightmare.This is the feature film debut of DeForest Kelley who later went on to play "Bones" on Star Trek.

Spoilers.DeForrest Kelley narrates the opening and, intermittently, much of the rest of the story. He begins with something like, "A glowing face seemed to come towards me out of the darkness." On the screen, we see a glowing face seem to come towards us out of the darkness. A bit later the narrator tells us, "The room began spinning." On the screen, the room begins spinning. I guess the director, Maxwell Shane, must have given up at about the point at which the narrator tells us, "My heart was beating like a jackhammer." There isn't an abundance of imagination on display in this rather interesting story of an innocent nobody who is hypnotized into taking part in a burglary during which he's forced to kill a man. He wakes up the next morning believing it to have been a nightmare, except that there are some strange objects in his pockets and a smear of blood on his wrist. He explains his unease to his brother-in-law who is an officer in the homicide department. That would be Paul Kelly. Kelly dismisses it irritably and tells Kelley to pull himself together. But Kelley is unable to do that and fills the rest of the film with the pungent odor of sweaty fear. This was his film debut and he's neither good nor bad, just another actor with ordinary talent. You could probably find someone at about his level in any play, maybe "Our Town," produced at a community college in some sleepy town somewhere in Arkansas.The story is from Cornell Woolrich, a strange guy -- homosexual, boozer, recluse, and amputee. He wrote a lot of pulp stuff that was adapted into radio plays and films -- "Rear Window," "The Bride Wore Black." Well, it's a living, or at least it was when people still read books. He may have been the equal of James M. Cain when it came to prose style, in the sense that neither had any. Reading either of them will remind you of reading a newspaper. Raymond Chandler at least tried for some insane poetry, no matter how idiosyncratic it was. You know Chandler's oft-parodied line: "Her hair was the color of gold in old paintings"? You won't find anything resembling that in Cornell Woolrich or in this adaptation.The budget must have been very low. Aside from Paul Kelly, there are only one or two recognizable faces, such as Charles Victor's and Ann Doran's. There is little outdoor shooting. The sets are mostly skimpy. But the director sometimes goes ape over on-screen effects. The ancient iris is replaced by an expanding star, for instance. And the nightmare sequences -- wow. By the way, this guy's nightmares make a lot more sense than mine do. No glowing faces seem to come towards me out of the darkness. Aside from the sex elements, which I don't mind as long as they don't involve those funny animals, they often seem to involve my running away from some horrifying manticore or something, intent on eating me alive, while I try to flail my way through a vast swamp of molasses. I'm told that dreams of appearing naked in public are common but I've never been bothered by them, and as far as this movie goes, I'd prefer seeing DeForrest Kelley stabbing someone with an awl to watching him run through Port Authority with no clothes on. In fact, that's a pretty disgusting image.The musical score is perfunctory and the direction is functional, no more than that, with one or two exceptions. Here's one of them. Kelley calls in sick and his teller's window at the bank is filled by the young lady who loves him. The director shows her replacing his name plate with hers at the window and for a moment she holds the two names side by side and smiles down at them. It's a small moment but someone had to think of it. More like it would have helped.The element of hypnosis is not new but still fascinating because, even now, no one knows exactly what's going on in the hypnotic state. I studied the subject in graduate school and I've used it as an adjunct to therapy and it works fine in certain limited contexts. But it remains a mystery. Surgery has been performed using no anesthetic other than hypnosis. What we see of hypnosis on the screen is possible, but barely.