MAN IN THE DARK (1953)

Edmond O’Brien is offered (under duress) immediate parole if he is willing to undergo experimental brain surgery in the hope it will remove his criminal impulses. It will also remove his memory. After moving up the surgery a few days, O’Brien is impulsively set on punching the male nurse in the jaw before a sedation injection.  After surgery, the angry criminal finds serendipity in hedge-trimming and painting, though ballet could not be worked into his rehab schedule. An insurance investigator, needing to recover the stolen money from a robbery, thinks O’Brien is faking and tracks his every move. Likewise, Ted de Corsia is not buying his former partner's amnesia story. Stereo-typically, under his angled fedora, he is his usual gangster self, grumbling and angrily threatening to beat the truth out of him or burn an eye out with the lit end of a cigar. The latter used as a gruesome 3D stinger, one of several 3D moments.

Later, trying to refresh O'Brien's memory in the first of three flashbacks, gang member Nick Dennis retells exactly, second by second, what happened during the robbery. If it were possible, one could accept this if it were O’Brien’s flashback. How Dennis knew O’Brien’s every step, including an attempted call at a phone booth without being present, is positively clairvoyant. What follows is a pursuit by two officers because O’Brien looks pretty guilty running down the sidewalk. In his early films, O'Brien was quite the runner. Really laying those dress shoes down. His stunt double climbs up a three-story fire escape, followed by a silly implausibility: O’Brien drops a potted plant down in the officer’s vicinity in Merry Melodies cartoon fashion. A big clue as to his location. A clichéd chase on rooftops ensues as the frantic music score backs up the action. O’Brien is not only exhausted but also arrested on a painter’s scaffolding.

Audrey Totter is O’Brien’s girl, but he does not know it. However, his two dreams, aka flashbacks, suggest she may be more than a stranger. One dream concerns a Santa Monica amusement park with a creepy seven-foot-tall laughing animatronic charwoman that is hard for O'Brien to forget. Me too. The following may answer why it is laughing so hard. The most unintentionally humorous scene, and no doubt a highlight of the 3D processing, has O’Brien getting on The Whip ride, where individual pods rotate around an oval hub. The cars never stay in one position for any length of time, yet five police officers slip into their own car and “chase” O’Brien around the oval, never getting any closer. The officers shoot at him as their pod randomly twirls around. It is lucky a fellow officer was not wounded, or a patron failed to dodge the stray bullets at the popcorn stand. The officer’s training never included this! Understandably, they cannot hit the broadside of a barn. The ride stops, and all six orderly get out of their pods. 

O’Brien’s dreams come to life as he and Totter return to the amusement park. He knows where the money is hidden and, with a dose of returning greed, stuffs the cash inside his suit coat pockets. Perhaps that brain surgery did not work. Her disappointment shows, and she assumes he has reverted to his old ways. They go their separate ways. Later, the oft-used rear projection roller coaster ride is used with actors pretending their necks are being snapped back and forth. I imagine a real buzz in 3D. O’Brien gets off the coaster as it creeps to the top and climbs down the wooden structure, only to encounter de Corsia, who stands up at the wrong end of the speeding coaster. Dennis takes a final bow off the scaffolding after an officer’s bullet rings true. Give the officer a stuffed animal! Never far away, the insurance investigator arrives after bodies stop hitting the pavement and gets back the company’s one hundred thirty grand from O’Brien. He and Totter kiss as their roller-coaster relationship levels out.

Note: Directed by Lew Landers and produced by Wallace MacDonald, this was the first Columbia Pictures film released in 3D, all in glorious black and white. It is a remake of the 1936 film, The Man Who Lived Twice, with a premise that has been overused since. This seventy-minute B-movie offers up good pacing, but the amnesia angle is pretty stale aside from the brain surgery concept. Decidedly more fantastic than John Payne’s war injury in the 1949 film, The Crooked Way.

WOMAN ON THE RUN (1950)

Directed by Norman Foster with a coherent screenplay by Foster and Alan Campbell, along with sarcastically witty dialogue by Ross Hunter, this Universal Pictures release is a winner thanks to solid performances by the main cast. A more accurate title might have been, “Husband on the Run,” that being the character actually running throughout most of the film. The hugely respected, top-billed actress probably predestined the title. The limited budget is pretty well hidden, sending this film into the unknown B+ movie category.

Husband and enigmatic starving artist, Ross Elliot, is walking his dog late at night and witnesses, what he will soon learn, is a gangland murder. The gunman spots him and fires in Elliot’s direction with precise accuracy. However, in the dark, the murderer shoots Elliot’s backlit shadow in the head instead. That is Elliot’s good news. The bad news is that he is now the prime witness to the murder. He bolts in fear, leaving the police, his wife, and his dog trying to locate him.

Robert Keith is the quintessential police detective in a trench coat and fedora, topping off a face full of weary. Keith is frustrated with Ann Sheridan, as she seems unconcerned about her vanishing husband. He wants to provide protection for her husband, but she is anything but helpful. They sarcastically exchange humorous lines back and forth. He is confounded that there is not a single photo of Elliot in Sheridan’s possession. Her husband, being a painter, he asks if he ever did a self-portrait. Sheridan says no, he never liked himself that much. He returns later with more news, telling her he went to see her husband’s doctor. She asks, “Why, aren’t you feeling well?” His point is, her husband has a serious heart problem. A shocking detail of which she was unaware. Elliot now has two reasons to be found. How times have changed, Elliot's doctor is stumped by something called hypertension.

Enter Dennis O’Keefe as a wisecracking newspaper reporter. O’Keefe was a pro at playing charmingly persistent characters. He wants to help Sheridan find her husband for an exclusive story. Their banter is fun and natural. After helping her evade a policewoman tailing her in a taxi, he treats Sheridan to breakfast, where they serve the best waffles. “Butter in every little square,” he tells her. Perhaps the only flaw in the screenplay is a revealing detail during this scene that shifts the plot about fifteen minutes too soon. The middle section is somewhat ponderous and less intriguing. Through a series of obscure clues left by her husband, she is able to piece them together and locate him. All the while, Keith has been gluing clues together and suspects the killer.

Note: The speeding roller coaster scene at night with screaming riders and laughing animatronic figures in carnival booths can be spooky enough. Often repeated in films. The climax of Sheridan's terrifying ride on the coaster, though done in a studio with a back screen, is a nail-biter thanks to excellent editing and Sheridan making it appear authentic.