Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

YouHeart I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Claudio Carvalho When the Navy sailor Jim Fletcher (Bill Williams) awakes from a two-year coma in a hospital in San Diego, he overhears a conversation of his doctor and his nurse and learns that he will face a court martial, accused of treason for snitching fellow POWs that were stealing food in a Japanese camp in World War II. He decides to flee from the hospital and seek out his friend Mark Gregory to help him to clear his name. However he meets the widow Martha Gregory (Barbara Hale) and learns that Mark is dead. He calls his other friend Ted Niles (Richard Quine) that promises to help him, Jim needs to travel to Los Angeles to meet Ted. Martha is forced to help him and while driving her car to Los Angeles, two men in another car try to throw them off road. Martha convinces of his innocence and when they go to Chinatown, Jim sees the most brutal guard in the camp, Ken "The Weasel" Tokoyama (Richard Loo). Now he feels that The Weasel may be the means to find what really happened in the camp and he stumbles upon a huge conspiracy. "The Clay Pigeon" is a film-noir based on a true story despite the flawed but pleasant and tense screenplay. The coincidences and the happy ending make the story hard to believe. The chemistry of Bill Williams and Barbara Hale is fantastic and the resemblance of Bill Williams with his son William Katt is amazing. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Alma em Sombras" ("Soul in Shadows")

Neil Doyle The only weakness in THE CLAY PIGEON is that it's easy to spot the real fall guy--and the viewer knows it's not BILL WILLIAMS. The real culprit telegraphs his guilt in what are supposed to be subtle hints, but anyone who is a fan of film noir will spot the villain right away.Otherwise, it's a good little post-war thriller, not an A-film but just as tense and intriguing as any of the big films about amnesia victims who went through harrowing things during the war that they prefer to forget. Only gradually do we learn more about Williams' torturous experience and what really happened is far different than we supposed.BARBARA HALE is excellent in a well-written role as his helpmate, at first thinking he did cause the death of her husband in a prisoner of war camp, but later realizing that she's willing to do all she can to help him clear his name.Since Hale and Williams were a married couple at the time (they're the parents of William Katt who looks so much like his dad), they have a good chemistry with each other right from the start.This is the kind of post-war film noir that RKO did so well, usually with stars like Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer or Kirk Douglas. But Williams and Hale are excellent in the leads and the story moves briskly toward an exciting climax where the villains are about to toss him in front of an oncoming train.Enjoyable vehicle of this kind, well worth catching.

MARIO GAUCI Excellent 'B' noir - from the memorable opening sequence of a close-up of a sleeping man's face, with a couple of hands entering the frame to strangle him, to the exciting train-ride climax, which curiously anticipates the director's own THE NARROW MARGIN (1952) - with a topical, Hitchcockian plot of an amnesiac war veteran, accused of treason and of being party to murder, who goes on the run to prove his innocence. Despite unknown leads (including Bill Williams and Barbara Hale, a married couple in real-life and the parents of BUTCH AND SUNDANCE: THE EARLY DAYS [1979] star William Katt, which I unwittingly watched the very same day, and future director Richard Quine!), it's very stylishly handled by an expert in the genre, with special care given to the hero's hallucinatory flashes of his harrowing experiences in a Japanese P.O.W. camp.

dbdumonteil Richard Fleischer who would direct "Barabbas" "fantastic voyage" and "the Boston strangler,not exactly low budget efforts already proves with "clay pigeon" he was a great director from the start.One has sometimes the strange impression to watch a "Mandchurian candidate" in miniature .A nightmarish atmosphere ,a true film noir where trains and cars belt in the night,where an amnesic hero has to fight an unknown enemy .It's really a tour de force to pack so much action (and much of what happens works behind the scenes) in a very short flick (about an hour).The last scenes on the train were probably influenced by Hitchcock's "shadow of a doubt" .This little gem should not be missed.