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Sorry, this movie sucks

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a really good and sadly overlooked film noir. No happy endings are to be found here, just good performances and writing and a close to perfect example of the film noir genre.

There's been a slew of bad cops in film noir, but none quite like Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) in "The Prowler." He's the cop no woman ever wants to call when she needs help. You might say he's a prowler cop, or better still a glorified stalker.But alone at midnight in her big hacienda, and frightened by a possible peeping tom, it's Susan Gilvray's (Evelyn Keyes) fate to call for the police. This is Garwood's Entry. Cocky, smug, indifferent, intimidating, womanizing, his looming presence and prowess accentuated in the dead-of-night shadows by his tight-fitting black uniform, he comes on more like a sneaky Nazi than a law enforcer.It's obvious that Garwood is not Frank Chambers (John Garfield) in "The Postman Always Rings Twice," whose single motive, despite the plot twists in the end, is to win over the beautiful wife of a much older, doddering, roadside burger joint owner. No Garwood here almost instantly sizes up the whole situation in a few minutes. His master plan is for the possession of a wife, the defeat of her rich, radio celeb husband, who he immediately names a wimp to his rescuing knight, and to seize from him the means of financing his dream Las Vegas motor court.And unlike Frank Chambers, too, he gets no help at all from the young attractive wife. Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) here is the precise opposite of Lana Turner's femme fatale in "Postman." She is genuine inside and out and incapable of plotting her way out of her marriage. To boot, she is most powerfully herself whenever she sees through and stands strong against Garwood's wiles, intents, and lies. In fact, mostly her relationship with him is underwritten by varying degrees of resistance. If she's a pushover, a dupe, or ingratiating at times, it's either because her character mode has been switched over to plot mode., or because she's up against a man who is well-practiced in the arts of romantic deception, and masculine manipulation.Garwood is not only in stark contrast to Susan, but to his police partner, Bud Crocker (John Maxwell), his wife Grace, Susan's in-laws, and almost all the characters he encounters. They're generous-spirited and almost saintly by comparison. But, ironically, it is he who lives in the Hotel Angela. Here he has a large muscle-builder poster on his wall (he drinks milk rather than booze), and a dominant black shooting target with a bullet-riveted torso from his champion sharp-shooter days. In this room, he lazes about in self-absorption, toys with his plots, as he does with things like shavers and phone receivers—and Susan herself, whose defeats he celebrates by tossing spitballs into the light globe above his bed, reminiscent of his heroic basketball days.In short, he's a snark despite his expansive front. He peeps in Susan's windows, he repeatedly alarms her with his police search lights, and he pops into her life on the merest whim. She is nothing more to him than a conquest and a medium to defeat her prestigious husband. The murder he accomplishes and the one he attempts are both too vile for words. And when Susan utterly exposes him, this self-pitying bore can only answer: "I'm no worse than anyone else." In the end, unlike Frank Chamber's (Garfield) "dust you are" lover's death in the presence of a forgiving priest, Garwood gets buried ignominiously in dust. Susan, unlike Cora Smith (Turner), who dies along with her unborn baby, in a car accident, emerges from a traumatic childbirth with a new baby girl companion, the baby that Garwood assumed would be his son. Ha!

Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) is NOT your average policeman. After he and his partner respond to a prowler call, they leave....and Officer Garwood returns later. He claims he's just checking in on the woman but it soon is obvious that he is very interested in the pretty, well-heeled lady. At first, she rebuffs his advances...but soon is infatuated with him. The problem is that she is married...and Webb has a plan. You see, he's a master manipulator and his interest in Susan (Evelyn Keyes) is more than just sexual...he knows she has money...money which can help him retire in style! So he hatches a crazy plan to kill the husband...and thus live happily ever after! So what comes of this vicious plan?!In some ways, this is a good example of film noir--such as the dirty cop, the murder and the affair. But in other ways, it's not quite a typical noir. The camera angles and dark cinematography is missing and the picture is a bit more Hollywood in look than a typical noir. I'd more consider this one noir-lite! This isn't really a complaint...more just an observation about the style of the film.All in all, this is a very exciting and bleak film. The ending is top-notch and the film one of Heflin's best. Well worth seeing...and oddly not especially well known or formulaic in the least.

This one isn't around very often on television. I don't know why. It's a pretty good noir, in its own slightly screwy way. When we think of noir, we tend to think of some big dumb brute like Robert Mitchum being manipulated by a scheming woman. Here it's the other way around.Evelyn Keyes is a bored housewife whose husband is an all-night disk jockey in a thinly disguised Los Angeles. She reports a prowler one night and temptation knocks on the door in the form of police officer Van Heflin. Heflin smirks a lot but he seems to ignite Keyes and soon they are boffing each other while Keyes' elderly hubby is spinning records on the radio. She was unfulfilled before, her husband being impotent, but she's no long unfulfilled and falls in love with Heflin.I don't think I want to give away much more of the plot because this is one of those instances in which an inexpensively made movie actually has some unpredictable elements in it.Making this film must have been fascinating, in one way or another, for everyone involved. A middle-aged guy, John Maxwell, great name, pats his wife on the rump. Don't know how that made it past the gate. And the House Unamerican Activities committee was hitting its stride, of course. Joseph Losey, the director, simply gave up and moved permanently to England where he turned out some seriously perverted masterpieces like "The Servant" and some engaging whimsy like "Modesty Blaise." The writer Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted but continued working. Here he appears under the nom de plume "Hugo Butler," the name of a good friend of his.The producer, S. P. Eagle (aka Sam Spiegel) threw an expensive wrap party and asked everyone to chip in for it. But he'd worked the party into the budget, so he just pocketed everyone's contributions and walked away with the money. As Heflin's character says in a desperate attempt at self justification -- everybody is a little crooked, from bankers to grocery store owners. He could have added movie producers.I suppose it's possible to read communist propaganda into this movie. Movies cover a lot of ground and, like the Bible or the Constitution, you can pretty much find anything you're interested in finding. Why, for instance, did Heflin have to use bankers as one of several examples of crooked businessmen? True, Trumbo's lines did include grocery store owners and a couple of other working-class types but still -- bankers? Why cast such aspersions? Everyone knows bankers and brokers never cheat. And not just bankers. The protagonist is a greedy, murdering cop. Everyone knows cops are there to serve and to protect us. But there's your commie pinko talking for you, polluting our precious bodily fluids.Evelyn Keyes was just getting divorced from John Huston at the time this was shot, and her father-in-law, Walter Huston, had just died. That may account for the uneasy quality of her performance. She seems breathless and she trembles throughout. Van Heflin turns in a nice performance. His lies sounded very convincing, to me as well as to the object of his affection. And there are moments when he actually makes us feel sorry for him. But, honestly, wiliness and guile are not his shtik. He's better at straightforward villainy ("They Came to Cordura") and he was excellent as the simple but not unperceptive squatter in "Shane." The sets are minimal and uniformly bleak. The big "hacienda" that the wealthy Keyes lives in looks spare and barren. And Heflin's cop lives in what I guess is called a studio apartment and what I'm sure would be called a dump. Joe Friday was never this badly off.