Nightmare is a minor classic of film noir, but it earns that title by the skin of its teeth. It’s fighting its own casting every step of the way.
I want to go back in time and shake someone by the shoulders. You cannot cast Kevin McCarthy as a high-strung musician who spirals into a nervous breakdown after one vivid bad dream, no matter how eerily substantiated it is in the light of day. Look at him. I don’t believe Kevin McCarthy ever had a nightmare in his life.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers1—released this same year—knew what it was doing with him. To get sweaty paranoiac McCarthy, you start with unimaginative, corn-fed, solid citizen McCarthy, and then you unravel him thread by thread. We have to follow him on his journey for it to feel plausible.
There are plenty of noir actors who are believably one bad dream away from becoming gibbering wrecks, but McCarthy isn’t one of him. When his moody clarinetist Stan dreams of murder—and wakes to find suspicious bruises on his throat and crime scene tokens stashed in his pocket—his stability collapses like a house of cards. He barely even tries to convince himself it’s some odd coincidence. Instead, he dives straight off the deep end, skipping work, wandering the streets, and trying to enlist the help of his cop brother-in-law (Edward G. Robinson).
Robinson, as always, is a breath of fresh air. His Rene Bressard is more grounded, rooted in his two identities of family man and cop—he starts in one, pivots to the other, and then combines them first painfully, in extremis, and then deliberately and with pride. While Stan is essentially trapped in his psychological room of mirrors—literalizing this is both hilarious and appropriately nightmarish—Rene does not constantly reflect on himself. He’s the stronger, better-defined character, and the movie seems to take real pleasure in giving him space to reveal his motivations and priorities.
Unsurprisingly, Robinson finds the exact right texture for all this, knowing and conveying exactly who Rene is. He’s especially powerful in a key scene where Rene’s “found out” that Stan used him and made a fool of him: he’s furious, and Stan reflexively cowers from that, but what’s worse is that he’s disappointed and disgusted and hurt too. He’s been ensconced in a cozy domesticity with his newly pregnant wife, Sue (Virginia Christine), and his temperamental brother-in-law, and now it’s all coming down around him. He has his own dark night of the soul here, though it’s briefer than Stan’s. It feels like Nightmare gives him the first genuine pause he’s ever felt, the first time he hasn’t known what to do; there’s even a moment where his tenderness for Stan seems to get out ahead of him, as much as he makes it serve a pragmatic purpose later.
No offense to McCarthy–who is good elsewhere and serviceable here once the vise starts tightening on Stan in reality, not just in his head—but no wonder Robinson got top billing. It’s true that Rene is the better role—his counterpart is likewise the lead in Fear in the Night, director Maxwell Shane’s earlier take on the same Cornell Woolrich material—but a different, nervier actor could have made Stan more of a scene-stealer. He would always be weak—his weakness is, as it turns out, the point2; of course it is, noir is filled with patsies—but his performance wouldn’t need to be.
I wish that miscasting were the only real flaw of Nightmare. Alas, it’s a bit lumbering early on, too, weighed down by some of the most unnecessary, on-the-nose voiceover that genre has to offer, with Stan providing leaden commentary on things that are happening in front of our very eyes: “All of a sudden the room started spinning,” he gravely informs us as the room does just that. The first time I tried to watch it, that voiceover was the end of me. But it does pick up as it goes along, especially as Robinson gets more and more involved and the emotional core strengthens. By the end, though the film is still leaving misleading shots strewn all over the place, it’s put together some good images and turned Stan from a nervy protagonist to a kind of damsel in distress, which makes his self-destructive haplessness almost endearing. Bless his heart.
Nightmare is streaming on Tubi, Hoopla, and Amazon Prime.
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Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
Dan Duryea gets a shave and a second chance.
Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Justified, Season Three, Episode Twelve, “Coalition”
“For once in your life, do what has been asked of you.”
I genuinely thought Quarles was going to be dead at the end there. That’s the kind of show this is and why I like it – I never quite know what’s going to happen. The characters are all really simple, but they move in ways that ricochet outwards and then back onto them. If there’s a thematic link here, it’s how Quarles and Arlo are both unstable elements rocking their respective worlds and getting that back on them (rare moment of subjective filmmaking when we watch Arlo talk to Helen despite her notable handicap of being dead).
Biggest Laugh: No Art this episode.
Biggest Non-Art Laugh: “You know what the two saddest words in the English language are? ‘What party?’.”
Top Ownage: “You know what your problem is? You keep thinking you’re tough. So you’re about to be taken back to prison to be reminded you ain’t. You’re just… stupid. You’re just a stupid, craven, hillbilly piece of shit.”
Honey, Don’t! – I’m a big Drive-Away Dolls defender but, alas, this one didn’t really work for me at all. I like the basic setup – Qualley makes an appealing private detective lead and I enjoyed her rapport with Charlie Day and Aubrey Plaza. But the plot fell way short of the convoluted noir intricacy that it seems to be shooting for and just felt like they were abandoning plot threads just as they became interesting. If this had as much humour in it as Dolls then I might not have minded the weaker plot but since they’re playing it fairly straight it just ended up feeling a bit empty. Kinda felt like a pilot episode for a detective show where they haven’t quite figured out the dynamics yet. I’d still probably take this over The Ladykillers but it’s definitely bottom-tier Coen(s).
An absolutely nonsense take, I am of course referring to your continued disparagement of indisputable classic The Ladykillers here. But yeah, there is a sloppiness here (particularly with the villain reveal) that I think hits people harder because we know what a Coen is capable of. But I also think the movie is very much trying to be different in that regard, more here: https://www.mediamagpies.com/bakersfield-blues-feeling-out-of-place-in-honey-dont/
The X-Files, “The Field Where I Died”
This did not work for me at all. Kristen Cloke is turning in a “best person in your mid-sized community theater” performance, differentiating her character’s various personalities with outsized tics: the over-the-top squint may be the worst. Mulder reverse-Wizard of Oz-ing his way through a hypnosis session–and Scully was there! And the Cancer Man!–that involves the Holocaust is another exercise in cringe, and either Duchovny knows it (and therefore won’t commit to it) or it’s just a bad fit for his style, because it’s well-acted in only one moment, and that’s when Mulder “finds” Scully in his memories, says her name, and gives the most natural smile. You of all people. Here of all places.
The basic idea of encountering your soulmate–someone you love in every incarnation–but realizing that the circumstances of this particular life has already doomed you is a good one, and I actually think it would make a compelling supernatural romantic drama movie (especially if you cast a different actress). But this is where the TV format works against it. This episode isn’t enough to sell me on Melissa being one of the most important people in any of Mulder’s lives; it can’t generate enough one-off emotional power to convince me that she should be ranked alongside Scully and Samantha and even the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
Also, Jonestown was a mass murder, not a mass suicide. Skinner’s evocation of it still makes sense, but all those Kool-Aid shots annoyed me on behalf of the real-life victims.
Nice little detail I liked: one of the other agents saying that “Spooky” found the secret trapdoor in the field. It’s always cool when we see Mulder and Scully bouncing off other FBI agents, and even though this is brief, it’s fun to see someone using that nickname in a more complimentary way for a change.
Not enough Michael Massee.
The Last Stop in Yuma County
Fantastic cast of horror and crime alumni, and it’s particularly great to see Richard Brake, with his ’70s crime film face, getting a relatively big role here. But while the unusual hostage situation makes for a strong start and some of the off-the-rails material–that baby!–is a bracing kick in the teeth, the last half hour or so feels a little too showy for my tastes. It’s all a little too in love with its influences, and even though I love its influences too, that annoyed me; I came here to watch a movie, not listen to a one-sided conversation about how great movies are. But this is close to being a compelling, if slick, modern B movie, and I give it points for trying and for all the virtues of the first two acts.
North by Northwest – Our brief encounter last week with Hitch and the Cold War on AHP had me in the mood for a film set against the backdrop of the Cold War. But a pretty speech from Leo G. Carroll justifying the treatment of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint is about all the acknowledgement of things as we get. James Mason might be a bad guy but there is nothing to suggest he is a true believer. Or just in it for the money. It doesn’t matter, and the Cold War is really just as big a McGuffin as the statuette. What matters is that the overall contours of the mistaken identity turn into suspense and fun. and this does that in droves.
I upped the grade on this viewing. The things that bother me – like a house right on top of Mount Rushmore! – are still silly, but once you accept that the bad guy is going to trick our hero into going to Indiana to be killed by a crop duster instead of just shooting him, things just work start to finish. I know saying “they don’t make movies like this anymore” is reductive and trite, and also there’s only one Hitchcock, but…we’ve lost something in the CGI-iztaion of everything. We’ve lost something in undervaluing the power of star presence on a screen. I would even say we’ve lost the sly sense of humor that underlay so many old movies in an age were the gags are either unsubtle as bricks or non-existent. Granted, the formula invented here was for years a dominant way of telling stories in the movies, and is still with us to some degree. But in the attempts to keep it fresh, in the shift to new ways to make movies, the formula has been watered down just a bit too much to work for me.
The Practice, “Checkmates” – A cop’s son accidentally kills someone. Did Helen have the cop get a confession from his kid as a legal ploy? Meanwhile, Ellenor defends a mentally challenged teen on murder charges, and butts heads constantly with Richard Bay. In the end, the court tosses the former case and Richard makes a fool of himself, and the episode ends with a depressing pair of DAs at dinner and Richard giving “the speech.” A spirited if over the top defense of the importance of the district attorney meant to remind Helen why she does the job. Jason Kravitz manages to delivery it with both sincerity and irony, and it cracked me up. I would say it’s a high point of the show, absurd though it may have been.
Forgot to note special guest judge Gates McFadden, the second Trek alum in judicial robes, and not the last.
I like this point about sly humor and I think it’s tied to star power – the charisma to sell and be in on a joke at the same time, without dialogue bluntly and loudly making this emphasis. Eddie Murphy and the great pricing scene and fourth wall break in Trading Places comes to mind.
Year of the Month update!
This December, we’ll be taking pitches on anything from 1948, like these movies, albums, and books.
Dec. 18th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Rope
Dec. 20th: Lauren James: The Lottery
Here’s how we’re wrapping up this month:
Nov. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Legend of the Three Caballeros
And here’s the movies, albums, books, TV, and games from 1985 for you to write about next January.
Jan. 2nd: Gillian Nelson: Return to Oz
Jan. 5th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Rambo: First Blood Part II
Jan. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Advice on Lice
Jan. 16th: Gillian Nelson: The Wuzzles/The Gummi Bears
Jan. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Breakfast Club
Jan. 23rd: Gillian Nelson: The Golden Girls