Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
I Wake Up Screaming (1941)
Director: H Bruce Humberstone
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A fine thriller in which the familiar situation of the man wrongly accused of his girl's murder is given a number of brilliant twists. Visually, adhering to the Fox style, the film is basically naturalistic, but its mood becomes increasingly murky as the hero plumbs the depths of nightmare, culminating in his discovery that the obese, soft-spoken detective relentlessly hounding him (the marvellously sinister Cregar) knows he didn't kill her but, himself hopelessly infatuated with the dead girl, blames him for her death and means to exact a perverse vengeance. Intimations of noir proliferate in the fact that the dead girl's sister is irresistibly attracted to the presumed killer, in the sleazy little dream world inhabited by the real killer, and in a scene of nightmarish ambivalence where the hero wakes to find the detective brooding lovingly over him as he sleeps. It's a pity that the script, developing cold feet, prevents the film from developing its full noir potential by toning down Steve Fisher's source novel in several respects. Most notably, Fisher's detective (intriguingly, a pen portrait of Cornell Woolrich), was presented as a man dying of TB ('He looked sick. He looked like a corpse. His clothes didn't fit him'); this sickness, creeping like a cancer through the story, made more sense of his obsessive vendetta against a man healthy enough not only to live but to win love.Author: TM
Cast & crew
Director: H Bruce Humberstone
Producer: Milton Sperling
Cast: Victor Mature, Betty Grable, Laird Cregar, Carole Landis, Elisha Cook Jr, Alan Mowbray, Allyn Joslyn, William Gargan full cast
Genre(s): Thrillers
Duration: 82 mins
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
Has David Cronenberg turned tame?
Has director David Cronenberg veered too far from his radical and bloody roots with new film 'A Dangerous Method'?
Pop-up cinema for Valentine's Day
Side-step romantic clichés with some alternative Valentine’s viewing
The 10 worst date movies
Just in time for Valentine's Day, we present ten of the least romantic films ever made
Where to watch this year's Oscar-nominated films
Find out where to watch 2012's Oscar-nominated films in London cinemas
10 unlikely badboy biopics
Featuring Phil Collins, Jeremy Clarkson, Nick Clegg, David Starkey and a host of other unlikely subjects






What do you think?
Post your review now