LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

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 "He Walked By Night" (1948) fully deserves its good reputation as a classic noir, thanks mainly to its chilling performance by Richard Basehart and a great deal of atmospherically low-key location filming in Los Angeles by ace cameraman, John Alton. "He Walked by Night" is also one of Hollywood's rare movies with no romance. Absolutely none at all! In fact, not even a hint of one. It's Mr. Whit Bissell, not some well endowed Hollywood starlet, who shines in the support case. Anthony Mann is reputed to have directed some scenes in this movie, but I have no idea what they were, as it was not an assignment that he claimed in his credits."He Walked by Night" is currently available on an Alpha DVD. I would give this DVD a mark of least eight out of ten.

mark.waltz Atmospheric and detailed in every way, shape and form, this is what tension is all about. Cop killings are a serious matter, and nearly 70 years later, this film still hits raw nerves. After the titles dedication to the world of law enforcement is followed by stock footage narration that takes you to downtown Los Angeles where calls come in one after another that the narrator describes as a city gone mad. Corrupt or not, the police force has a job to do, and when real criminals are taken off the streets of any big city, it is something to celebrate. There are moments of silence here that in some films indicates that nothing is going on, but here, something is always happening. Richard Basehart gives a truly creepy performance as a cop killer who kills the officer simply asking him where he is going in total cold blood. Witnesses surface who saw the fleeing Basehart are gathered together where little descriptions provide enough of a picture of who they are looking for. Los Angeles streets turn sinister as the killer leads the police force (among them Scott Brady and Jack Ebb) on a not so merry chase.If you like tight camera work that really goes into the structure of the new wave, then this is a great example of how film noir and crime dramas, whether on the big screen or the then new invention of television. It's a chase not only between cop and criminal, but camera and cast, turning precincts, streets, sewers and various other types of locations into characters. The end of the war gave filmmakers new tricks to try, and this one succeeded in abundance.

Baceseras Not a little masterpiece as some of its fans would claim, "He Walked by Night" is just standard cheapie police-procedural: a manhunt for a cop killer, with the police techniques spelled out as if for an audience of simpletons. What distinguishes it from dozens of similar movies is the very energetic light-and-shadow work by cinematographer John Alton. Alton's brief must have been, in the first place, to disguise the low-budget deficiencies of the production (unable to shoot sound on location, unable to build elaborate sets); and he succeeds in covering them up, but then he keeps going, and going . . . until the film becomes a black-and-white graphic-arts explosion. (The editing is a let-down though, merely smooth and adequate, not up to the mark of the photography.) The sound design (although it wasn't called that back then) is sharp and inventive too, especially the noises and voices at a crowded streetside investigation late at night, and the echo after the concluding gunshot.A promising young actor named Richard Basehart, still new to films, plays the killer at the center of it all, and he holds us right from the start; but as it soon becomes apparent the film isn't going to explore his character, it turns into a hollow exercise. There's a scarily intense self-surgery - no on-screen gore, but we can read every detail in Basehart's face. The other actors are a drab bunch, especially the ones playing cops, with the exception of Jack Webb, who takes advantage of his colleagues' mopishness to indulge in some shameless scene-stealing: it's petty theft - he ought to be ashamed. Dependable Whit Bissell plays a shopkeeper, dependably.

evening1 Richard Basehart is chilling as a radio operator-turned rogue in this noir that is literally cloaked in shadows.Rather than be caught with lock-picking tools, Roy pumps a patrolman full of lead. The cop tries valiantly to fight back and a whole detail of gumshoes work the streets of LA to find this reptilian thief.The cops use a mild-mannered businessman as the bait to catch Roy, leaving him woefully vulnerable to injury or worse. Basehart is chilling in a couple of claustrophobic scenes with the sap.Basehart gets milk deliveries to feed his poor dog, and that turns out to be his undoing. The film ends jarringly abruptly, like the victim's life.Grim, harsh, and powerful.