evanston_dad A fairly routine woman-in-peril movie is elevated a bit above others of its kind by the actors in it: Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders and Gary Merrill.Stanwyck plays an interior designer who witnesses her neighbor from across the way (Sanders) strangling a woman. She then tries to get the police involved, who dismiss her story due to lack of evidence and the fact that Sanders is a respected gentleman and author. But Sanders wants to make sure they continue to dismiss her, and proceeds to convince Stanwyck that she's crazy and that her story is the result of her hysterical imaginings. Gary Merrill is the detective who believes her, mostly because he falls for her.It's a little bit of "Rear Window" crossed with a little bit of "Gaslight." Sanders is terrific as the unctuous villain (who happens to be a Nazi in hiding, no less), and there's some nice creepy atmosphere generated by the cinematography and score. The movie will never be anywhere near a classic, but it has its merits and is worth 90 minutes or so of your time.Grade: B

Kenneth Anderson Like a horror movie that requires the potential victims to be hollow-headedly dumb and virtually serve themselves up to the serial killer, the entire plot of this movie is hinged on frustratingly inept police work. Even for the LAPD these guys are a pretty lazy bunch; expecting a person to supply all the evidence and proof of a case before reporting it.Barbara Stanwyck sees Nazi-neighbor George Sanders commit a murder in his apartment and tells the police a totally plausible, non-sensational story (in that level-headed, Stanwyck manner). Pretty much based on a landlord's claim that Sanders is a model tenant, two alarmingly disinterested cops just assume that because there is not a dead body for them to trip over and Sanders doesn't just blurt out "Yes! I did it, I did it!", that a murder couldn't have possibly taken place.What follows is a very drawn out drama of Stanwyck going to the police with her assertions only to be patted on the hand and told to "calm down." Though Sanders makes for an impressive villain and Stanwyck is always wonderful, the plot has nowhere to go because the cops (Gary Merrill and Jesse White) regard evidence not as something you investigate, but something that jumps out at you and lands in your lap.It ultimately gets too repetitive and tiresome with the deck so stacked against Stanwyck that you just know everything will work out in the end. The writer just doesn't try hard enough to make plausible everyone's lack of belief in Stanwyck's story.A pleasant enough film if you imagine it to be an episode of one of those anthology TV shows like "Thriller," but very disappointing given the cast.

HeathCliff-2 As you can tell by my headline, I found this a shockingly inferior film. And sad to experience, as a fan of Barbara Stanwyck, that she had reached the age and stage of her career, where was challenged to bring her craft to inferior scripts and directors. The story was infuriatingly sexist, even for the 50s. Because she is a woman, she is brushed off, and told to calm down. I found Gary Merrill's reprise from All About Eve of the smug man who has to patronizingly calm down the little woman absolutely infuriating. As a side note, he's lucky to have AAE in his credits, because he is a mediocre actor lucky enough to be in a famous picture, and he was the same in every role. Obviously Stanwyck is fine here, as usual. But it's such an implausible absurd story that it's hard to really suspend disbelief, when cops don't do rudimentary investigation into a murder allegation. And Stanwyck's incarceration in the booby hatch was so ridiculous that I just fast forwarded through what looked like outtakes from the Snake Pit. There were plot holes to drive a bus through, and plot contrivances and impossibilities that were eye-rolling. She's running down the street shrieking, and everyone is just compliantly following ? And how many duplicate scenes of a) Merrill telling Stanwyck to calm down and see reason and b) Stanwyck reluctantly agreeing against her instincts. Over. And over. And over. Oh - and for all you folks that love t throw around the word Noir when there is a hint of a) night; b) shadow; c) murder; d) black and white -- those do not Noir make, which require a femme fatale, a weak male (usually), hard-boiled dialogue and (often) Voice-over, and a pervasive cynicism. None of which this film, a murder-suspense, is. Shows you that even an A cast can't overcome a bad script and direction.

Bucs1960 Who could better play the villain than that elegant gentleman, George Sanders........very cultured and very deadly. In this little thriller, Sanders plays a non-reformed, non-repentant Nazi who is enjoying the high life life in California as a writer and soon-to-be husband of an heiress. Barbara Stanwyck, looking from her bedroom window, sees him strangle a woman who turns out to be his bit on the side. His political leanings, you would think, should make the police just a little suspicious. But no, they don't believe Stanwyck and the chase is on.Gary Merrill as the cop who is attracted to Stanwyck doesn't believe her either ("are you sure it wasn't a dream?"). Things go from bad to worse for Barb as she ends up in a mental ward for observation and then Sanders sets her up for murder. This is where the film starts to fall apart. In a chase that must involve half of the population of the city with Sanders in the lead, what does Stanwyck do?.........runs up to the top of a building site. Why do people do that??? You have no where to go but down. There is a struggle and guess who falls to their death? This is such a cliché. Merrill and Stanwyck clinch and roll the credits.It's a pretty good little film with a look at Stanwyck in her later career, still acting her pants off. She and Sanders save it from being classified as a "B" picture but it flirts with that genre.