Experiment Perilous

A comparatively minor but characteristically elegant Tourneur costume melodrama-cum-psychological thriller in the vein of Rebec and Gaslight, this features Lamarr as the wife of a wealthy philanthropist; inevitably, she comes to fear not only for her own sanity, but also for that of her genuinely dangerous husband, a manic authoritarian patriarch whose violence is the product of a troubled, traumatic childhood. Equally inevitably, doctor/ detective Brent is there to save her and supply romantic interest, but Tourneur manages to overcome the formulaic plotting and cod-Freudian characterisations through carefully controlled performances and Tony Gaudio's fine camerawork.