Fear in the Night (1947)

Written by CinemaSerf on January 6, 2024

"Vince" (DeForest Kelley) wakes up in a sweat one night convinced that he's murdered a young woman. He just assumes it was a vivid nightmare but then he starts to discover some objects around his apartment that he cannot explain. Fortunately, his brother-in-law is cop "Cliff" (Paul Kelly) but when he confides in him, he is politely pointed to the psychiatrists chair. It's only when a family picnic ensues and they find themselves outside an abandoned mansion that his friends start to believe a "Vince" who clearly knows his way around the house and that, quite possibly, he did actually kill someone! The key to the mystery seems to be an octagonal, completely mirrored, room - and maybe if he can find that he might get to the bottom of this mystery. This is actually not a bad little story and although the penny drops for those watching way earlier than it does for the cast, director Maxwell Shane does rather better with the totally wooden cast than you might expect. Everything about the production, the lighting, the static camerawork are pretty basic, but it does hold up for an hour or so, and it's just a little bit different from your average psycho-noir.