Fear in the Night . Austin Chronicle . 02-23-98

Fear in the Night

DIRECTED BY: Maxwell Shane

REVIEWED: 02-23-98

DeForest Kelly's first feature film is an adaptation of "Nightmare" by William Irish (Cornell Woolrich) in which he goes to sleep and dreams of murdering a man, then awakes to find a button and a key which appeared in the dream, as well as blood on his arm, convincing him that it was no dream. Distraught, he goes to his detective brother-in-law Cliff (brawlin' Paul Kelly, who took a break from fistfights long enough to stick his pugnacious mug in this picture), who of course dismisses it. They all go out on a picnic, but wind up taking refuge in an empty mansion during a thunderstorm. When Vince (DeForest Kelly) knows every room in the mansion in detail, Cliff becomes convinced that he actually did commit the murder and concocted the whole story about the dream. Cliff realizes that the whole thing is a bit too tidy, though, when he saves Vince from suicide and it becomes apparent that wealthy Mr. Belknap (Keene) compelled Vince to murder under hypnosis. Fear in the Night stays faithful to the feel of the Woolrich story, with inventive dream sequences and moody, high contrast black & white camera work. It retains a truly pulpy feel, with seedy set pieces and a propulsive story line, building up to a truly suspenseful conclusion. Pulp readers of the Thirties and Forties were fascinated with the cutting edge of technology and weird science being used for investigative purposes. So what if no one can be hypnotized against their will, it serves the purposes of the story well. An interesting detail is the octagonal room of mirrors in which the murder takes place, which serves both as a plot point and visual device. Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai also featured a room of mirrors, but Fear in the Night predated Welles' film by at least two years! All in all, a well-done treatment of a classic pulp story, outshining its grade-C noir origins. (For all the Trekkies, DeForest Kelly, aside from being younger and skinnier, acts exactly as he did in Star Trek 20 years later. And, though he's now several years the senior of the average Wal-Mart greeter, looks exactly like he does now.)

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