Nightmare (1956)
Directed by Maxwell Shane

Film Review

It was a brave but somewhat eccentric decision by director Maxwell Shane to remake Fear in the Night (1947) just nine years after he made that film, the one that launched the career of Star Trek actor DeForest Kelley.  Maxwell retains pretty well all of the plot of Cornell Woolrich's novel Nightmare but this time gives it a more realistic, modern feel, making it very different from the oppressively stylised Fear in the Night.  Both films are respectable forays into film noir but Shane's first attempt clearly stands head and shoulders above its bigger budget remake, its darkly expressionistic feel being better suited to Woolrich's gloomy novel than the slicker, more prosaic look of the later film.

Where Nightmare matches its predecessor is in the quality of the performances from its lead actors.  Kevin McCarthy, whose big screen career had recently got off to a flying start with Laslo Benedek's Death of a Salesman (1951) and Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), is a worthy successor to DeForest Kelley in the lead role, and is just as effective in conveying the anguish of a man realising that he is no longer in control of his life but at the mercy of invisible malignant forces.   Edward G. Robinson is well-cast as the tough but humane police officer who takes it upon himself to solve the mystery - his is a solid performance which anchors the highly implausible narrative in a concrete modern reality.

With this, the last of the five films he directed, it looks as if Shane's inspiration and enthusiasm for the job are fast deserting him.  Nightmare has none of the inventive flair of his earlier noir offerings and it reduces Woolrich's novel to a comparatively routine murder mystery.  It's jazz musical interludes lend the film the modernity that noirish dramas of this era felt they needed to attract audiences but these feel like a lazily stappled on addition to a film that is struggling to find some form of identity and a deeper meaning.  Although far less chilling than Fear in the Night, which deserves to be recognised as one of cinema's best adaptations of a Cornell Woolrich novel, it still manages to be an engaging piece with some very disturbing undertones.

Film Synopsis

Stan Grayson, a clarinet-player in a New Orleans band, awakes from a dream in which he sees himself murder another man in a mirrored room.  On his neck there are obvious bruise marks and he notices a key identical to the one in his dream.  After a day of soul searching he decides to seek the advice of his brother-in-law René Bressard, a homicide investigator in the state police.  René persuades Stan that he has been overworking and invites him to spend a day in the country, in the company of his wife and Stan's girlfriend Gina.  Caught in a violent downpour, the party takes refuge in a remote and seemingly deserted mansion.  Stan finds the house strangely familiar and is surprised when he comes across the mirrored room in his dream.  A police officer shows up and explains that two murders have recently been committed in the environs of the house.  One of the murders seems to fit exactly the pattern of Stan's dream...