Alex da Silva Merle Oberon (Leslie) is a traumatized survivor of a sinking ship and Dr Alan Napier recommends that she goes to recuperate with her uncle and aunt on a plantation in the Louisiana swamps. Her mother and father have not survived the sea tragedy and she is loaded. However, she has never met her aunt or uncle. Does the visit do her any good……? Is her trauma sending her over the edge…? Is everything as it seems in this film? No, it isn't but I don't think that it is the intention of the director to hide this. Perhaps this film could have been more suspenseful but the story still grips and has tense moments as we follow Oberon's awakening to what is going on around her. In fact, it is quite a rewarding moment when we watch her realize that things are not right. Thankfully, she has strength to take the situation on as opposed to crumble as a victim.The cast are all good with the exception of that forever unconvincing loser that is Elisha Cooke Jr. In this film, he plays, once again, a heavy. How!!?? He's about 2 foot high, scrawny and more like a gimp than a threatening presence to anybody living in the real world. However, yet again, he turns up in a pretty decent film - see also "Phantom Lady" (1944), "I Wake Up Screaming" (1941) and "The Maltese Falcon" (1941). Check out "The Lodger" for another good film from this year starring Merle Oberon."Dark Waters" is a better film than I remembered it as being when I saw it around 10 years ago and so I recommend a viewing.

kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** Escaping from the Japanese held island of Batavia Leslie Calvin's, Merle Oberon, passenger ship was torpedoed off the island of Madagascar with all on board, including her parents, lost under the waves of the Indian Ocean and her and only three other persons surviving the carnage. Now in a New Orleans hospital ward Leslie gets the word from the doctor, Alan Napier, the good news in that her relatives in the bayou swamps of Belleville Louisiana Aunt Emily and Uncle Norbert, Fay Bainter & John Qualen, want to welcome her home there to recover from her terrible ordeal. As it turned out both Aunt Emily and Uncle Norbert were not the masters of their own home. It was the creepy manager Mr. Sydney, Thomas Mitchell, who in fact was in control of the place and the two were only there for his both personal and financial interests. There was also Mr. Sidney's assistant Cleeve played by Elisha Cook Jr in a rare romantic, if you can call it that, role who developed the hots for the very demurer and sensitive Louise and made no bones in hiding his feelings about her.It's when the handsome kind and understanding country doctor George Grover,Franchot Tone, came on the scene to treat the emotionally wrecked, due to her experience at sea, Leslie that things started to get a bit wild in the bayou in that Mr. Sydney started to lose it in seeing that the good doctor was about to uncover his attempt to drive Leslie insane and even to the brink of suicide. With her thinking, due to Mr. Sydney's sleazy tactics, she's going insane Leslie is saved from a nervous breakdown by former handyman, who was fired from his job by Mr. Sydney, Person Jackson, Rex Ingram, who's been snooping around the premises ever since and sleeping in the swamps, as well as catching and eating crew-fish, since his involuntary departure from the place.It's Preston who filled Lousie in to what was really going on and in the end paid for it with his life.***SPOILERS*** Dr.Grover who had since fell in love with his patient Leslie Calvin then went out of his way to save her life from the evil Mr. Sydney and his henchman the hopped up, on testosterone, and sexually starved Cleeve but almost got himself killed in doing it. Using the divide and conquer technique Dr. Grover gets the two, Mr. Sydney & Cleeve, to turn against each other thus doing the work, dirty & deadly work, for him. With Louise now knowing that she in fact wasn't going insane she now was going to tie the knot with her handsome and knight in shining amour and stethoscope Dr. Grover who saved her from the terrible situation that she found herself in.

Leofwine_draca DARK WATERS is an engaging little movie with a great setting: the almost-deserted bayous of the American South, which provide a hostile backdrop to the hostile storyline. This is one of those descent-into-madness type movies, where you're never quite sure if the protagonist is losing his or her mind, or whether everyone really is out to get them. As such, it's one of the earliest variations on the theme I've seen.The movie benefits from some strong players in the cast, notably Merle Oberon's lead, Leslie, who does the whole haunted-while-remaining-sympathetic thing very well. Franchot Tone, as the doctor who becomes involved in her case, is also very stalwart as a dependable hero type. Thomas Mitchell's villain has more than a touch of the Charles Laughtons about him, and of course there's a nice part for Elisha Cook Jr., too.The story is quite slowly paced but it does take time to build the atmosphere and in the end it pays off with the doom-laden climax which finishes everything up as you would hope. As such films are usually all about the atmosphere, I think this one's readily up to the job.

Jonathon Dabell Dark Waters is an OK suspenser, helped quite a lot by its atmospheric bayou setting and the against-type casting of Thomas Mitchell. One can't help feeling that a director like Alfred Hitchcock would probably have made a better job of the suspense side of things, while a director like Jacques Tourneur would most likely have done more with the Gothic noir-ishness. However, in the event the film is directed by Andre De Toth who does a solid and workmanlike job without ever really lifting the film above its station.Following a terrible shipping accident from which she emerges the sole survivor, Leslie Calvin (Merle Oberon) goes to recuperate at her aunt and uncle's plantation in the middle of Louisiana. Leslie never really knew her aunt and uncle that well, but in spite of this when she arrives she is troubled by their distant behaviour and the way that they constantly keep getting small details about the family history wrong. Also amiss is the way that Aunt Emily (Fay Bainter) and Uncle Norbert (John Qualen) seem strangely intimidated by the plantation manager Mr Sydney (Thomas Mitchell). At first, Leslie thinks that perhaps her mental state is not right because of the traumatic accident she was involved in. But later, she begins to suspect that something very serious is wrong at the plantation…. maybe even that her very life could be in jeopardy. With the help of her kind and caring doctor, George Grover (Franchot Tone), she attempts to unravel the mysterious happenings before her sanity is tipped over the edge.The film has a reasonably absorbing storyline, courtesy of Frank and Marian Cockrell (plus an uncredited John Huston). A passable level of interest is created regarding Oberon's predicament. The question of whether she is in real danger, or merely imagining that she is, is kept hanging over the proceedings. Miklos Rozsa provides a characteristically melodramatic score that adds drama to the events on screen. It is also good to see Mitchell playing a more ruthless, shady type of character compared to the ones he portrayed in Stagecoach and Gone With The Wind. However, Dark Waters suffers a little from its dated air, with the two leads – Oberon and Tone – particularly guilty of the kind of bland, stiff performing that plagues so many minor films of the era. The shadowy lighting is over-used like some tiresome gimmick and generates only half-hearted excitements, while the photography of John Mescall and Archie Stout mistakes darkness for suspensefulness. But on the whole Dark Waters remains a passable suspense flick in the old-fashioned mould, worth catching on one of those rainy afternoons when there's nothing else to watch.