"He's dead, Jim!": DeForest Kelley's Film Noir Debut

Fear in the Night (1947)

If you've followed this blog any, it probably comes as no surprise that I'm something of an oddball. I've had a soft spot for the underdog all my life. In a Curly kind of world, I'm a Shemp fan. My favorite character from the original Star Trek series is not the hard charging Captain Kirk or the aloof, logical Spock, but rather the skeptical, irascible Doc Leonard "Bones" McCoy. And of course, I love old B movies that manage to overcome all the odds against them -- low budgets, no name actors, tight shooting schedules -- and still entertain in surprising ways.

So imagine my delight when several years ago I discovered (courtesy of Alpha Video) an obscure little B movie gem that combined several of my favorite things: film noir, Deforest Kelley, and a screenplay inspired by the great Cornell Woolrich (for more on Woolrich, see my review of The Chase, 1946).  The only thing it lacked was a cameo appearance by Shemp Howard, but then, comic relief would have ruined the dark atmosphere of the film.

Fear in the Night is classic, textbook noir in its theme of an ordinary Joe (in this case Vince) suddenly being caught up in forces beyond his control, committing crimes in spite of himself, and then having every avenue of escape cut off by circumstances and the grim, relentless arm of the law. A dark feeling of dread slowly builds and then envelops the protagonist, keeping him in its grip almost to the very end. Where it parts company with classic noir is the absence of the deadly dame, the femme fatale who lures the unsuspecting man to his doom like a flame beckoning a moth. (Actually, a scheming female does figure into the story, but she appears in only in one short scene, has no lines, and is more backdrop than anything else.)

Fear opens with an hallucinogenic dream sequence as Vince Greyson (DeForest Kelley) describes in voice over suddenly finding himself in a strange mirrored room in a strange house, interrupting what looks like a burglary as he confronts a man and a woman breaking into a closet safe. He struggles with the man, and ends up stabbing him with an awl that he pulls out of the woman's hand. After the woman disappears, Vince hides the man's body in another closet.

The next morning, it all seems like a bad dream, until Vince discovers blood on his wrist and a button and mysterious key in his pocket. With doubt clawing at his mind, Vince takes his concerns to his brother-in-law and homicide detective Cliff Herlihy (Paul Kelly). Cliff at first dismisses Vince's concerns out of hand. Then, out on a family picnic designed to cheer up the morose Vince, a bad thunderstorm drives the group into the car. Not knowing the area well and with the windshield wipers out of commission, Cliff declares that they need to find a place to stop pronto. Almost in a trance, Vince directs Cliff to nearby country house, even though supposedly he's never been out that way before.

This hard-boiled dame makes a brief
appearance in the dream sequence.

There's no one home, but Vince also somehow knows where a key to the front door is hidden. As the women (Lil Herlihy played by Ann Doran and Vince's girl Betty, played by Kay Scott) dry themselves off, the men go exploring the house. Coincidence of coincidences, Vince seems to know his way around, and ends up with the now suspicious Cliff in the mysterious mirrored room of his nightmare. There is a hole in a closet safe, as if someone were trying to blowtorch it open, and there's dried blood in another closet, the one where Vince stuffed the body in his "dream…" With the evidence mounting against Vince, Cliff believes he's been conned, and launches into this brother-in-law with some of the most colorful, hard-boiled language to ever grace a B crime drama (see the clip below):

"If you weren't Lil's brother, I'd push your lyin' face out through the back of your head!"

It's a good thing that Vince is Cliff's brother-in-law, because the detective delays throwing his posterior in jail just long enough to start sorting out what really happened. When Vince attempts suicide back at his hotel apartment, Cliff backs off and begins to believe that the quivering man just might be telling the truth after all. (This bit of logic didn't quite work for me-- wouldn't a hard-bitten cop be just as likely to see a suicide attempt as an admission of guilt?) Upon further questioning, Vince recalls the unusual behavior of a neighbor shortly before the "nightmare" happened. An older man, a neighbor, had knocked on Vince's door, claiming that the power in his adjoining apartment was out. He had a candle in his hand, and was waving it slowly in front of Vince's eyes, speaking slowly and strangely…

Uh-oh! Vince seems to be slipping into another trance!

Fear in the Night packs a lot of noirish punch. Its 72 minutes fly by with disturbing nightmares, ghostly faces floating in and out of the protagonist's tortured mind, dream houses, strange mirrored rooms, rough language, suicide attempts, and malicious hypnotic suggestions. With a small cast, the film is carried by the two male leads. This was DeForest Kelley's first feature-length role of any substance, and he does a very creditable job as an ordinary working stiff who slowly stumbles into the realization that he's killed a man. (After this role, DeForest jumped feet first into TV, where he alternated between westerns and detective shows before landing his storied role on Star Trek.)

But the real star is Paul Kelly. At the point where Kelly's character thinks he's being conned by Vince, his words come shooting out like firecrackers. Kelly's cop is so vehement, DeForest looks like he's actually afraid that he'll be throttled. According to Karen Burroughs Hannsberry, author of Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir (McFarland, 2003), Paul Kelly's life could have been the subject of a film noir potboiler. In 1927, after having worked for years in silent movies and the theater, Kelly got into a fistfight with musical comedy star Ray Raymond over Kelly's supposed dalliances with Raymond's wife, actress Dorothy Mackaye. The morning after the confrontation, Raymond died of a brain hemorrhage. Both Kelly and Mackaye were convicted, he for manslaughter and she for conspiracy. Incredibly, after Kelly got out of prison, he resumed his acting career and married Mackaye, adopting the daughter she'd had by Raymond. Fate stepped in again when Mackaye was later killed in a car accident. In spite of his sordid past, Kelly was almost universally respected and admired by his show business colleagues.

Almost 10 years after the release of Fear in the Night, writer-director Maxwell Shane would re-make it as Nightmare (1956), with Edward G. Robinson in the Paul Kelly role and Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956) as the tortured young man. In spite of Robinson's presence, this one is more difficult to find on DVD or online.

In these hard times when it seems like we're all clueless noir protagonists caught up in forces beyond our control, films like Fear in the Night help to remind us that the darkness has always been around, but the sun always rises, and occasionally it brings with it happy endings. Check out the Alpha Video DVD edition, or download it at the Internet Archive.


Hard-bitten homicide cop Cliff Herlihy (Paul Kelly) has some choice words for his quivering brother-in-law Vince (DeForest Kelley):

Dark Moon Over Miami

The Chase (1946)

A veteran comes home from a long war to a supposedly grateful nation, but instead of finding a job and a caring community, he finds himself staring longingly through the window of a diner in a cold, impersonal city, unable to afford even the cost of a good breakfast. It's an old story, and unfortunately, a very current one as well. Lost in all the heroic tales of the "good" war -- World War II -- is the fact that countless veterans struggled to find jobs in an economy that wasn't ready for them, and bore physical and psychological scars that remained with them the rest of their lives. During the war years and the following period of angst and malaise, a new kind of crime drama emerged. Heroes were replaced by anti-heroes, deduction replaced by seduction, and the world in which these dramas played out was dark, unforgiving, and festering with corruption.

The Chase's opening scene finds luckless Chuck Scott (Robert Cummings) walking the grimy streets of Miami, wondering where his next meal is coming from. As he dejectedly turns away from the diner window, he stumbles into a seemingly lucky break in the form of a wallet lying on the sidewalk. After helping himself to a hearty breakfast from the wad of cash, he decides to do the right thing and return the wallet. In typical noir fashion, this small, honorable act propels him into a seething world of sociopathic gangsters, illicit love, murderous jealousy, and danger.

Chuck traces the owner's address to an ornate, gleaming white mansion in a swanky part of town. Sporting a cheap, dirty suit and a heavy five o'clock shadow, Chuck is a bit uneasy as he rings the bell. In a neat little visual twist, the grinning head of a winged cherub on the door swings up and is replaced by a an eye staring out of a peephole and a gruff voice asking "what do you want?"  The door opens and Chuck is confronted by a life-sized, sneering "cherub" in the form of assistant Gino (Peter Lorre), an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. Gino plays it cagey, refusing to introduce himself. "What have you got?" he languidly asks Chuck. "You're not Mister Roman," Chuck counters. "How do you know?" "You just don't fit," Chuck says, a little of his confidence returning.

Chuck knows he's not in Kansas anymore as he cools his heels in an opulent waiting room with huge chandeliers and classical statuary. Two women emerge from an adjoining room-- one is crying and the other is consoling her companion. This is a big clue that Chuck needs to turn tail and run, but then, film-noir protagonists tend to be stubborn, unlucky, and not always the sharpest pencils in the box. Gino introduces Chuck to the master of the house (and apparently master of lucrative schemes) Eddie Roman (Steve Cochran). Eddie is obviously very well off, dressed in an expensive double-breasted suit and hat, with a carefully folded handkerchief in his breast pocket. He's busy with a phone call as Chuck hands him the wallet. The ensuing conversation is a second big clue that Chuck should turn and walk away:

Eddie: Where did you find it?
Chuck: I don't remember the name of the street… it was in front of a restaurant…
Eddie (warily): How much was in it?
Chuck (sheepishly): 81 dollars. I spent a dollar and a half for breakfast… there's 79.50 there now.
Eddie (pausing, not quite believing what he's hearing): How do you like that… an honest guy!
Gino: I don't! Silly law-abiding jerk!
Eddie: How do you like that? He comes all the way out here just because he found it! … You know, you ought to get a medal… Gino, go buy him a medal.
Chuck (perturbed): Thanks, I've got a medal.

The ultimate set-up for the backseat driver.

Apparently Eddie's contempt for honest men doesn't extend to veterans, and in a weak moment he offers Chuck a job as his chauffeur. Circumstances being what they are, Chuck has little choice but to accept the offer. However, the seemingly innocuous job very quickly puts him in deadly danger. The dapper pillar of Miami society decides to test Chuck his first time out. Eddie's car has been rigged with a second accelerator and brake on the floor of the back seat. With a cruel smirk, he overrides Chuck's controls and slowly presses the back-seat accelerator to the floor. As the car speeds up seemingly by itself, an alarmed Chuck reports to his boss that there seems to be something wrong, only to be reassured by a very calm Eddie: "Relax, I take care of all of that back here… just keep your hands on the wheel." Eddie is apparently both a control freak and an adrenaline junkie. The car is speeding at 100 miles an hour toward a train, as Gino pleads with his boss, "But you don't know how he drives!" Eddie brakes just in time, allowing Chuck to swerve to avoid hitting the speeding train.

This is only a small taste of the dangers that lie ahead for Chuck. Like many noir chumps, he falls for an alluring dame, only this dame is the boss' wife! Ouch! One moment he's driving the sad, beautiful Lorna Roman (Michele Morgan) to the beach to stare vacantly and longingly at the crashing waves, and the next he's fleeing to Havana (pre-Castro Cuba) on a tramp steamer with her. And the next, he's being framed for her murder, desperately explaining to the Cuban police inspector that the knife that killed her only looks like the one he purchased in an out-of-the-way curio shop.

The Chase is based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, The Black Path of Fear (Doubleday, 1944). Woolrich was an odd duck-- a near-recluse who lived most of his life with his mother and rarely ventured outside of New York City. Yet this sheltered man wrote dozens of dark, wildly imaginative novels and short stories that helped launch the film-noir wave of the '40s and '50s. Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) is the best-known Woolrich adaptation (originally published as "It Had to be Murder"). An IMDb search on Woolrich's name demonstrates his extraordinary influence-- nearly 160 films and TV shows based on his work. In his essay "Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich," David Schmid cites Woolrich as one of the signal founders of the genre:

Although his work is not as widely read as that of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich almost single-handedly invented the noir genre--creating a dark, psychologically menacing world--and producing some of the greatest works of pure suspense fiction ever written. … Woolrich's heroes [are] victimized and damaged by forces of evil that are often abstract, nameless, and all-powerful. Woolrich's plots and techniques reflect a worldview far more bleak and pessimistic than that of most other hard-boiled writers, and his ability to evoke the dilemmas of those unfortunates caught in his world is his most signal contribution to the genre. ("American Hard-Boiled Crime Writers" in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 226. Gale, 2000.)

Lorna wonders if she can ever truly escape
from her psychopathic husband.

The Chase takes some liberties with the source material. The book starts off with Mrs. Roman's murder (Eve in the book), while the film leisurely works up to it, immersing the viewer in the pathos and near-hopelessness of the illicit love affair before setting the chase and the murder in motion. Lorna is a beautiful, ethereal vision in her expensive evening dress and long, flowing hair, yet living for three years with a sociopath has left her cold and bloodless, almost zombie-like. Her only joy is to stand on the shore, watching the crashing waves and wondering what it's like beyond. "What's out there, straight ahead?" she asks Chuck, the new chauffeur.

Chuck: "Havana I think."
Lorna: "Have you ever been there?"
Chuck: "Yes, I was a long time ago."
Lorna: "What was it like?"
Chuck: "Oh, for me it was cheap hotels, cheap restaurants, cheap friends… all places are alike when you're broke you know."

The next thing you know, she's offering him $1000 to take her there-- and their fate together seems to be sealed. Having almost immediately fallen in love with her, Chuck begs off the financial part of the deal. They flee to Havana, but realize it can only be a brief way station. They plan to go to South America to get as far away as possible from the implacable Eddie. Stranded in the heart of the chaotic city with little time left before their ship sails, she asks Chuck, "How much time do we have left?", and it's not quite clear if she means how much time before the boat leaves, or how much time before her psycho husband catches up with them.

The Chase employs a very different narrative structure, and springs a plot "cheat" about two thirds of the way through that is risky for a B movie aimed at a fairly broad audience. It ultimately wraps things up a little too neatly for film-noir, especially for something based on Cornell Woolrich's dark, pessimistic visions. Still, it rewards the open-minded viewer with fascinating characters, biting, hard-boiled dialog, and haunting imagery.

Eddie (Cochran) and Gino (Lorre) make a deliciously evil pair. They act like a couple who've been together just a little too long-- mercurial Eddie alternates between bored and disinterested one minute and homicidal the next, while dour Gino grumbles and second-guesses his boss at every opportunity. A scene in which the black-hearted pair, nattily attired in white dinner jackets, have some cruel fun at the expense of a clueless business rival is priceless (see the clip below). Steve and Peter specialized in meaty, villainous roles, and their combined film-noir resume includes some of the great classics: Stranger on the Third Floor (1940, Lorre), The Maltese Falcon (1941, Lorre), The Mask of Dimitrios (1944, Lorre), White Heat (1949, Cochran), and The Damned Don't Cry (1950, Cochran).

Doomed love in the shadows.

Michele Morgan / Lorna Roman is achingly beautiful, and almost unreal-- like a too-perfect robot. Three years of marriage to a manipulative, controlling psychopath has practically drained her of any emotion. We don't often see characters this beautiful and this pitiable. Cinematographer Franz Planer saves his best stuff for Lorna: standing silhouetted on the shore, longingly staring at the waves; looking apprehensively out of the porthole of the Havana-bound ship, shadows creeping up and down the side; embracing Chuck in a hansom cab, her face glowing in soft, white light, his obscured in deep shadow.

Cummings, better known for light comedy and the folksy The Bob Cummings Show of the late '50s - early '60s, is nonetheless effective as the down-on-his luck everyman thrust by fate into the arms of a sad, angelic beauty. His everyman image also appealed to Alfred Hitchcock, who featured him in two of his better mystery-thrillers, Saboteur (1942) and Dial M for Murder (1954).

With the economy still sputtering and more and more politicians, business executives and entertainers acting like Eddie and Gino, it seems like we're all living in a noir world. But while the Eddies and Ginos of the world may be bat-sh*t crazy, they also make for great entertainment. So don't despair-- sit back and enjoy the show!

The Chase is available online at the Internet Archive, and on DVD from Alpha Video.


Crime boss Eddie Roman (Steve Cochran) and henchman Gino (Peter Lorre) practice their own special art of persuasion on a rival businessman: