Watch Nightmare For Free

Touches You

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Let's begin by getting the few squawks out of the way; for no discernible reason the story is set in New Orleans yet not one single person in the cast employs a Southern accent or indeed anything other than an Eastern accent of the kind we'd expect to find in Manhattan. New Orleans of course is celebrated as the cradle of jazz and protagonist Kevin McCarthy is indeed a muso BUT he plays clarinet in a large SWING orchestra - led, in fact, by the great Billy May who also has a speaking role and plays trumpet, as he did in real life. Nothing wrong with that, in fact in my case it's a bonus EXCEPT New Orleans is synonymous with Dixieland and a Swing outfit on Bourbon Street would be like Turnip Greens at the Four Seasons. Those cavils to one side we're left with a taut, nourish entry which holds the attention all the way.

Kevin McCarthy has a terrible nightmare one night, in which he finds himself inside a room with walls and doors covered in mirrors. He sees what looks like a burglary and tries to prevent it, but in the process kills the burglar. Panicking, he hides the body in one of the mirrored closets, before waking up in a cold sweat. When McCarthy finds a button and a key from his nightmare in his pocket the next day, he fears it might've been than a bad dream. Soon after, on a picnic with his girl Connie Russell, his sister Virginia Christine and brother-in-law Edward G. Robinson, they come across an abandoned house. In the house they find the mirrored room from McCarthy's dream, including a burned safe. And when they find out there's been a murder committed, the nightmare has truly come to life... Robinson, a homicide detective, is convinced McCarthy is guilty but after a failed suicide attempt by McCarthy and a crucial piece of information that he remembers, Robinson decides to look deeper into the matter.This is the 2nd film noir based on the Cornell Woolrich story 'And So To Death'. The first one, 'Fear In The Night', was made in 1947 and was directed by Maxwell Shane. And lo and behold, so is this one! Both movies are very alike and both are well worth watching. This one's set in New Orleans, and has the appropriate 50s jazzy soundtrack. McCarthy ('Invasion Of The Body Snatchers') gives a good if not great performance as a man who's possibly guilty of murder while Robinson ('Double Indemnity') almost phones it in here, which still means he's better than anybody else in the movie, hah... Russell and Christine have very little to do besides being 'the women', neither portray particularly strong women, altho Russell does some nice singing in this movie (if that's her real voice, I have no idea).Aside from fairly minor differences, the main ones being a difference in location and the climax in this one involves a lake and not a car chase, the movies are too alike really. I am not sure what Shane's idea was with this version, the original is a good noir as-is, and so is this one, but it doesn't improve or add anything really. He still does a decent job tho, but with the main story intact, it feels too much like a rehash. DoP Joseph Biroc ('Cry Danger', 'The Garment Jungle') does a good job, not just with the dream sequence but overall the movie is nicely shot. Unfortunately, and also like 'Fear...', this movie seems to be in public domain hell, the copy I saw is in better shape than the version I saw of 'Fear...' (which was really bad) but still washed out. I would love to see cleaned up copies of both, maybe on a 'double feature' DVD? Just don't watch them back-to-back. 7/10

Pine-Thomas (the 2 Dollar Bills) certainly got their money's worth out of the William Irish (Cornell Woolrich) story "Nightmare". Back in 1947 they made it as "Fear in the Night" with a young Deforest Kelly ("Bones" from the original "Star Trek" series) making an impressive debut and veteran Paul Kelly as his brother in law. It was a case of really there is nothing to separate these two fine films (unusually Maxwell Shane wrote and directed both films) with "Nightmare" being equally impressive and having the edge in production values and being set in an interesting jazz environment "way down yonder in New Orleans". In the earlier film Kelly was his usual edgy, angsty self while Robinson rounded out his characterization by being a very motivated cop (shades of "Double Indemnity").Kevin McCarthy is just fantastic and I couldn't agree less with the reviewer that feels he just walked through his part. He is Stan Grayson, a jazz musician, who awakes from a ghastly nightmare which took place in a room full of mirrors, convinced he has killed a man. Being stressed with work and having, that same day, some of his arrangements rejected for being too "out there" is enough to have him doubting his own mind. He goes straight to his sister (Virginia Christine), and his brother in law, Rene (Robinson) a cynical cop tells Stan his mind is suffering from overwork - even when Stan produces a key and a button that he doesn't know how he got!!!Of course things start to fall into place when, taking shelter from a fierce thunderstorm which wrecks their picnic, Stan somehow directs them to an unoccupied house in the middle of nowhere!! "I've been here before"!!! He knows where the spare key is and then shows Rene the "room of mirrors" at the top of the house. Rene then believes Stan is a cold blooded murderer who has deliberately involved his family only for sympathy but in the usual Robinson way he systematically sets about solving the case and leading to an ingenious conclusion involving Stan's meek and mild neighbour.This movie was made when Robinson's career was at it's lowest ebb, he had had a run in with the H.U.A.A.C and felt after that a lot of the work he was given was mediocre. Viewing the movies now, a lot of them were better than the As (Cecil B. DeMille etc) of the time and Robinson's performances are among his best. Marian Carr who played the blonde vamp Stan encounters when he is trying to retrace his steps had a pretty uneventful career, considering the promise and the big things that were expected from her when she first went to Hollywood. She was voted "Miss Insomnia" as the starlet voted most likely to keep men from their sleep!!! but after "Nightmare" her career was over!!

Cornell Woolrich was the source of many scripts from the time he was writing in the thirties (in the last century) up until now. His books themselves are hopelessly outdated in writing style, overwritten and florid - but the plots - he was a veritable Agatha Christie when it came to cooking up noir twists and turns. One of my favorites was his novella Nightmare, here (forgive me) hypnotically brought to the screen with moody settings, bayous drenched in rain, mirrored rooms, seedy hotel rooms in New Orleans, a weird strangulated score based on the songs in the movie and great performances by ALL involved, a suspicious Edward G. Robinson who's a hard boiled cop reprising his performance in Double Indemnity with his wife's brother Kevin McCarthy as the foil instead of Fred McMurray. Only in this picture McCarthy is innocent. McCarthy, hitting his stride in, in my opinion, the best sci-fi thriller of all time, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. did NIGHTMARE the same year and brings believability to his role as the skittish and floundering jazz musician living in a New Orleans seedy hotel while drifting through the Bourbon Street Bar scene. In one scene he picks up a prostitute (which you feel he's done before as their bar banter is done with the greatest of ease.) Even though, of course, he has a girlfriend, and only freaks and bolts from her apartment when, in a weird shot in the mirror, the prostitute reminds him of the woman in the mirrored room of his nightmare...in which he feels he's killed someone and though there's no proof, can't get it out of his mind. Turns out McCarthy was hypnotized into believing he killed someone and why not? The plot's half noir and half giallo anyway. What is the secret of the mirrored room? Does it exist? Of course. And the murder was all very real and executed with great aplomb by the extremely creepy Gage Clarke who in a dual role moves into McCarthy's seedy hotel as presumably just another transient but in a bizarre and disquieting scene actually comes into McCarthy's room with a candle and hypnotizes him further to keep him under his control. You have to check this villain's voice out and his hypnotic structured repetitions for a real spooked out treat. McCarthy is excellent - paranoid and losing it. His girlfriend Connie Russell is the penultimate pin-up babe of the fifties, going the length for 'her man' while decked out in tight sweaters and singing some low down numbers live and in the studio, such as 'It was the last I ever saw of that man' and ' What's Your Sad Story, it can't be sadder than mine' Virginia Christine, Mrs. Olson 'It's Mountain Grown', fresh from co-starring with McCarthy in INVASION, doesn't disappoint here and rounds out a great cast as the pregnant wife of Edward G. Robinson. Pretty much a controlling hysteric type, she goes bananas during thunderstorms with great aplomb! Maxwell Shane directed this material before in FEAR IN THE NIGHT which is fairly unremarkable with a few good moments. But NIGHTMARE is great! The plot is not at all dated and has no holes but is neatly devised and carried out. In the end everything makes sense. I think this movie is vastly underrated and a strange and strong entry in the noir canon. There's something haunting about it you can't shake off.