UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

JohnHowardReid Writer-director Maxwell Shane remade the film in 1956 as Nightmare starring Kevin McCarthy as the impressionable young man and Edward G. Robinson as his strong-willed brother-in-law.This was Kelley's feature film debut. He'd previously appeared in a small role in a 1945 short variously titled The Letter and Time To Kill starring George Reeves, Barry Nelson, Don Hanmer, Jimmy Lydon and Don Taylor. Although the re-make with Edgar G. Robinson has a bit more clout in the acting department, this one features a marvelous performance by Robert Emmett Keane, stepping out of character for once as a pest of a neighbor. True, Kelley's portrayal is little too overdone. The schmuck is supposed to be weak-willed but Kelley turns him into such a nerve-racked fraidy-cat that he tends to lose audience sympathy. Paul Kelly, of course, is well cast as the detective, and, aside from Kelley, he receives excellent support all the way down the line. Although the film was lensed on a "B" budget by the two dollar Bills, it seems to have more production values than the usual Pine-Thomas bills of fare.

blanche-2 DeForrest Kelley has "Fear in the Night" in this 1947 low-budget B film, also starring Paul Kelly and Ann Doran. Kelley plays Vince Grayson, who has a vivid dream that he has committed murder. In fact, he wakes up and finds a key and a button, which were part of the dream, and also blood on his wrist. He tells his cop brother-in-law Cliff about the dream, but Cliff brushes it off as just that, a dream.Later on, Vince goes on a picnic with his sister Lil (Ann Doran) and husband Cliff. When the rain starts coming down in buckets, they jump in the car and Vince directs them to a house, which turns out to be the murder house, down to the octagonal mirrored room that Vince described to Cliff. Cliff now believes that Vince committed murder and lied when he described the dream.Very good story that makes use of hypnosis as part of the plot. It is very well done, but you can't help thinking of what someone like Hitchcock would have done with the story. Instead, we have grainy film and footage of downtown Los Angeles, including, I think, the Commodore Hotel. The shots of old LA are wonderful - sometimes when films are done cheaply there is city shooting and use of the city in process shots, which always adds authenticity to the movie.When I showed my sister one of the screen shots and announced it was DeForrest Kelley, I thought her eyes would bug out of her head. Yes, he was once that young. He does a very good job, too.Well worth seeing, and if you're a fan of "Star Trek," it's a must!

Michael O'Keefe Very suspenseful and atmospheric. Film Noir based on a short story "Nightmare" by Cornell Woolrich. Vince Grayson(DeForest Kelley)is a bank teller that has a nightmare where he kills a stranger. After he wakes up he finds evidence that he may actually did kill someone. He asks his brother-in-law Cliff(Paul Kelly), who happens to be a detective, to help him make sense of his horrible dream. After Vince is drawn to a mansion, he realizes it has the mirrored room in which he killed the man in his dream. Intrigue and mystery. There actually has been a crime committed, but by whom? Other players include: Kay Scott, Ann Doran, Charles Victor and Robert Emmett Keane.

Robert J. Maxwell Spoilers.DeForrest Kelley narrates the opening and, intermittently, much of the rest of the story. He begins with something like, "A glowing face seemed to come towards me out of the darkness." On the screen, we see a glowing face seem to come towards us out of the darkness. A bit later the narrator tells us, "The room began spinning." On the screen, the room begins spinning. I guess the director, Maxwell Shane, must have given up at about the point at which the narrator tells us, "My heart was beating like a jackhammer." There isn't an abundance of imagination on display in this rather interesting story of an innocent nobody who is hypnotized into taking part in a burglary during which he's forced to kill a man. He wakes up the next morning believing it to have been a nightmare, except that there are some strange objects in his pockets and a smear of blood on his wrist. He explains his unease to his brother-in-law who is an officer in the homicide department. That would be Paul Kelly. Kelly dismisses it irritably and tells Kelley to pull himself together. But Kelley is unable to do that and fills the rest of the film with the pungent odor of sweaty fear. This was his film debut and he's neither good nor bad, just another actor with ordinary talent. You could probably find someone at about his level in any play, maybe "Our Town," produced at a community college in some sleepy town somewhere in Arkansas.The story is from Cornell Woolrich, a strange guy -- homosexual, boozer, recluse, and amputee. He wrote a lot of pulp stuff that was adapted into radio plays and films -- "Rear Window," "The Bride Wore Black." Well, it's a living, or at least it was when people still read books. He may have been the equal of James M. Cain when it came to prose style, in the sense that neither had any. Reading either of them will remind you of reading a newspaper. Raymond Chandler at least tried for some insane poetry, no matter how idiosyncratic it was. You know Chandler's oft-parodied line: "Her hair was the color of gold in old paintings"? You won't find anything resembling that in Cornell Woolrich or in this adaptation.The budget must have been very low. Aside from Paul Kelly, there are only one or two recognizable faces, such as Charles Victor's and Ann Doran's. There is little outdoor shooting. The sets are mostly skimpy. But the director sometimes goes ape over on-screen effects. The ancient iris is replaced by an expanding star, for instance. And the nightmare sequences -- wow. By the way, this guy's nightmares make a lot more sense than mine do. No glowing faces seem to come towards me out of the darkness. Aside from the sex elements, which I don't mind as long as they don't involve those funny animals, they often seem to involve my running away from some horrifying manticore or something, intent on eating me alive, while I try to flail my way through a vast swamp of molasses. I'm told that dreams of appearing naked in public are common but I've never been bothered by them, and as far as this movie goes, I'd prefer seeing DeForrest Kelley stabbing someone with an awl to watching him run through Port Authority with no clothes on. In fact, that's a pretty disgusting image.The musical score is perfunctory and the direction is functional, no more than that, with one or two exceptions. Here's one of them. Kelley calls in sick and his teller's window at the bank is filled by the young lady who loves him. The director shows her replacing his name plate with hers at the window and for a moment she holds the two names side by side and smiles down at them. It's a small moment but someone had to think of it. More like it would have helped.The element of hypnosis is not new but still fascinating because, even now, no one knows exactly what's going on in the hypnotic state. I studied the subject in graduate school and I've used it as an adjunct to therapy and it works fine in certain limited contexts. But it remains a mystery. Surgery has been performed using no anesthetic other than hypnosis. What we see of hypnosis on the screen is possible, but barely.