Fear in the Night (1946) A Cheapo Hollywood Classic Noir

Written and Directed by Maxwell Shane, and based on Cornell Woolrich's "Nightmare" writing as his pseudonym William Irish. 

Shane directed Nightmare (1956),The Naked Street (1955), The Glass Wall (1953), City Across the River (1949). Cinematographer was Jack Greenhalgh (Wild Weed (1949), Music was by Rudy Schrager.

Paul Kelly as Cliff

DeForrest Kelley as Vince

The film stars Paul Kelly (Crossfire (1947), Side Street (1950), Split Second (1953)) as Cliff Herlihy, DeForest Kelley (Canon City (1948) and of course Star Trek), as Vince Grayson, Ann Doran as Lil Herlihy, Kay Scott as Betty Winters, Charles C. Victor as Captain Warner, Robert Emmett Keane as Lewis Belknap, aka Harry Byrd and Jeff York as Deputy Torrence.

Low budget noir.

Author Cornell Woolrich was a very intensely strange individual. He gets his first book published while attending Columbia University. Apparently, during the school term, he gets laid up with a gangrenous leg for weeks on end during which he writes Cover Charge this gets published. He quits and writes a short story that wins first prize $10,000 for a contest put on by College Humor Magazine and First National Pictures. That $10,000 is a huge sum of money equivalent to about $150,000. So he heads off to become a screenwriter at First National. After a bizarre series of "adventures" in Hollywood he moves back to New York. There he basically reinvents himself as a pulp fiction writing, tragically dysfunctional, recluse, who lived, by choice, in seedy, decaying, decadent resident hotels, with his mother along with a plethora of eccentrics and low life's as neighbors. Naturally as a result, he wrote a lot of his fiction in a manner that methodically ratchets up the tension all the way into the stratosphere of looney bin land.

A film based on a Woolrich novel is usually both slightly implausible and exceedingly intense. As a heads up, always look for the unabridged copies of his written works. The abridged versions excise a lot of descriptive sentences that tend to act like brakes between the feverish hysteria.

The Story

A bank teller, Vince Grayson, has a nightmare. He dreamt that he was in a strange octagonal room of mirrors. There is a man and a woman in the room with him. He fights with the man and kills him, and locks the body in a closet behind one of the mirrors. 

When he wakes he finds a strange button clenched in his fist. he goes into the bathroom to wash up and discovers marks on his throat and blood on one of his hands. He also finds a strange key in his jacket pocket. 

Distraught with the realization that his nightmare may have actually happened, he goes over to his sisters house and tells his brother-in-law Cliff, who is a cop, that he thinks he killed someone. Cliff tells him don't worry its got to be a dream. 

A few days later Vince and his gal pal with Cliff with his wife go for a wandering drive out in the country to find a nice  picnic spot. They eat, but then get drenched in a rain storm and start driving back home. Vince sees a bridge, it jogs is memory. He's been in these parts before. He tells Cliff to make the next turn because there is a house at the end of that lane. 

Its the house from his nightmare. Cliff and Vince go inside, start a fire for the girls to dry off and then head upstairs where they find the octagonal mirrored room. 

Vince tells Cliff that the key he has unlocks the closet, and inside the closet by a safe door is where he put the body. When they unlock closet there is no body but Cliff does find some dried blood. 

Cliff now begins to believe Vince. This belief is fortified when a deputy sheriff stops at the house asking what they are doing there. Two bodies, a man stabbed inside, and a woman Mrs. Belknap run over by a car outside where found at the property. The place belongs to Dr. Lewis Belknap

Dr. Belknap's house

Back in the city it goes Noirsville when Cliff brings Vince into headquarters to tell his story and he finds out that Mrs. Belknap gave a description of her assailant before she died. A description that fits Vince.  During this meeting Vince passes out.

Cliff now thinks Vince may faking everything and really is the murderer, the distraught Vince now wants to commit suicide and tries to jump out the window of his hotel. 

Noirsville 

A cheap production plus an unrestored print isn't an ideal viewing experience. Its got a nice twist and, as is, it's about a 5/10 maybe it would get a half point or another full point with a restoration but not much more. Watchable.

Strange little film whose crumminess gets to you

bmacv4 April 2001

Fear in the Night brings to mind Edgar G. Ulmer's legendary Detour in its brevity, its cast of unknowns, and its technical primitiveness. It doesn't have that film's crude and daring originality, though. Basically it's the story of a nightmare that turns out to be true (in fact it was remade in the 50s as Nightmare, with Edward G. Robinson). The whole premise of the plot is of such an implausibility that it's hard to take seriously, but if you close your mind and swallow it, the film develops a certain sleazy integrity. If you clicked onto this movie during a long, sleepless night of the soul, you'd probably stay till the (metaphorical) dawn.