pensman The estates of Reginald Rose and Hugh Wheeler should be looking at Gillian Flynn's novel and ask how much of this this film influenced her novel. We have a neurotic somewhat psychotic wife, Carolyn Jones here channeling Bette Davis, upset and angry with her husband because he refuses to return to New York. She makes a scene at a party implying her husband is a wife beater. Once the stage is set incidents make it appear her husband killed her. The big difference is the band of local children who believe John, Alan Ladd, is innocent and join forces to protect him and help prove he is innocent and if his wife is dead then there must be another killer. And yes, in this film she really was killed. What I find most amusing about the film is its being set in a mythical town in CT that seems a lot like Westport in the 1950's except for the townspeople who have a lynch mentality and don't want to hear the facts that would clear John. But who really did it--yes she was was really killed--her lover or the local sheriff or was it someone else. The ending is a bit of a surprise but all ends well; almost too well.

nomoons11 Words can't describe how bad this film is. I'm gonna try my best though.I'll say right off that Alan Ladd just looks terrible in this. He was in his mid to late 40's and he looked like he was in his 60's. His scenes where he runs looks like he's an old man. I don't know if he wasn't athletic or he was under the influence of something but this performance reminded me of the last film Montgomery Clift did. With the exception of Shane and a few film noirs in the 40's, Alan Ladd was not a very good actor. He's a cigar store Indian in his thing. Looks and even is as wooden as one. Just terrible all the way through.A struggling, use to be art director at an ad firm decides to move to Connecticut country with his wife. She's highly unstable and a drunk to boot. She had a breakdown in New York and he wants to see if the country will help. While he's there he can concentrate on his art/painting. She's feels trapped in the country and wants to go back to New York but he insists on a Psychiatrist visit. She refuses. He gets a job offer from his previous company with better money but he would rather just paint and try and sell his stuff. With this decision, the crux of the film starts. We get a seriously ill woman who does everything to ruin her husband. She does everything imaginable and then.... she gets killed and he gets framed for it. Then the Connecticut lynch mob appears and they want this guilty rascal for all it's worth. It's just a B film all the way folks. The only stand out performance is Carolyn Jones' portrayal of the psychotic alcoholic wife. She really nails it down. Other than that this is just a bottom feeder. There's one scene where he gets a phone call from a friend. After the call ends he leaves the room and you can see a crew members shadow in the foreground of the scene. It wouldn't be too obvious if he didn't walk right by. I mean I thought it was Alan Ladd but nope. Wow, now that's quality editing. I grew up in the south and I've never heard of a lynch mob from Connecticut. I thought people from the north east were progressive and gave people the benefit of the doubt. This guy was an artist and strange so that meant...he guilty...let's go get him.Folks...save your time and run from this thing. To call this thing anything else but bad would sully the name of bad.

bkoganbing Alan Ladd gives up the city life and rat race for himself and also for dipsomaniac and nymphomaniac wife Carolyn Jones. They move out to quiet and peaceful Connecticut. Where Ladd paints out in the woods with his only true friends the town children. Jones on the other hand gets an affair going with one of the town movers and shakers.Jones winds up very dead when Ladd makes an overnight trip to New York. Local cop Charles McGraw thinks Ladd did it as does most of the town, his only friends are the children and Diane Brewster, one of the suburban wives. Alfred Hitchcock might have made the rest of this film seem plausible. In fact Man in the Net plays like an expanded version of one of his half hour TV stories. There are some plot similarities to The Blue Dahlia made back during Ladd's Paramount hey day. In that one he's also a husband on the run after his wife has been killed. Back then though Ladd put a lot of passion into his role of John Morrison, returning war veteran. As John Hamilton though he seems just tired and bored.One thing that doesn't ring true is the lynch law mentality that takes over this suburban town. That plays more like a western than a modern story. Again, maybe Alfred Hitchcock could have made it more believable.It's kind of cute and fun to see the kids outsmart the grownups including the local law for a good deal of the film. But it only goes so far for Man in the Net.

bmacv With both its star Alan Ladd and its director Michael Curtiz nearing the end of their careers, The Man in the Net has a valedictory feel that surely wasn't intended. Ladd looks puffy and seems bored by issues that are literally vital to him (and his sprints through the woods look labored and abbreviated). Behind the camera, Curtiz fares a bit better; the old pro (Casablanca, Mildred Pierce) knows how to shape a story and sustain tension, but he didn't bother to plaster over the cracks in the far-fetched screenplay by Reginald Rose.Ladd plays a commercial artist who has moved to rural Connecticut to pursue his dream of becoming a serious painter; another reason for leaving New York's `rat race' was the gin-fueled nervous breakdown of his wife (Carolyn Jones). She still chafes under their genteel poverty when she knows he could make big bucks by returning to his old job. She takes her revenge in a clandestine affair (all the while trying to look and act like Bette Davis as Rosa Moline in Beyond The Forest). When Ladd takes a commuter train into the city to turn down the job and incidentally to visit her psychiatrist (isn't it customary for the patient to go?), he returns to find all his paintings slashed and a typewritten note telling him she's left for good. But then a suitcase full of her clothes is found burning at the local dump, and other evidence points to foul play. The townspeople, who range from rural bumpkins to the country gentry, jump to the conclusion that the aloof Ladd murdered Jones. They profess shock at Ladd's revelation that she was a drinker, even though she has already staged a drunken scene at a big party where the hosts know her well enough to have a `special tomato juice' waiting for her. Then we're asked to buy the spectacle of this Connecticut town, in 1959, turning into a Balkan village, with a lynch mob gathered in pursuit of a short, middle-aged white male. Luckily for Ladd, he's forged bonds of trust with a bevy of children whom he's forever sketching in the bosky glades (this seems a stretch, as he appears as stiff and uncomfortable being with them as they do being in front of a camera). They hide him in a surprisingly spacious and well-appointed cave they use as their clubhouse, and, at his bidding, undertake a series of ruses to smoke out the real killer. There's enough going on in Man in the Net to keep you watching, including Charles McGraw as a surly sheriff, but it's not fresh enough to make you suspend your considerable disbelief.