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Memorable, crazy movie

Admirable film.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Excellent, truly depressing, forgotten noir starring Farley Granger. He plays a young man who's had an incredibly difficult life: he has grown up poor. His father, when he was a teenager, committed suicide after committing a robbery. The church denied providing any services for his father and basically told Granger and his mother that the guy was doomed to rot in Hell. Granger's mom was too religious to give it up, but Granger holds a powerful grudge for the church. The film opens with his mother dying, and Granger has to honor his mother's final wishes by going to the church to get her a funeral. A big one, he insists, because she never had anything good in life. Unfortunately, the priest his mother trusts (Dana Andrews) is out on a call, and he is forced to deal with the same priest (Harold Vermilyea) who denied his father a proper burial. This agitates Granger so much, he ends up committing a horrible crime. Andrews is quicker to understand the truth than the police, so he tries to get Granger to turn himself in before he gets himself in more trouble. Both Granger and Andrews are very good in their roles, and Mark Robson, who previously directed several horror films in the Val Lewton cycle, does an excellent job ratcheting up the suspense. This was kind of a bomb on its first release. It perhaps was too dark, even for the genre. Farley Granger didn't think it was very good, but he was wrong. He should have been proud of it. You can find this film right now on Netflix Instant. It was on VHS, but has never been on DVD.

Edge of Doom (1950)It would be hard to find a movie as unrelentingly dark and brooding as this one. Everyone from the priest to the hero's mother, from the sweet girlfriend to the neighbor down the hall is burdened with the pain of everyday life. Most of the scenes at night, too, or inside dark rooms and hallways, or both, so the shadowy world only descends lower. And this is partly what makes it really work. Dana Andrews is a worldly, reflective priest in a tale of redemption, actually, against all this gloom. The protagonist is a young Farley Granger, who gets in trouble from a single rash act, and is in a tailspin for the rest of the movie. From one shadowy scene to another, running through dark streets or hiding in a dingy apartment, Granger has to face his inner demon.But Granger, like Andrews, is a thoroughly decent person inside, and the movie, despite all the negative vibes, is about faith and goodness. Director Mark Robson is not a big name, of course, but he paid his dues with some of the best--Robert Wise and Val Lewton. And he came out of an era of Hollywood that was uncompromising in its technical quality. It shows. This is a movie with a single main theme, and if it has impassioned acting and high dramatics (at times) it also is gritty and single minded, too. The plot is packaged too neatly, and littered with Andrews narrating through the long flashback. That's its one limitation--that it's limited. But what it does do it does with real intensity.

This film was told by veteran priest Dana Andrews to a young troubled priest. The tale was about a real-life murder and how Andrews came to become involved in counseling this young killer. The intent of the story was to make you feel sorry for Farley Granger and understand his motivation--something I just KNEW would be a major thrust in the film since Farley made a habit of playing young "good" men who somehow go bad (as in ROPE and THEY LIVE BY NIGHT). The problem with this whole angle, though, is that apart from Granger's poverty, I didn't feel the least bit sorry for him or understand the pointless murder. Granger's character was very whiny and weak and frankly he disgusted me with his petulant manner throughout the film. Now Andrews was excellent as a priest--forgiving, kind and yet tough when he had to be and I could understand why, as a priest, he worked so hard to save Granger's soul--even if Granger was a childish idiot. In fact, aside from Granger's character, the film was very good but the general unlikability of him really did a lot to deaden the impact of the film. A nice try to make a film with a social conscience, but it just didn't fly and is just a time-passer.

Samuel Goldwyn produced this hybrid of social consciousness, religion and noir stylistics, which is not successful on any level. The plot pits wise priest Dana Andrews against clean-cut slum kid Farley Granger. Ironically, this anti-poverty lesson is decked out in a sumptuous production, complete with Harry Stradling's glowing photography of the mean streets.