Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Rainey Dawn This one is a suspenseful little mystery-thriller - a crime noir. For me, this is one of the better, more mysterious mystery-thrillers I've seen from the 1940s. Worth watching if you like these types of films.Vince Grayson (Kelly) is a young man who is easily hypnotized and he's had a horrible nightmare that he murdered someone and a mirrored room but it seemed all to real to him. "It was dream, no it's real" - he kept debating himself, yet he knew it had to be real so he enlisted the help of his detective brother-in-law Cliff to find out the answers.The questions are: Did Vince really kill someone? Is Vince making all this up as reality when it was only a dream? Is Vince having premonitions? If Vince didn't kill anyone then who did? 8.5/10

dougdoepke What the movie lacks in believability it makes up for in sheer visual imagination. That opening sequence is a real grabber. Just what the heck is going on with the fuzzy focus and dreamlike images. People are going here and there in front of a bank of mirrors. Then, all of a sudden, someone hands Vince a drill. But Vince doesn't stick it into a chunk of wood. Instead he plunges it into a man's heart! Good thing Vince wakes up in bed, maybe sweaty, but at least inside a focused reality. Must have been a bad dream, but then why the bloody wrist and where did that weird key come from. From what we see, it's almost like he's come back from a strange parallel world.So did Cliff actually kill someone or was it just a bizarre subconscious. Good thing he's got Mr. sober-sides Cliff as a cop brother-in-law. Maybe Cliff can figure it out since it's driving Vince nutty. Trouble is Cliff thinks his in-law really did kill someone, but in the interest of family harmony resists turning him in. So how will all this weirdness turn out, and what's suddenly the big deal about a candle.Kelley really nails his part as the hapless Vince. Catch his many shaded expressions as he suffers through the nightmare. Paul Kelly too nails his part with a no-nonsense demeanor that keeps things anchored. But the real star is the production itself that manages to dangle us between two worlds with the many off-center effects. Sure, too much storyline stretches over the edge. Still, it's pretty gripping stuff, straddling the murky line between noir and horror. The premise was loaded enough to get re-made a few years later, Nightmare (1956). But this one, I think, is better. So don't let it slip by.

bkoganbing If you've seen the remake of this film under its original story title Nightmare than you pretty well know what this story is. In fact the only difference I could tell is that in Fear In The Night protagonist DeForest Kelley is a bank teller whereas Kevin McCarthy in the remake is a jazz musician. The remake was shot in New Orleans while this one has the old standby Los Angeles as the scene of activity.In any event DeForest Kelley is bothered by a persistent and nagging nightmare that he killed somebody. Only no murders have been reported in the metropolitan area. But on a Sunday drive with his brother-in-law Paul Kelly and sister Ann Doran, Kelley leads them to a house and shows enough to his brother-in-law to know that something happened. You see Paul Kelly is a homicide detective.At some point and I can't lest I spoil one of the best scenes of the film Paul Kelly starts believing his brother-in-law. The man responsible is Robert Emmett Keane though how he is responsible I can't say again lest I give the whole film away. It was quite an interesting scheme Keane had to rope an innocent in to do his dirty work.My criticism of Fear In The Night is the same I had of Nightmare. Some good performances and a nice suspenseful story. But it was also done on the cheap even for a noir film.Fans of the noir genre will love it though.

blanche-2 DeForrest Kelley has "Fear in the Night" in this 1947 low-budget B film, also starring Paul Kelly and Ann Doran. Kelley plays Vince Grayson, who has a vivid dream that he has committed murder. In fact, he wakes up and finds a key and a button, which were part of the dream, and also blood on his wrist. He tells his cop brother-in-law Cliff about the dream, but Cliff brushes it off as just that, a dream.Later on, Vince goes on a picnic with his sister Lil (Ann Doran) and husband Cliff. When the rain starts coming down in buckets, they jump in the car and Vince directs them to a house, which turns out to be the murder house, down to the octagonal mirrored room that Vince described to Cliff. Cliff now believes that Vince committed murder and lied when he described the dream.Very good story that makes use of hypnosis as part of the plot. It is very well done, but you can't help thinking of what someone like Hitchcock would have done with the story. Instead, we have grainy film and footage of downtown Los Angeles, including, I think, the Commodore Hotel. The shots of old LA are wonderful - sometimes when films are done cheaply there is city shooting and use of the city in process shots, which always adds authenticity to the movie.When I showed my sister one of the screen shots and announced it was DeForrest Kelley, I thought her eyes would bug out of her head. Yes, he was once that young. He does a very good job, too.Well worth seeing, and if you're a fan of "Star Trek," it's a must!