KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

LCShackley This thriller isn't a bad way to spend 69 minutes, thanks to some decent acting, a good supporting cast of character players, and fast pacing. But the novelty of psychoanalysis-as-solution has worn off after 70 years, and most modern audiences have heard the "blame the parents" ploy so often that it seems hackneyed. The director includes some special effects which also might have seemed novel at the time but now seem amateurish.Ralph Bellamy plays a teacher of psychoanalysis who has to put his theories to work on a mad killer who has decided to use the prof's country house as a temporary hideaway. Chester Morris is the trigger-happy escaped con in a part that would have been more compelling with Cagney or Bogie in the role. This adapted play is stage-bound but keeps enough interest going to make you stay put for the explosive ending.Watch for John "Perry White" Hamilton in a very small, non-speaking part.

Neil Doyle This B-film from the late thirties can probably be considered way ahead of its time, dealing as it does with a psychiatric solution for the climax of the story. Hollywood would go much further with such themes in the '40s with the advent of films like "Spellbound", "Possessed" and "The Snake Pit".RALPH BELLAMY is a pipe-smoking psychiatrist with a calm, cool demeanor who appears undisturbed when a psychotic serial killer (CHESTER MORRIS) and his gang intrudes on family and friends during a quiet holiday weekend. When Morris turns out to have bad dreams, psychiatrist Bellamy goes to work tracing the events that trigger the nightmares. Director Charles Vidor uses reverse negative images imaginatively to depict the dream sequence which movie buffs can immediately solve without any explanations from Bellamy.ANN DVORAK is the gun moll acting tough with the house guests and confining the servants to the cellar, and MARC LAWRENCE is effective as one of the tough guys. MELVILLE COOPER has a role in which he's unusually heroic a year after playing the cowardly sheriff in "The Adventures of Robin Hood". SCOTTY BECKETT is a lively presence as the little boy who talks back to the bad men.But the pat solution is too simplistic and the fact that Morris is willing to even listen to Bellamy's sermonizing and psychiatric talk makes the whole thing quite unrealistic. The remake with William Holden had the same problem and the same glaring faults. Another distraction is CHESTER MORRIS who seems to be chewing the scenery in his over-the-top impersonation of the psychotic killer.

theowinthrop Ralph Bellamy had an unusually rich acting career that many people fail to notice some seventeen years after his death. I have had occasion (such as reviewing THE AWFUL TRUTH and TRADE WINDS) of noting his wonderfully goofy doofus characters. But he was also responsible for good dramatic performances, most notably as Franklin Roosevelt in the film SUNRISE AT CAMPOBELLO and later in the television series THE WINDS OF WAR, and even some dandy murderous villains from time to time. But then he was also filmdom's Ellery Queen. His lifetime Oscar, given to him at the tail end of his acting career, was well merited. Would that the Academy had done the same for other stars, such as the just deceased Richard Widmark.This film, BLIND ALLEY, was shown on Turner Classic Film Network last night, and I had never seen it - but I was aware of it. The plot of BLIND ALLEY was used a decade later for the early William Holden - Lee J. Cobb thriller THE DARK PAST. It is the Holden movie (where he plays the role played by Chester Morris here) that people see more frequently, probably because it is William Holden starring. This is unfair not only to Bellamy's well restrained thinking hero, Dr. Shelby, but also to Morris' villain, Hal Wilson. Morris was one of Hollywood's busiest leading men in the early talkies period, but by 1939 he was relegated to leads in "B" features. Bellamy was doing yeoman work in supporting roles in the late 1930s, when not returning to the Broadway stage. He was in the other lead role in this film (possibly the actual lead role). If Morris's lead here is a sign of his decline as a leading man, it was a sign of Bellamy's rise in film stardom when he played Dr. Shelby.Story is simple. Dr. Shelby is a psychiatrist, and a professor of psychiatry. His star pupil is Fred Landis (Stanley Brown), who is leaving college to start a new job in another state. Shelby invites Landis to his home for a going away party that night. Also in the house are Shelby's wife Doris and son Davy (Rose Stradner and Scotty Beckett), his close friend George Curtis and his wife Linda (Melville Cooper and Joan Perry), and a friend of the Curtises, novelist Dick Holbrook (John Eldredge), and two servants (Agnes - Anne Doran - and Harriot - Marie Blake). The household is enjoying the evening, awaiting the guest of honor, when their peace of mind is shattered. Enter escaped murderer Hal Wilson, his mistress Mary (Anne Dvorak), and his two gang members Buck (Marc Lawrence) and Nick (Milburn Stone). As you can see it is a good cast.Having killed three more people (two guards and a warden - played by John Hamilton of "Superman" fame) - in his escape, Wilson has nothing to lose about killing anyone else. His plan is to be rescued by a boat crossing the lake in back of Shelby's home. So he and his gang take over the house, split up the various hostages (Buck watching the Curtises and Holbrook; Stone watching Doris and Davy; and the two servants tied up in the basement). Wilson and Shelby stay in the living room on the first floor and in the Doctor's study. And gradually Shelby's curiosity as a psychologist concentrates on Wilson's peculiar and violent personality. In particular two of his fingers that seem paralyzed on his right hand. Wilson keeps denying it's nothing more than from an accident, but Shelby know the fingers don't look physically damaged.The hours pass and much comes out about personalities. And this is what made BLIND ALLEY more interesting to me than THE DARK PAST. The later movie did not deal with a secondary plot involving Mr. and Mrs. Curtis and Holbrook. Curtis is a prosperous stock broker, and has been married for some time to Linda, but the marriage has hit a rut. So she has been becoming all too close to Holbrook, much to Curtis's humiliation. But during the film it is Curtis who shows more guts in facing down the gang, in particular Buck (even attempting to attack him), while Holbrook reveals increasingly how cowardly he is. In the end Linda is far less enchanted by the novelist (ironically he writes adventure stories). The interesting casting of Melville Cooper (usually playing comic bits in his films) as a middle aged man who shows his real grit when the chips are down adds to the enjoyment of this second plot.As nerves grow tenser tragedy does strike when Fred Landis shows up, and confronts Wilson and Buck. Wilson shows his answer for all problems with a sickening smile on his face. Wilson however has been having an odd dream that effects him - he hates rain as a result. Mary makes the suggestion to Dr. Shelby that maybe he could cure Wilson of this returning nightmare he has. Shelby slowly probes away at it - I will leave it to the viewer to see the film to understand what the secret is.Although psychiatry in movies seems very superficial, one has to recall that there is a time constraint in film that forces some answer within sixty to ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes for the sake of the story line. Even so the solution of the dream, and of the basis for the evil that is Wilson, is well handled (including a very stylized flashback sequence). Bellamy does not strike a false note - however angry he really is at what has happened he remains the reasonable physician throughout the probing second half of the film. Morris matches him as a hateful figure, but one who one realizes is as helpless in his own way as his hostages and shooting victims usually are. The film is quite well made, and the stars certainly live up to the quality of the script.

jandbclarke I saw this movie when I was seven, 'way back in 1939. I had never seen anything like the dream sequence and the psychiatrist's explanation. They both were shot from the camera's viewpoint, something I wasn't to see again until Robert Montgomery's version of Raymond Chandler's "The Lady In The Lake. This stuck in my cerebellum since. The remake, "The Dark Past," with Wm. Holden wasn't quite as good, but then I was older and more sophisticated when I saw that one. And, anyone who says Chester Morris couldn't act obviously hasn't seen "The Big House," "Three Godfathers" (not the John Wayne one), or any of the Boston Blackie movies. P.S. Where are the Boston Blackie movies?