Fear in the Night

A remarkable thriller about a young man's torture by nightmare when he dreams he committed a murder, and then finds himself in possession of tangible evidence proving that somehow, somewhere, he actually did kill. An adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's story Nightmare, it's a real poverty row quickie produced by the Pine-Thomas team. Admirably acted in a raw-boned way, tricked out with a barrage of cheap but surprisingly effective expressionistic tricks, above all using a subjective narration which orchestrates the hero's terrors with Bressonian intensity, it creates (almost by accident, it would seem) a hauntingly exact visualisation of the dark, seedy world of Woolrich's imagination that made him the patron saint of film noir. Shane remade the film in l956 as Nightmare, with twice the budget and half the effect.