Fear in the Night

Deforest Kelley has a nightmare in which he kills a man. He can't go in to work, so he goes driving with his sister and girl friend and brother-in-law Paul Kelly... to the house in which he dreamt the murderer.

It's a film noir from a story by Cornell Woolrich, so you know up front that it's going to be overwrought. It's also Kelley's first feature, and screenwriter Maxwell Shane's debut as director. Given the poor condition of the copy I looked at -- plenty of hiss on the audio track, as well as looking as if it was made from a 16mm. TV print -- I was not able to evaluate cinematographer Jack Greenhalgh's visuals, so important for a movie with extensive dream sequences.

Even with those handicaps, I was able to see the basic competence of this Pine-Thomas production. There's little that's fancy about the production, but the ripeness of the source material, the solid actors (Ann Doran has a solid role, and old Demille hand Julia Faye an uncredited bit) make this an agreeably disagreeable noir.