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 This film noir is "drenched in moodiness, rain-slicked streets and shadowy
atmosphere." Carol Richman is trying to clear her boss who is wrongly
imprisoned on a murder conviction. His alibi is a woman who has since
disappeared. Carol checks out suspects and "finds danger at every turn." A
bartender is killed, a jazz-drummer strangled, you have your insane woman, and
also a crazy friend of her boss. This is described as "stylish suspense" and Variety is quoted as saying the cast "puts punch in every scene and sequence." 1944, 87 minutes, VHS
This is based on a novel written the year before by a guy claiming to be
William Irish. I say claiming, because we all know that William Irish is
simply a pseudonym for one Cornell Woolrich, of Black Angel and Rear Window fame (we won't mention Antonio Banderas' Original Sin again). It's another
noirish tale of murdered dames, wrongly accused men and the search for the
truth. Director Robert Siodmok, a student of the German expressionistic
movement (whatever that is) slathers on the oppressive atmosphere here with
lots of shadows, darkness, silences, and fluid camera work, an obvious effort
to distract you from how silly this story is. For the most part he succeeds.
Scott Henderson, whom we last saw in The Invisible Man's Revenge, plays a
successful engineer who is having what we in the biz call, "issues of a
domestic origin." Him and the old lady aren't getting along so he finds
himself in a seedy little neighborhood bar with two tickets to the theatre and
notices a pretty young thing in one of the ugliest hats you'll see this side of
Minnie Pearl or Carmen Miranda (she's not in this picture, but her sister
Aurora is!). He sidles up to her asking if she wants the tickets and she kind
of demurs, but he is able to coax her into going with him with only one
condition. They won't exchange names. Sounds a little freaky to me and Scott,
but he's in that freaky kind of mood where you're going to show your no-account
wife that would soon as look at a bucket of Ben and Jerry's then you, that he
can
still run with the big dogs. So they go out to the show, where some odd things
happen. First of all, there's that nasty looking hat. I can't believe nobody
behind her kicked her seat until she took the beastly thing off, but she's
wearing it to this song and dance show, and the star, Miss Montiero, is wearing
the exact same hat! Montiero gives our Phantom Lady a series of ugly looks and
if you have any doubt that the hat is ugly, this is Carmen Miranda's sister who
is up there with the same hat. You just know the famous sister got all the
good hats. The other cool thing that's going down at this show is that the
drummer in the band is making eyes at the Phantom Lady and pretty much gets to
second base with her just by his salacious expressions. He's a little nervous
horny toad played by Elisha Cook, Jr. We may recall his role as the nervous
little dude in Vincent Price's House On Haunted Hill. He also was in The Maltese Falcon. Even though Scott doesn't even know his date's name, you can tell he doesn't
appreciate the overtures of Cliff the drummer. After the show, Scott tries to
get a nightcap out of Phantom Lady, and since she's a bit of phantom, she has to
decline, so Scott goes back home to check on his wife's murdered body (yep,
she's dead).  Scott comes in the door, shouting to his wife that he knows she's up, because
he saw her bedroom light on. When he gets in there, he notices it's not the
love of his life that is there to greet him after his night out with the
Phantom Lady, but three burly guys who, if you read really cool novels, would
know were homicide bulls. They inform him that Mrs. Scott Henderson is now
officially the late Mrs. Scott Henderson and she's still back in the bedroom
all strangled if you want to have a looksee. (Did anyone check Dan Duryea's
whereabouts when this strangled skank did the Dutch?). It becomes fairly
obvious, by the drool hanging off the mouths of these coppers that they're
looking to hang a murder beef on our hero, but he's not having any of that.
He's telling them he was out all night and has an alibi with a woman that he
can't quite remember what she looks like (I know she wore an ugly hat!), he's
sweating like a stuck pig just like an innocent guy would, and he even cries a
little bit (just like an innocent guy would when it's plain that he's getting
railroaded into riding the lightning for something that he only wished he had
done. Right Juice?) Oh, and if all that's not super-sweet, she was strangled
by one of his own ties! Thank you for playing Mr. Henderson, but fate is as
much a be-otch as your purpled-faced wife. Now, I'll give it to the fuzz. They
don't arrest him right off. They give Scott a chance to prove his story. They
accompany him to all the places he went on that fateful night. He goes to
the bar where he met Phantom Lady, where the barkeep remembers him, but not the
girl. They go to the cabbie that gave him a ride, where the cabbie remembers
him, but not the dame. They go to the show where Carmen Miranda's sister
doesn't remember any tootsie with an gaudy hat. The cops shrug their shoulders
at Scott, slap the cuffs on him and start measuring his skull for the nice
metal cap you get to wear right before they flick the switch. As is the case
in these types of movies, he gets tried and convicted a week later, chiefly
because he insists on sticking to that bogus story about dating a Phantom Lady.
Where's Kato when you need him? All seems lost for Scott, except for his
secretary. In a stunning development, her name is Kansas, just like Sonny
Tufts' name in So Proudly We Hail and she sets out to prove her boss' innocence. I don't know that I'd bother, I
mean with the boss in jail, I'd pretty much be on the internet all day at work
in the chat rooms. Don't get me wrong, I would chat with people about how he
was innocent, but I don't really see myself doing any investigating (the police
are professionals at that, not I).  Kansas begins her career as a junior Nancy Drew by heading down to the bar
where Scott met Phantom Lady. Heading down to the bar is always a good start
in my opinion, especially if they've got Keystone on tap. No bitter beer face
for me when I'm trying set an innocent free before they toast him. Her
technique at dredging up clues is somewhat unorthodox and fairly time
intensive. It consists of her ordering a single drink and then just staring at
the bartender that said he didn't remember no woman. She does this for several
nights and eventually the barkeep gets unnerved by it all. If someone like
Kansas rolled up on me day in and day out, I think I'd just give her something
to stare at, if you know what I mean. But this guy is a portly devil, prone to
what I call, "the guilt sweats" which means your shirt is entirely drenched in
your own acrid bodily fluids because you're worried that Kansas Drew has good
the drop on you. The bartender leaves the bar and Kansas follows him. These
are nice scenes of rain swept streets with only the sounds of unseen clicking
heels on the pavement as this guy attempts to flee. They finally stop at the
train platform and she just stands there ignoring him. She's obviously nervous
as he sneaks up behind her (she knows he's there) and he is about ready to push
her off the platform when someone else shows up, so he doesn't. Later he
confronts her asking what she wants. She just wants info, and he makes a
comment about being paid off before getting his tubby butt run over in traffic.
Seemingly at a dead end, she goes home, to find one of the homicide cops,
named Burgess waiting for her. He says, he wants to unofficially help her
because he thinks that Scott is innocent. His reason for that switcheroo?
Because Scott stuck to such an obviously stupid story as his defense, he must
be innocent! Whew! Maybe that should have been the defense - this is such a
obviously bad story my client has made up, he has to be innocent. If he was
guilty he would have made up a much more credible story! Kansas gets some info
from him and her next plan of attack in finding the real killer is to do what
most leggy dames would do in this situation. Go undercover as a tramp at the
club where Scott took the Phantom Lady. She and her gams immediately grab the
attention of that fireplug full of hormones, Cliff and he makes all kinds of
faces at her and then mouths to her that he wants to meet her after the show.
I'm not much of a lip reader so he could've said "eat" instead of "meet" but
they do hook it up after the show. He takes her to this little jazz, hepcat
club where they play all kinds of really fast, horny music and this leads to the
scene that this movie is most famous for. Simply put, Cliff plays the drums in
front of her as a proxy for some type of sex act and the expression on his face
is one of obvious carnal pleasure. He beats the drum more and more (they even
focus on his hands pounding the skins pretty much right at his crotch) and he's
sweating and making these faces of pleasure and we see her shaking and
quivering with the drum beat like she's going to have an orgasm or something
(but we know she's faking it - just like with a real sex act!) and the bass
drum comes in ( so to speak) to represent the ah, release as it were. An
ingenious scene that proves the power of suggestion and just adds to the
"downtown" atmosphere of the picture. Cliff takes her home, she gets him drunk
and he starts talking about taking $500 so that he wouldn't say anything about
the lady in the funny hat. Then he sees some stuff fall out of her purse that
shows she's in cahoots with the police and he gets spastic. She escapes, calls
the cops and waits for Burgess to arrive. Meanwhile in Cliff's apartment we
get
our first peek at the fiendish mastermind behind this conspiracy of
silence.  The killer is none other than Franchot Tone and most of his psychoses can
probably be attributed to the time he spent married to Joan Crawford. Tone
plays Jack Marlow (his name isn't revealed until a little later for plot
reasons) and he is a well-spoken man who is obsessed with his hands and rubs
his head a lot, complaining of pain and dizziness. He has been keeping an eye
on Cliff and is peeved that he didn't exactly get his $500 worth out of Cliff,
so he strangles him. Burgess and Kansas come back to find Cliff dead and the
killer gone. They leave and later we are at Kansas' house or somewhere when
Scott's best friend who's been in South America or Toledo or someplace foreign
ever since the wife bought it, shows up. It turns out to be Jack Marlow and we
now see
that Scott's bestest pal in the whole wide world apparently killed his wife and
set him up to take the fall. He spends the rest of the movie tagging along,
gazing at his hands, rubbing his head and urging Kansas to go home and let
Scott's bacon cook. Marlow is portrayed as a murderous egomaniac who thinks
he's smarter and therefore more worthy than everyone else. This is
demonstrated in some good scenes with Burgess where they fence about whether
the killer is insane and whether he'll ever be caught. Marlow is obviously
irked that Burgess thinks the killer is just an insane guy that will get caught
and that he's not that clever and is actually just a crazy dummy. You almost
see Marlow straining not to shout out, "I am not a freak!" In another scene
after
Kansas figures out that he is the killer, he tells her that his life is more
important than Scott's because nice losers like him are a dime a dozen and all
he wants to contribute is to build sewers and stuff, whereas Marlow has a
really nice set of hands and a pretty slick brain tumor. At that point Marlow
wasn't making much sense, as you can tell, but I wouldn't call him nucking
futs, at least not to his face while he has a necktie in his hands. Kansas
gets some leads and is able to finally track down the Phantom Lady through her
hat. The Phantom Lady has gone around the bend is now completely insane. The
guy she was intending to marry became sick and died two days later. I guess
that's when Scott ran into her. Well, she's been crackers ever since that
night, which I guess is supposed to explain why she never came forward about the
night she spent with Scott. Once Kansas figures out that Marlow is the killer (she finds some items she
left at Cliff's house in his dresser drawer) she completely goes to pieces and
gets all scaredy-cat which seems completely at odds with her tough-gal approach
earlier in the film. I mean she stalked this bartender down deserted streets
and didn't flinch when he was about to give her a one-way ride on the third
rail. Marlow spends a good deal of time laying down at this point, since his
head really hurts, but he gets up to menace her with a necktie. With the lame
physical condition he was in, I'm not sure why she felt so threatened or why she
couldn't get out of the apartment, but she's eventually saved by Burgess and
Marlow goes out the window to his death. Kansas and Scott live happily ever
after. This is one of those movies that the more I think about it, the less
impressed I am with it. Visually, it's got everything down pat, all the
nighttime locales, the creative camera shots, and the way everything is drenched
in shadows, with light streaming into scenes only intermittently. But the plot
is about as rickety as Marlow's mental health. Let me get this straight.
Marlow was having an affair with Scott's wife and kills her when she laughs at
him about accompanying him to South America or Sheboygan or wherever. Then he
follows Scott around and bribes everyone to keep their mouth shut about the
Phantom Lady. Now he paid them something like $500. Why wouldn't you take the
money from him and then just go ahead and implicate him anyway? What's he
going to do? Demand a refund? Ruin your rating on e-bay? He couldn't find
the girl to bribe, but luckily she went crazy so he didn't have to worry about
her. Here's the question that bothers me. If everyone acknowledges that yes,
Scott Henderson was in my bar, that he was in my cab, but I don't remember any
lady, so what? Why do we need the lady? These independent witnesses have
already confirmed that he was out and about that night? What's the broad going
to do except confirm what we already know? All the investigating that Kansas
did was ultimately pointless. The only reason anyone ever figured that Marlow
was the killer was because this super genius picked up some of Kansas' stuff
from Cliff's apartment. Why would he do that? Why wouldn't he get rid of it
or better yet, just leave it. Everyone knew she was there, so why take her
stuff? If she hadn't had found the conspiracy, no matter how poorly it was
constructed, it would have never unravelled. I think Cornell must have shot his
wad writing Black Angel, because the story in this is far inferior to that one. Even though I had
problems with the plotting and the fact that I could back that thang up through
its holes, this is still worth viewing, especially if you are a fan of the film
noir genre. All the conventions are there and used to good effect. Heck,
you've even got another instance of a woman laughing in a guys face which
results in her getting killed. What's more film noir than that? I liked
seeing a strong female character that wasn't portrayed as someone that destroys
men, it's just too bad she lapsed into screaming mimi phase at
the end. I guess that's the movie's story in a nutshell. It's like Coach
always told during a race, "you've got to finish up strong, son." Or maybe he
told me not to end the race screaming and crying. In any event, the movie's
strong start compensates for its weak denouement and you should seek it out.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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