Fear in the Night/Quicksand! (Film Chest, NR)

Quicksand! is an efficient film noir for most of its length, and then becomes something else entirely, with a lot of unnecessary complications and a distinctly unbelievable ending.

 

Fear in the Night (Film Chest, NR)
Quicksand! (Film Chest, NR)

If you’re feeling overdosed on this summer’s major studio movie releases and are ready for something from a calmer/lower-budgeted time, you could do worse than to enjoy a double bill of two new Film Chest releases, Fear in the Night and Quicksand! Neither is a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but both offer enough interest to be worth a viewing, particularly if you like old black-and-white movies and are up for some semi-noir of the distinctly low-budget variety. With these two films, instead of A and B features, you’d be essentially watching B and C features, with Fear in the Night occupying the lower rung of quality.

There are two main reasons to watch Fear in the Night. First, it’s the film debut of DeForest Kelley, best known for his role of Dr. McCoy on Star Trek, but who also appeared in a number of other films (including Sam Fuller’s 1955 House of Bamboo) and television shows. The other is that it’s an adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich story “And So to Death,” and anything by Woolrich is worth a look. (Other films based on his writing include Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, and The Leopard Man.)

Fear in the Night is stuffed with catchy story elements, beginning with the basic premise of a mild-mannered bank teller (Kelley) who dreams that he kills someone, then awakens to discover physical evidence suggesting it wasn’t just a dream. He enlists his cop brother-in-law (Paul Kelley) to try to figure out what happened/is happening, and discovers all kinds of interesting things in the process, including an octagonal room of mirrors and an evil hypnotist. Since the story is largely told from Kelley’s point of view, it’s custom designed for that favorite of film noir conventions, the voiceover. Unfortunately, Fear in the Night suffers from the excessive use of special effects, to the point where you can just about hear director Maxwell Shane, who usually worked as a screenwriter, asking for a list of all the effects that could be done cheaply. For all that, it’s still an OK watch, but if you’re doing the double bill, watch this one first, because it makes Quicksand! look like Double Indemnity by comparison.

Quicksand! offers a big step up in quality, including the presence of the actors Mickey Rooney and Peter Lorre, as well as a director, Irving Pichel, who was good enough to draw the attention of HUAC and be blacklisted. For most of its running time, it’s a better-than-average noir featuring the classic plot of an essentially good man who takes one wrong step, due in part to the influence of a femme fatale, and finds himself drawn further and further into a world of evil in which he has no natural defenses—hence the title. Rooney spends most of the film sinking into a moral quicksand, and nothing he has learned up to that point is of any use in helping him escape his fate.

Rooney plays an auto mechanic who wants to show his date Vera (a very tarted-up Jeanne Cagney) a good time, and “borrows” $20 from the shop’s cash register with the intention of returning it the next day. Unfortunately, the shop’s bookkeeper shows up early, and to cover his theft Rooney becomes involved in a series of increasingly serious acts, leading him ever deeper into a life of crime. His descent is all the more ironic because he had a perfectly nice girlfriend (played by Barbara Bates, who is as wholesome in this film as she was conniving as Phoebe in All About Eve) but let his little head do the thinking just long enough to set him on a course that seems certain to end with death and/or disgrace.

Quicksand! feels like a too-many-cooks production (although only one writer is credited). It’s an efficient film noir for most of its length, and then becomes something else entirely, with a lot of unnecessary complications and a distinctly unbelievable ending. But before you get to that point, there’s a lot to enjoy, including appearances by Mousketeer-to-be Jimmie Dodd and character actor Jack Elam, who appeared in about a zillion Westerns as well as the Twilight Zone episode “Will the Real Martian Stand Up?” (He’s the guy with the crazy eyes.)

Both Fear in the Night and Quicksand! are in the public domain, and neither look great in the Film Chest restorations, but they are watchable. There are no extras on either DVD, so what you are getting is a somewhat restored version of these films that you can pop in your DVD player or computer. | Sarah Boslaugh