Nightmare (movie)

City newspapers in New York report the murder of model Vicky Lynn ( Carol Landis ). In connection with the murder, the police interrogate with the addiction of sports agent Frankie Christopher ( Victor Matthew ), who begins his story about how he met her ...

One day after sports, Frankie sat in a cafe with buddies, aging actor Robin Ray (Alan Mowbray) and newspaper reporter Larry Evans (Ellin Jocelyn), where a very attractive waitress Vicky Lynn approached them. Frankie tells friends that with a few tricks he can make her a real model. First, Frankie buys her an expensive outfit and leads to the chic club El Chico, where, with the help of Robin and Larry, she begins to play an increased interest in her. At the same time, Vicki herself demonstrates not only beauty, but also erudition and wit. They are noticed by an influential elderly lady, Mrs. Handel (May Beatty), who invites them to her table and meets Vicki. A group of photojournalists, whom Larry persuaded, take pictures of their acquaintance. The receptionist in the house where Vicki lives, Harry Williams ( Elisha Cook ) is too lazy to give her the keys, but Frankie quickly shows him how he should treat the lady. Vicki refuses to invite friends to her apartment, saying that she lives with her sister.

Vicki’s sister, Jill Lynn ( Betty Grabble ), is invited to the police for interrogation, who says that they have been living in New York for two years, Vicki worked as a waitress, and Jill as a typist, they lived together, but recently they rarely saw each other since Vicki was constantly out. Jill continues the story ...

Returning home that evening, Vicki enthusiastically tells Jill how wonderful the evening was and that she met influential people. Vicki says she will no longer work as a waitress, and Frankie will make her a star. Through it, she has already received two advertising contracts and expects to become famous. Jill tries to appease her by saying that nothing good will come of such a life, but Vicki is confident. The next day, Frankie comes to their house, meets Jill, and shows a newspaper with a picture of Vicki. From this moment on, Vicki’s life changes abruptly, she begins to be invited to social events and offer advertising contracts. Vicki decides that she can become a singer, and Frankie finds her a job. One day, when Frankie comes to his sisters home, Vicki tells him that he is ending his business relationship. She went through a screen test, signed a long-term contract and is leaving to shoot in Hollywood without him ...

Police interrogation continues. Frankie says that after this meeting he went with Ray and Larry to a bar, where it turned out that each of them played a role in Vicki's successes, and that she not only secretly met each of them individually, but, in addition, she had there was someone else ...

Jill, in turn, recalls that while Vicki was still working as a waitress, Jill once noticed how some mysterious fat man was watching Vicki. She warns Vicki, but she says, then this is a common thing for her work. Then Jill saw this fat man several times, and he made a frightening impression. However, the inspector does not believe in her story, believing that she is trying to shield Frankie. Jill demands to invite the chief, and Ed Cornel ( Laird Kregar ) enters the room. Jill says that it was this man who was chasing her sister. However, Cornell replies that this is not surprising, because it is his job to walk around the city and watch people.

Jill goes on to say that the day before Vicki left for Hollywood, Frankie invited the sisters to drive a car. On the way, Vicki said that Jill was in love with Frankie. Then Jill tells how she discovered her sister's body. At five-thirty in the evening she arrived home early, music was playing in the apartment. There was Frankie, who said that he had just entered and discovered Vicki's body. Then everything was in a fog ...

The police let Jill go and continue interrogating Frankie, accusing him of killing Vicki in a fit of jealousy and resentment. Ed pounces on Frankie and is ready to kill him. Another, more relaxed cop asks Frank for forgiveness and leads to the assistant prosecutor (Morris Enkram), who asks for forgiveness from him and Jill. He says that he knows that the murderer was a residentist at Harry’s sister's house, who disappeared immediately after the murder.

Frankie wakes up in the middle of the night and sees in horror in the chair in front of him is Ed Cornell, who says that he will get to him.

Returning home, Jill is surprised to see Harry, who says that he was leaving to see his parents and has already explained everything to the police. Knowing that Jill was going to move to another apartment, he had already packed and packed her things.

To the prosecutor, who says they have no more suspects, Cornell says he continues to suspect Frankie and will prove his guilt. On behalf of the prosecutor, he calls Ray and Frankie to the police. They are shown screen tests of Wiki. Ray is visibly nervous and tries to leave the room. During interrogation, Ray confesses that Ray organized a screen test for Vicki, but she decided to leave for Hollywood without him. But Ray says that he did not kill her, he has an alibi, at the time of the murder he was in a sanatorium.

Cornel gets into Frankie's car and says on the way that he has already gathered a lot of evidence against Frankie and that he will soon be gone. Cornell comes to Jill’s new apartment, accusing her of cutting off Frankie because she loves him. Jill drives him out of the house. Then she looks at the letter she found with the following text: “Dear Vicki. After what you have done, you better get out of here as soon as possible. Frank".

Jill calls Frankie. He invites her to a boxing match, then to the evening club for dancing. Frankie tells Jill that he was ready for Vicky for a lot, but he did not like her. Jill's mood improves, they go dancing. Cornell, meanwhile, is following them, and a reporter who has noticed them dictates to the newspaper the article “Dancing at the Grave” about the meeting between the sister and the ex-boyfriend who was killed. After the club, Frankie and Jill swim in the pool, then she invites him to her and gives his letter, saying that she understands everything, but the police can interpret it in their own way. Frankie and Jill kiss, but at that moment Cornel bursts into the apartment and demands to give him a letter. Cornell says he found brass knuckles in Frankie’s room, which will be the main evidence, and handcuffs him. Cornell continues to intimidate Frankie, and then Jill hits Cornel on the head and offers Frankie to run.

At the hardware store, Jill cuts Frankie up with handcuffs. They kiss and plan to run. They spend the whole night in the cinema at round-the-clock sessions, and in the morning, Frankie goes to the bank to withdraw money to escape. Jill is waiting for him in the library, but there she is detained by the police. Frankie sees two cops being put into her car.

The newspapers write about Frankie Christopher's escape and that he is charged with murder. In the evening, on the street, Frankie comes to Cornell and threatens with a weapon, asks for Jill to be released, after which he is ready to give up. However, he refuses, saying that he will catch him sooner or later.

Cornell offers the prosecutor to release Jill and use her as a decoy to catch Frankie. Jill comes home and accidentally finds a lot of memorabilia in Vicki’s things with the text: “As I promised,” written with one hand.

Noticing a cop at the entrance of his house, Jill rises to the roof and moves to a neighboring house, after which he goes unnoticed out onto the street. She comes to the same cinema, where she agreed to meet with Frankie. She shows many of the same cards that came with flowers at Vicki's funeral. But she does not know who wrote them. They go to the cemetery. Having introduced himself as a newspaperboy, Frankie asks the caretaker about Vicki's funeral. He reports that flowers are brought to the grave every day from one store. Frankie finds this store, and Jill finds out that the customer for the bouquets is an anonymous newspaperman.

They come to the sleeping Larry, asking about the murder and about the flowers. He says that on the day of the murder he drove Vicki to the station to buy a ticket to Los Angeles. Then they returned to her house, but it turned out that both had forgotten the keys. Larry climbed into her apartment on the fire escape. There was no one in the apartment, but it seemed strange to him that there was a smoke. As a sign of what she remembers, Larry promised the first two weeks to send Vicki flowers every day, and then left. Leaving home, he was surprised to see that Harry was not at his usual workplace.

On the street, Frankie quietly approaches one of the detectives asking him to help him in one business for half an hour, after which he is ready to give up. Together with Jill, they approach the house where the sisters used to live. By intercom, Jill terrorizes Harry, saying in a voice from Vicki "why did you do this, you loved me." Frankie comes in and tells the detective how Harry, in a fit of desperate love, sneaked into her apartment and killed Vicki. Harry says that this is true, but that he had already told Cornell about all this for a long time, who told him to be silent.

Entering Cornell’s apartment, Frankie finds there a whole altar dedicated to Vicki, with many of her photographs and fresh flowers around. Cornel enters with a bouquet of fresh flowers. Realizing that the police guessed everything, he tells his story. Cornel says that he had long known who the killer was, but did not arrest him because he wanted to plant Frankie, who, he believes, took Vicki from him. Cornell says that he met Vicki even when she worked as a waitress, and soon fell in love with her. Once he protected her from street thugs, after which they met a couple of times, and Cornell began to dream of a wedding. He lost his head from Vicki, he literally began to idolize her. He bought and furnished this apartment for her, bought her perfume, but all this became miserable with the advent of Frankie and his ideas to make Vicki a star. And Cornell began to take revenge on Frankie ... Seeing that he was doomed, Cornel took poison and died.

Frankie invites Jill to the club El Chico, dances with her and makes her an offer. Mrs. Handel asks who this beauty is, but Ray and Larry say they have no idea.

H. Bruce Humberstone was a director of a wide genre range, his most famous works were the films “ Serenade of the Sun Valley ” (1941) and several musical comedies about Chinese detective Charlie Chen (1936–38). The best paintings by Victor Matthew include the kisses of Death “Noir” (1947) and “The Crying of the Big City ” (1948), as well as the Western “ My dear Clementine ” (1946). In 1940, Matthew and Carol Landis starred in the very popular science fiction film Million Years BC .

Betty Grable played one of the rare dramatic roles in this film. Most of all, she was famous for the perfect shape of her legs and roles in musical comedies, such as Even in Argentinean (1940), Mom Was in Tights (1947) and When My Baby Smiles at Me (1948). In 1944, Humberstone staged a musical comedy with the telling title " Cover Girl " with Gable .

After the release of the film, Variety magazine wrote: “Director H. Bruce Humberstone was equipped with a good script and achieved the results that the actors could get in a movie about a murder with a romantic tension beyond ordinary ... Betty Grable is extremely attractive in the role of the sister of the murdered girl played by Carol Landis , which disappears from the screen in the initial stage of the game. Victor Matthews plays harder than usual, and this seems to be quite appropriate. This time he acts as a slightly grouchy sports promoter ” ^[3] .

Time Out magazine wrote about the film: “A very good thriller in which a familiar situation with a man falsely accused of killing a girl takes several brilliant turns. The visual style of the picture is basically naturalistic, but its atmosphere becomes darker and more obscure as the hero plunges into a nightmare, culminating in the discovery that a fat detective with a soft voice (surprisingly ominous Krigar) is relentlessly hunting him, knowing that he did not kill her. Nevertheless, the detective who is madly and hopelessly in love with the deceased girl accuses the hero of her death and intends to carry out her perverted revenge ... Noir moments multiply more and more, in particular, that the sister of the murdered girl is irresistibly in love with the alleged killer, petty and the vicious little world in which the real killer lives, in a scene of nightmarish ambiguity, when the hero wakes up from what he sees above him as a lovingly inclined detective. Unfortunately, a slightly cold script does not allow the film to fully develop its noir potential, weakening some aspects of Steve Fisher's novel. First of all, Fisher’s detective was dying of tuberculosis, his illness, which sneaked like cancer through the whole novel, made more sense in that manic vendetta against a man who was healthy enough not only to live, but also to seek love ” ^[4] .

The New York Times review stated: “Despite the fact that the film embodies many familiar tricks of high-quality melodrama - flashbacks, a clear picture, threatening music and a pace of narration comparable to water torture -“ Nightmare “is a fairly obvious“ who is-made “and surprisingly not touching affair” ^[5] .

Film critic Dennis Schwartz wrote: “ Fox studio veteran H. Bruce Humberstone , whose films range from Charlie Chen to Tarzan , is creating his best work with this noir ... This early film noir , shot in the naturalistic style of Fox Studios, showed how the darkened camera work can enhance a painful mood and make the film more intense ... The final is full of plot twists and unexpected discoveries about the characters' characters, while Laird Kregar’s surprisingly sinister game as a sick detective dominates the screen ” ^[6] .

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