Bill Slocum I was really impressed by the first five minutes of "Fear In The Night." Then the rest of the film happened. My short take: Mood alone is never enough.Film lovers enjoy debating whether an old movie qualifies as "film noir." No need here. From the murky circumstances to a sleepwalking main character to constant dream sequences cutting in abruptly, this is noir, alright. It even has keywords "fear" and "night" in the title.But man does this film draaaaag.Vince Greyson (DeForest Kelley) is a bank teller who wakes up to the gradual realization that he just killed someone. Who and where, he doesn't know. But he does know he has marks on his neck, blood on his wrist, and a strange key in his pocket that weren't there before. Enlisting the help of police detective Cliff Herlihy (Paul Kelly) who happens to be his brother in law, Greyson discovers what it is to have "an honest man's conscience... in a murderer's body."A great premise, yes, from a short story by Cornell Woolrich (billed as "William Irish" in the credits), and with some smashing effects work. But the story wastes too much of its short running time on conversations between Greyson and Herlihy about whether he imagined it. An intrusive narration by Greyson explains what we are seeing on screen, as if director Maxwell Shane had no confidence visuals alone would do the trick. I suspect this was done in editing after the producers realized how hard the film would be to follow otherwise.Of the leads, DeForest Kelley gives an uneven performance. At times he is effective in portraying real fear and guilt; other times he overacts badly. Much of the time he sleepwalks, because that's what the script calls for. Did they want a Kafkaesque anti-hero or more of a conventional everyman rising to a challenge? He suffers from a lack of clear direction.Paul Kelly is much better, a studio pro who radiates some needed strength and reason. But he is saddled with some dumb moments, too. Like why does he get the bright idea of sending his shaky brother- in-law into a dangerous situation without police backup?When Greyson tells his story, Herlihy's first response is to wave it off: "You've just been stretching your nerves thin, kid." Then, after Greyson takes him to the house where it happened, Herlihy transforms into Dirty Harry, slapping the poor kid around and calling him "lower than the lowest rat we ever brought in for knifing someone in an alley." I give Kelly credit for making his about-face play at all, but it leaves a weird aftertaste.I don't hate this movie; the visual dynamics are strong throughout. Shane's track record was pedestrian, but that opening suggests real vision at the helm. How did they get all those mirrored-room shots without exposing the camera? We watch Greyson stumble around, looking submerged as he fights with a man who seems as asleep as he. Then the scene breaks up, and there's this fantastic swirl of light and fog that literally leaves him dumped on his bed.After that, though, you feel Shane struggle to match the surrealism of those opening moments. Occasionally, he succeeds, like in a harrowing episode where Greyson finds himself on a ledge, fighting Herlihy to throw himself over. More often, the results are just silly, like Greyson fainting at the sight of nail polish on his wrist.The conclusion is especially rushed and unsatisfying, featuring the most unbelievably powerful mesmerist since Dr. Caligari hung up his shingle. Everything is tidily resolved, including Greyson's ridiculously one-sided relationship with a long-suffering girlfriend.Good film noir plays with convention, but not by discarding such things as logic and convincing motives. "Fear In The Night" does, making it a noir film only a die-hard noir lover could love.

bkoganbing If you've seen the remake of this film under its original story title Nightmare than you pretty well know what this story is. In fact the only difference I could tell is that in Fear In The Night protagonist DeForest Kelley is a bank teller whereas Kevin McCarthy in the remake is a jazz musician. The remake was shot in New Orleans while this one has the old standby Los Angeles as the scene of activity.In any event DeForest Kelley is bothered by a persistent and nagging nightmare that he killed somebody. Only no murders have been reported in the metropolitan area. But on a Sunday drive with his brother-in-law Paul Kelly and sister Ann Doran, Kelley leads them to a house and shows enough to his brother-in-law to know that something happened. You see Paul Kelly is a homicide detective.At some point and I can't lest I spoil one of the best scenes of the film Paul Kelly starts believing his brother-in-law. The man responsible is Robert Emmett Keane though how he is responsible I can't say again lest I give the whole film away. It was quite an interesting scheme Keane had to rope an innocent in to do his dirty work.My criticism of Fear In The Night is the same I had of Nightmare. Some good performances and a nice suspenseful story. But it was also done on the cheap even for a noir film.Fans of the noir genre will love it though.

MikeMagi Not every screen version of a Cornell Woolrich (aka William Irish) yarn is another "Rear Window" or "Phantom Lady." In the wrong hands, you're liable to end up with "Fear in the Night," a flimsy low-budget adaptation of a short story that deserved better. You know you're in trouble when the first reel is largely devoted to voice-over while the central character wanders around a cheap hotel room. The premise, a bank clerk who dreams he has committed a murder only to wake up grasping a button from the victim's jacket, is pure Woolrich. The execution (an all-too-appropriate term) is pretty grim. A young De Forrest Kelly of "Star Trek" fame stars as the conscience-stricken "murderer" back before he learned to act. Paul Kelley, on the other hand, proves that even in a shoddy production, at least someone knows how to deliver a line. Suggestion: hunt down a collection of Woolrich/Irish stories and you'll discover why this strange, haunted author was legitimately the "father of cinema noir." And why so many filmmakers couldn't resist adapting his tales -- even those who did it as badly as the crew behind "Fear in the Night."

JohnHowardReid Writer-director Maxwell Shane remade the film in 1956 as Nightmare starring Kevin McCarthy as the impressionable young man and Edward G. Robinson as his strong-willed brother-in-law.This was Kelley's feature film debut. He'd previously appeared in a small role in a 1945 short variously titled The Letter and Time To Kill starring George Reeves, Barry Nelson, Don Hanmer, Jimmy Lydon and Don Taylor. Although the re-make with Edgar G. Robinson has a bit more clout in the acting department, this one features a marvelous performance by Robert Emmett Keane, stepping out of character for once as a pest of a neighbor. True, Kelley's portrayal is little too overdone. The schmuck is supposed to be weak-willed but Kelley turns him into such a nerve-racked fraidy-cat that he tends to lose audience sympathy. Paul Kelly, of course, is well cast as the detective, and, aside from Kelley, he receives excellent support all the way down the line. Although the film was lensed on a "B" budget by the two dollar Bills, it seems to have more production values than the usual Pine-Thomas bills of fare.