Nightmare (1956)

Directed by Maxwell Shane; produced by William H Pine and William C Thomas

Stan Grayson (Kevin McCarthy), a clarinetist with a New Orleans night-club band, wakes from a nightmare in which he murdered a man. At first dismissing the dream, he is unnerved to find items from it in his room. Later, he inexplicably discovers more proof that the dream may have been real. For help, he turns to his brother-in-law, police detective Rene Bressard (Edward G Robinson), but finds that the practical investigator thinks Stan has actually committed a crime. With the mounting evidence pointing toward his guilt, and his only ally against him, Stan is cornered.

The dream-come-true genre of film noir has more than a few entries, and most of them have plots that are, to varying degrees, far-fetched. Nightmare is no exception. To be fair, though, most of these movies have story-lines that do work within the context of the film. Again, Nightmare is not an exception. The explanation would certainly not stand a few second’s scrutiny by anyone with some knowledge on the subject, but in Hollywood terms, it works adequately in the story.

That written, there are factors both to praise and condemn about Nightmare. The setting of the story in New Orleans gives it a different feel than other films noir. Like the recently reviewed Cry Vengeance, which took place in Alaska, Nightmare’s less than common backgrounds give it a different look and feel than many movies in its genre.

The script is no better than average, with McCarthy giving his character’s narration over much of the action. This I found unnecessary; McCarthy is a good enough actor to provide the visual equivalent of narration if the direction for him to do so was there. It may be that this was an attempt to preserve the feel of the source material, a short story by Cornell Woolrich. It suffers, however, from inconstancy, a failing of a number of narrated movies: some scenes are given a voice-over, while others are not, with no good reason for the contrast. As well, Bressard’s conversion to seeing things his brother-in-law’s way seems a bit too abrupt.

The acting is mediocre, with Robinson, unsurprisingly, coming across as the best. The scene in which he confronts Stan over what the former believes are the latter’s lies is a good one. Otherwise, there is not much that demands superior thespian skills.

While Nightmare improves as it goes along, the solution becomes clear too soon - not to mention that it's given away by the poster - and the climax is not terribly exciting. The result is a fair-to-middling movie.

Cry Vengeance (1954)

Directed by Mark Stevens; produced by Lindsley Parsons

Former policeman Vic Barron (Mark Stevens) has good reason to be bitter and vindictive. His wife and child were killed - and he was disfigured - by a car-bomb planted by gangsters when he was coming too close to putting them away. Unsatisfied with that, they also framed him for crimes, resulting in a three-year prison sentence. Now freed, Barron’s one goal is to find the man responsible for his family’s murder and to do the same to him.

In a genre of dark and single-minded characters, Vic Barron is one of the darkest, at least for much of the film. His obsession with vengeance even leads him to consider killing his enemy’s child, as his own was killed. It’s a good character to play, and Stevens brings Barron’s narrow world to the screen convincingly. There really isn’t anything for him but revenge. As for what happens afterward? It isn’t mentioned because it doesn’t matter.

Also well-performed is the gangsters' hatchet-man, Roxey Davis, played by Skip Homeier, whose distinctive appearance adds to his acting to make Roxey a memorably menacing villain. More could have been made of the fact that Barron and Davis are two sides of the same coin, but even so, the pair make good adversaries.

The characters are, I think, a product of the writing, more than the acting - though Homeier is very good - which also folds into the plot the notion that the man Barron is hunting may not be the one he should be hunting. There are different layers of villainy, and Barron’s quarry comes across as almost sympathetic.

Cry Vengeance is aided greatly by the setting. Filmed in Ketchikan, Alaska, the town and the countryside surrounding it are used to good advantage. They provide a radically different backdrop to most film noir, which usually take place in bleaker environments, a grimy city or a dusty desert. Director Stevens uses the locale well, both in its unusual topography and its relative isolation.

On the subject of direction, Stevens does a good job. Though he probably wouldn’t have risen above the B-movies in which he often acted, there are some entertaining scenes, and an exciting chase sequence. As noted above, Stevens chose wisely in selecting his locations.

A largely unknown production, Cry Vengeance benefits from an above-par story, a stand-out villain and a deliberately one-dimensional protagonist.

Under the Gun (1951)

Directed by Ted Tetzlaff; produced by Ralph Dietrich

Bert Galvin (Richard Conte) is a smooth and shady businessman infatuated with singer Ruth Williams (Audrey Totter). At last persuading her to go to New York with him, they stop at a small restaurant. While there, a man with a grudge against him wants to kill Galvin, but Galvin kills him first, in circumstances that could not be termed self-defence, and is sentenced to twenty years on a prison farm. The rich and clever Galvin doesn’t intend to stay there, though, and starts plotting his escape, no matter how deadly the risks might be - to himself or to others.

A good crime-movie lifted by its performances and script, Under the Gun is let down somewhat by the ending, though not enough to cancel a recommendation. Conte gives an admirable performance in the type of rôle he could play well. Though he could take on sympathetic characters (as in Hollywood Story, reviewed on this blog in February, 2024), he slips easily into Bert Galvin’s character, and makes him intelligent, ruthless, arrogant and remorseless - in ways that aren’t all that obvious.

Audrey Totter has what might be considered a reduced part for someone at this point of her career: though she has a major rôle, she’s not seen for the middle three fifths of the film. She adopts a squeakier voice than her real one, and seems a singer from the 1930s, rather than the early ‘50s, though that is actually her singing in the night-club.

This is a movie in which the supporting characters are important to the story and the atmosphere. Galvin’s fellow prisoners are an assorted lot, each quirky without being unrealistic. Royal Dano as prison trusty Nugent, Richard Taber as slightly unhinged Five Shot and, especially Sam Jaffe, as the quiet, observant Gower, are stand-outs, though Shepperd Strudwick, as Galvin’s competent and crooked lawyer, is equally good.

Tetzlaff performs another competent job as director, as he had with Riffraff (reviewed in March of this year), though, for the most part, without providing anything extraordinary. The exception is, as with Riffraff, the opening sequence. It features Conte slumbering in the back of a convertible. The camera closes in on him as he converses with the driver, then retreats again. It was clearly filmed with moving automobiles, perhaps one of the first instances of such a sequence (instead of using a back-screen, or immobile car-frames on trailers for steadiness.)

The story could have ended better. I wonder how many writers sacrificed a good, ironic conclusion for the sake of the action that a producer or director thought an audience would have preferred. The finish here is fitting, but not as fitting as it could have been.

All in all, Under the Gun is, while not excellent, nonetheless a good entry in the crime-drama category, and will entertain for its 83 minutes.

Whale Music (1994)

Directed by Richard J Lewis; produced by Steven Demure and Raymond Massey

Desmond Howl (Maury Chaykin) is a once-famous rock performer turned recluse, living alone in his semi-derelict mansion on the west coast. Not having published any music for nine years, he devotes his time to drinking, remembering his dead brother, Danny (Paul Gross), and composing a symphony based on the songs of whales. His dead-end life is disrupted, however, by Claire (Cyndy Preston), a teenaged run-away and petty criminal. Her presence forces Desmond to confront not just his past, but his future, with his precarious mental state in the balance.

An entertaining drama, with elements of comedy, Whale Music benefits immensely from the acting, especially that of Chaykin, who usually captures an audience’s attention as a supporting player; here, he is the unlikely lead. Something I’ve noticed about this engaging actor (who died relatively young, on his sixty-first birthday) is that he is often sympathetic, even in unsympathetic roles. He makes Desmond a frustrating person, but very likeable, a man who has suffered from loving too well, rather than wisely.

Preston does very well as Claire, Desmond’s foil, a character very grounded in reality. She too must create a sympathetic person from someone who might not easily hold the viewer’s warmth. The supporting characters are less defined, but are needed mainly for how they affect the two leads. Nonetheless, Gross succeeds as someone who is entirely derived from Des’s memories, and so the performance must be both inconsistent and constant.

The writing both helps and hinders Whale Music. From an award-winning novel by Paul Quarrington (who has a cameo as a bar-tender in a strip club), the movie was adapted by the author and the director. The dialogue is good, and the revelations that both the characters and the audience experience are well-handled. But the overall plot may be predictable, and the ending is weak, as if the writers seemed uncertain as to from what direction the resolution should come. A warning should be given, as well, as to the swearing and nudity used in the film.

One aspect of the movie that is commendable is that it makes little of Desmond’s weight. When Chaykin portrayed Nero Wolfe in an excellent but, alas, short-lived tv series, the character was referred to as weighing a seventh of a ton. Yet Chaykin is routinely shown in Whale Music in no more than swimming trunks - often taking a ‘refreshing dip’ in his debris-filled pool - and only a couple of insults refer to his size. His girth is, nonetheless, a factor in his affinity for whales, and it gives pathos to his isolation. The use of less-than-usual-looking lead actors is, I think, an advantage of cinema for smaller markets, such as Canada, or the independent-movie industry in the U.S.

Ironically, while the music in the movie is significant in that it is being composed by Desmond, the pop songs that made him and Danny famous - and rich - are rather bland. This is, perhaps, not unrealistic. The soundtrack was derived in a round-about manner. The band responsible for it, the Rheostatics, were inspired by the book Whale Music to produce their identically-named album. This was heard by Quarrington when the book was being adapted, and so was used in the film.

All told, Whale Music should be seen for the warm and entertaining performance by Chaykin, complimented by that of Preston, and for (the majority of) the writing, a story of rescue and redemption by music and love.