It sounds like a Sally Jesse Raphael episode, but this Monogram quickie is actually a pretty okay thriller, if not
quite the shoestring classic James Agee once hailed. Ohio gal Kim Hunter comes to New York City to meet the
man she’s just married (Dean Jagger), who’s got a penchant for fake IDs, hem haws about his work, and gets
jumpy whenever somebody mentions the recent "silk stocking murder." William Castle, later the cheery huckster of
such gimmickoid classics as The Tingler and 13 Ghosts, is here young and hungry and, if nowhere near the level of
a Joseph H. Lewis, his modest ingenuity blooms within the anecdotes offered by the script (co-written by Philip Yordan).
Some of the effects (a maid’s shriek melting into a train’s whistle, guffawing faces clouding up the heroine’s mind) are
direct lifts from other movies, but for every thud (a neon sign "visualizing" Hunter’s anxiety) there’s a nifty bit (suspense
drummed up around a glass-plated mail chute). Castle’s unjaded eagerness blurs the line between disarming naiveté
and outright hackdom. Best of all, the picture offers glimpses of careers at their flowering: Hunter is very touching, and
Robert Mitchum, playing her ex-boyfriend in his first major role, is already the man. With Neil Hamilton, Dick Elliott, and
Milton Kibbee. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce
|