User reviews

Sometimes one runs across an Academy Award level performance in a B film and the performance doesn't get the attention it should have. Mala Powers was a remarkably talented actress who rarely got to show off what she was capable of doing, being used largely as decoration in things like fifties horror movies because, alas, she was quite attractive and in those days of Piper Laurie, Lori Nelson, et cetera, young attractive ladies were often cast in slop. But in this highly watchable effort Mala Powers gives what amounts to a complete acting class as she pours her heart into this stunning performance which has to be watched several times to be fully appreciated. Ms. Powers taught the Michael Chekhov school or style of acting professionally for many years but she could certainly show her students this work as evidence that she knew what she was talking about. In this acting theory, the Chekhov-influenced actor attempts to indicate through gestures a reflection of the interior or psychic anguish that is being felt. Movements and gestures must be true and effective and lively but not forced and inappropriate or unnecessarily exaggerated. If you just take isolated scenes and you know the plot, you can watch her emotional display and her gesturing and how organic and integrated they are. There are no false moves, no exaggerated gestures and no grandstanding. Ably supported by Jacques Bergerac as a troubled man who seems to find highly troubled women to court without even trying, Mala Powers keeps us wondering about her sanity until the rather feeble and highly implausible ending moments but it's well worth a watch for people who like to curl up and watch a pretty good mystery thriller with one performance that goes way beyond what one would expect and which shows the post-Slanislavski school (Slanikovsky was Chekhov's teacher) in all its raging glory. It's a must-see for serious acting students. I hope this review does not sound too artsy for the viewer-- it's one of the gutsiest performances in a film that I've seen!

Although French ,Jacques Bergerac made only two movies in his native land :"un homme se penche sur son passé" and a small part in "Marie-Antoinette Reine De France "where he is virtually unknown ; is it because of that that his name in the movie is Colbert (like Claudette ,who is famous both in the US and in her native land)?

"Fear no more " is an excellent Hitchcokian thriller , with a solid screenplay,and good acting ,particularly by Mala Powers ,lost in a nightmarish set -up : as soon as they arrive in her boss's house, there's no more letup as the story continues to build in suspense and intensity as the interventions become more and more overwhelming for the heroine -who spent some time in a mental hospital- who thinks she's losing her mind -and her only ally does too;Helena Nash's face recalls several hitchcock's villainesses (" the man who knew too much" 2nd version ,"notorious" )

And the screenwriters had not forgotten Hitchcock's lesson:expect the unexpected ; the sudden new developments are numerous all along the movie ,and the supporting characters are not cardboard ( the child's mother is not so petulant, Seymour is not so strong);but the movie belongs to Mala Powers ,whose facial expressions ran the gamut from pain to terror to rebellion.

Entertaining movie. Don't turn it off, it gets better. One thing that doesn't ring true. She believes the police are looking for her believing she is a murderer. They have her purse and, with it, her home address. So, after she escapes from the police, instead of trying to hide, she goes home and thinks every thing is now OK. I'd be trying to dig a hole to hide in. But, that aside, it's a very entertaining film and moves quickly.

Mala Powers is sent on a business trip by her employer, John Harding. When she gets to her train compartment, there's a man with a gun, and a dead woman. After she fails to convince him that she is not whoever he is looking for, he knocks her out. A cop wakes her, and prepares to take her to jail. However, Miss Powers escapes and hitches a ride with Jacques Bergerac and his son back to Los Angeles. After Bergerac drops his son off with his ex-wife (with many recriminations), he returns to Miss Powers and tries to find out what's bothering her. She evades his questions, and finds her old boyfriend, whom she was letting stay in her apartment while she was gone, dead.

It's a story that grows more and more dire as secrets are revealed, things she remembers not being where she left them -- including the ex-boyfriend -- until her resolve crumbles and she falls into a paranoid rant.

It's a pretty good movie up until that point, with the audience beginning to question the evidence of their own eyes. One of the IMDb reviewers calls it "Hitchcock on a budget" and that's not a bad description if you ignore the lack of visual flair. The result is an intriguing movie .... at least until the denouement, which is a bit of a disappointment.

Secretary Sharon Carlin (Mala Powers) heads from Los Angeles to San Francisco via train on a business trip. Things go bad the moment the train leaves the station as she is met in her cabin by a dead woman and a man with a gun, who knocks her unconscious. She is woken up by a cop who tells her the body has been moved and she is being charged with murder. She jumps off the train and soon runs into good Samaritan Paul Colbert (Jacques Bergerac). He initially believes her story, but then begins to have doubts when she reveals she spent time in a mental institution for murder. This 77-minute picture moves at a fast pace and has some nice twists in it. Viewers will actually start to doubt Sharon's story and her paranoia is well established. Not a classic, but worth watching once if just for the scene where Colbert's son cracks his forehead on the dashboard in a near crash.

Mala Powers mistakenly thinks she can FEAR NO MORE when Good Samaritan Jacques Bergerac finds her lying in the middle of the road after she escapes the policeman who arrested her for the murder of a woman on a train. He takes her to her place where there's another dead body and the couple get an even bigger surprise when they go to her employer's house and find the cop and the "murdered" woman there, insisting she's insane. Jacques doesn't know what to think when he's told Mala is also an escapee from a mental institution after having killed her previous employer. WTF?

Jacques Bergerac, handsome star of stage, screen, and tabloid scandal, was like a suave, Gallic version of Mike Henry whose thick French accent made him hard to understand half the time but it never mattered much since he was usually just eye candy anyway. As luck would have it, Jacques is called upon to react instead of act in this "twisty mystery" that's not half bad if you don't examine it too closely and, in its defense, you don't get the chance. Bottom line: it's a fast-moving B- movie held together by Mala Powers, a pretty good little actress, something I never noticed before.

A terse little thriller which both recalls 'North by Northwest' and 'Psycho' and anticipates 'Marnie' and 'Torn Curtain' shot by the Academy Award-winning cameraman Ernest Haller beginning at Union Station at night and ending in the Hollywood Hills the following morning.

The plot gets so convoluted you half expect it all to turn out to be a dream (or rather a nightmare) but when it finally does reach it's conclusion it does so satisfactorily.

FEAR NO MORE stars Mala Powers as Sharon Carlin, who finds herself caught up in a terrifying mystery full of murder and possible conspiracy. All this, arising from a simple, relaxing train ride to San Francisco.

When Sharon is joined by a seemingly helpful man named Paul (Jacques Bergerac), her life truly begins to spin out of control!

This is a wonderfully dark suspense thriller! The best of such films reveal the depraved / perverse side of human nature, usually resulting in its undoing. This movie is nearly perfect on that score...

Never heard of Director Bernard Wiesen, and doubt I'll want to hear. FEAR NO MORE is a blatant ripoff of Alfred Hitchcock's THE 39 STEPS (UK 1935), except that Jacques Bergerac (why an actor with a French accent in California?) is no Robert Donat and Mala Powers certainly is no Madeleine Carroll.

The preposterous script is rendered all the more so by Powers' hesitancy to explain what is going on, until it transpires that she was in a mental asylum before. How tragic, such a pretty girl, who had behaved so normally and seemed intent on serving her bosses to the best of her ability... and we learn that she is about to become the fall girl in a nefarious scheme devised by her boss from hell, John Harding, who is surrounded by a host of useless henchmen that reminded me of the three stooges, one of them a woman who is supposed to be the villain's wife but is really his sister... how incestuous is that?

Good old Jacques Bergerac is not just a handsome boy, he also saves the day by sticking to Powers like the proverbial leach. Why he goes the extra mile for her we will never know, just as why Powers' alleged murder of a woman should be punished with her stay in a mental asylum beats logic.

Perfunctorily done, shabby photography, substandard acting. Watchable - that's about it! 6/10.

Fear No More is a B noir starring Mala Powers and Jacques Bergerac.

The film begins with Powers receiving travel instructions from her boss' chauffeur and offering a friend her apartment for the weekend as she boards a train.

Her situation then becomes a Kafkaesque nightmare. She's accused of killing a woman on the train and knocked unconscious. She escapes from the police and, after almost being run over, hitches a ride to LA with a man, Paul Colbert (Jacques Bergerac) and his son.

Colbert is concerned about her and wants to help. He accompanies her to her boss' house. Her boss denies asking her to travel, and to her horror, the woman who claims to be his wife is actually the woman she saw dead on the train. We then learn she was committed to an asylum after the death of her mother. Colbert begins to doubt her story.

A bit convoluted but kept my interest.

Mala Powers was good as the agitated and frightened woman. Jacques Bergerac was a handsome Frenchman who made his career, my mother said, "by marrying beautiful actresses," those actresses being Ginger Roger's and Dorothy Malone.

At one point he proposed to Tyrone Power's widow Debbie. Tyrone Jr. And his stepbrother thought that was fine as Bergerac had two daughters their age. Didn't work out.

He later became the head of Revlon's Paris office.

Fear No More is a Hitchcock lite low budget noirish conspiracy thriller. It was the only film made by director Bernard Wiesen. The rest of his output was television shows.

Sharon (Mala Powers) is a secretary taken to the train for a business trip to San Francisco by her employer's chauffeur. He puts her on the train and gives her an envelope for an errand.

In the compartment she finds a stranger and a dead woman. She is knocked out and when she regains consciousness. A cop accuses her of murder. Sharon manages to escape from the cop.

She is almost run down by Paul (Jacques Bergerac) a Frenchman taking his son back to his ex wife Denise. Paul gives Sharon a lift to her Los Angeles apartment where she lives with Keith.

Only when she returns to the apartment after going out for a drink with Paul. Keith is dead and the same killer from the train pursues her.

It transpires that Sharon had a mental breakdown. Maybe she is mad or paranoid. Her employer Milo Seymour tells a different story. Sharon was not sent on a business trip and stole $3000 from his safe which is in her envelope.

Not only that, the dead woman from her train compartment walks in. She is alive and well and claims to be Milo's wife.

Despite the low budget, there are a lot of twists as it seems Milo has elaborate plans of his own. The ending does get very hysterical and melodramatic which is a bit of a let down.

When you watch "Fear No More", I strongly advise you to resist the urge to turn off the movie prematurely. You are bound to think that the movie has a million different plot holes and problems but it is important to realize that eventually they do all fit together and make sense.

When the story begins, a woman is riding on a train and she is attacked by a man with a gun. Before she is knocked unconscious, she notices a dead man in the compartment with her. When she awakens, a man identifying himself as a policeman is interviewing her and acting as if she murdered the woman in the train car. However, soon she manages to escape from him and is soon picked up by a nice man who offers to help.

You need to understand that there is a reason the policeman doesn't seem very competent and the story so hard to believe and if you keep watching there is an excellent payoff. Plus many of the typical cliches you'd expect to see in such a film are often subverted in the name of the plot and characters making sense. For example, in too many movies, a person in trouble meets up with someone while they're on the run and almost instantly the stranger believes them and risks their life to help....but this isn't exactly what happens in "Fear No More"...just watch and you'll see the plot problems and cliches melt away and the story turns out to be a dandy. Well worth your time...just be patient with it!

An unheralded little movie with no pedigree, "Fear No More" plunges the viewer into a mesmerizing story of paranoia, thanks to an ingenious screenplay by Leslie Edgley. Unknown director Bernard Wiesen does a bang-up job keeping the screws on tight as we identify first with framed heroine Mala Powers plunged into a world of hurt and then dashing hero/Good Samaritan Jacques Bergerac as the bystander who is the only one who can save her.

While watching it for the first time, some 63 years after release, I furiously took notes on the details of the story, the interesting clues, suspicious character and clever plot twists leading to a great final reel that reveals the elements of the conspiracy against her. It's far-fetched but both engrossing and satisfying.

For me, the absence of "ringers" in the supporting cast -no familiar faces or B-movie stars to identify as villains, adds to the credibility of this very fine sleeper.

Entertaining Noir thriller is flawed by a highly improbable and construed narrative, but it does have its moments.

(1961) Fear No More PSYCHOLOGICAL CRIME THRILLER

It has secretary companion, Sharon Carlin (Mala Powers) running some errands for her boss Mr. Seymour at the train station. And before she leaves, she is then met by a former friend, Keith Burgess (John Baer). At this point viewers are oblivious what their relationship was like except that she hands him a little money and at the same time offered him to stay at her apartment complex. She tells him she was supposed to pick up an already paid kimono from San Francisco. And by the time she attended to her train compartment, she is then greeted with a stranger she has never seen before with a gun pointed straight at her. She also sees another lady who is dead, and he knocks her out. By the time she comes to, another guy who claims he is working for the police says she is being charged for murder and that she is being escorted out of the train on the next stop to Whitford. By the time she escapes she is almost hit by a driver, Paul Colbert (Jacques Bergerac) an insurance broker heading to his ex's house to drop off their son. And as we find out more about Sharon herself, it is not long before we find out she was let out of a mental institution.

The gaslighting made it way more interesting than the cop out ending to which it looked like they ran out of funding.

This is a good suspenseful mystery that grabbed me from the very beginning and never let me go. Sharon (Mala Powers) is seen at a rail station being given instructions to travel to San Francisco in the opening scene. She has a shock awaiting for her in her booked 4B sleeper compartment on the train when a man with a gun is waiting for her. A woman is lying on the floor who Sharon takes as being murdered. Sharon is knocked out by a heavy slug from a gun in the hands of the mysterious intruder. When she recovers consciousness, she undergoes a series of bizarre incidents starting with an arrest by a man calling himself a policeman. The mystery continues with reveal after reveal, only we can never be sure that any reveal is genuine. She enlists the help of a good samaritan in the guise of Paul Colbert (Jacques Bergerac). He manages to elicit some details of Sharon's past but it becomes obvious she isn't declaring everything. There are twists and turns in the story in which we get the impression that Sharon is being gaslit by individuals who are using information about her from her past. Mala Powers gives a good performance in this one and only release from Scaramouche Productions.

Arriving at what is Arguably the Very End of the Film-Noir Cycle.

Before Serious Students of the Genre Morphed the Label into "Neo-Noir" (approximately 1962).

Mala Powers, an Actor's Actor and Professional Instructor in the Craft, gives a Dynamic Performance in this Little-Late-Noir.

She Dominates, along with a Taut Touch of Directing and Production.

A Film about a Psychologically Troubled Woman Caught in the Vortex of an Elaborate Personal Spiral.

It's a "Gaslight" Type of Movie where the Audience is kept Guessing whether She is Delusional about what Goes On Around Her.

A Good Movie Despite its Limited Resources and a Well-Traveled Plot.

The Style is Minimalist and Straight-Forward and does Not Bend too Much to Film-Noir and its Tendency to Coat the Proceedings with Surrealism and Affectations.

Mala Gives it Her All in One-More Role in a Long and Prolific Career in Film and TV.

She is Surrounded with Good-Support and an Intriguing Script that Milks the Suspense and Twists in an Entertaining B-Movie Format.

Definitely Worth a Watch.

An excellent woman in peril and has to run from men who want to force her into an asylum mystery.

It appears to be all paranoid, but as usual everything is not what it seems. Anyone would believe or not believe the strange stories and events occurring here, but there is no intrigue without a flaw somewhere. The only victim is in fact the poor Keith, who was in love with Mala Powers and got the worse for it, but it was not his fault. He could have no idea of what kind of people Mala got involved with, and even less she could herself, as they actually helped her and got her a job. When finally the web starts to break up you wonder which link will be the first to break, the chauffeur, the sister, the retired policeman who was the first to vanish, the doctor who only appears speaking on the phone, or the greedy man. Actually it's the last one, but you have to wait long for it, but when he breaks he breaks with a vengeance. They all get upset, as if Mala's reasonable upsets were contagious, all except the Frenchman, who is the one who stays cool all along, while his curiosity leads him to find the body, which saves the whole extremely messy affair.

It's a very Hitchcockian thriller, all paranoid, but well acted and efficient enough to keep anyone in suspense until the very last.

Like so many other films of the early- to mid-twentieth century, 'Fear no more' maintains a decidedly brisk pace. As it does, the first impression it makes is that the course of events is a little strained, heavily reliant on movie magic to build the story. However, another image begins to form as the plot advances, and the feature in some ways comes across as a psychological thriller: fraught with fear and anxiety as protagonist Sharon is, she seems to be the only reasonable person, targeted to be framed for murder, hounded by astoundingly incompetent but persistent cops, and surrounded by other individuals who are brusque or forceful in their own ways. Just as this air is cemented, the narrative starts to take still another turn. I don't know that the course of events and plot development are perfectly solid and convincing - but in the very least the movie does a great job of keeping us engaged to see how the tale unfolds.

Ultimately the plot is tight and absorbing, vivid with tension and suspense, and deliberately twisting around itself to hook viewers. I will say that the towering pomposity of the narrative is maybe a little much, to the point that it seems to be teetering on the edge of collapsing under its own weight. This is arguably an instance in which the picture would have actually benefited from not being wound so tightly. Put this aside, however, and the screenplay is flush with complicated characters, sharp dialogue, varied and stimulating scene writing, and a complete and intriguing narrative. Bernard Wiesen exhibits fine direction in keeping the crowded production bound together and steadily moving, and the cast are well in bringing their roles to life - not least of all star Mala Powers, whose performance as Sharon requires adept range and nuance that she handily illustrates.

It's perhaps not so pulse-pounding and enthralling a feature as to demand viewership, and it's worth noting that the very end - the very last scene, following the climax - is plainly overdone so as to elicit a tired sigh as it hones in on a boring trope. Yet even as the plot sometimes struggles to bear its own mass, as a whole this is well made in every regard. It's a thriller that meets its promise, and feels quite kindred to film noir of the preceding decade that it only just leaves behind as the saga spirals out. Compared to some of its brethren 'Fear no more' maybe isn't so special as to be essential, but if you have the opportunity to watch it, these are nevertheless 80 minutes that deserve remembrance and recognition.

"Fear No More" is a nifty little B-movie sure to please fans of the woman-in-peril subgenre. Mala Powers plays a young woman recently dismissed from a mental health facility, only to be ensared in a devilish plot to frame her for murder. One-time filmmaker Bernard Wiesen really keeps things moving, never giving the audience a chance to get bored. Apparently, Wiesen worked on the set of "The Trouble with Harry", and one imagines he picked up a thing or two from the master.

What really elevates this for me is the presence of Jacques Bergerac. I've seen him in a number of these low-budget affairs, and he always classes up the joint with his (extremely) thick French accent and his manful, Gallic charm. The guy's simply a joy to watch, and he gets to play a genuinely decent person here. John Harding, recognizable from his many TV roles, is a nice contrast as a hatable slimeball who just barely keeps it together when his plans are threatened.

This is adapted from a 1940s mystery novel by Leslie Edgley, so the script is a touch more intelligent than a typical production of its kind. This would make a good double bill with "Woman in Hiding", another tale of a gaslit woman helped out of impossible circumstances by someone believing in her against all evidence.