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Search for a Shadow was the original title, the spotlight illuminating the titles is that of a guard tower during a prison escape. Joey Faust (Douglas Kennedy), "mean and bitter," his Mephisto is the former Army major (James Griffith) who broke him out. The experimental ray calls for a human guinea pig, the dream is an unseen force at the conqueror's command. "An invisible army is worth billions!" "An army of dead men, Major." The hideout is a farmhouse, in the upstairs laboratory is a locked door behind which lies the captive daughter of the scientist (Ivan Triesault), a concentration camp survivor. Stealing atomic matter is the safecracker's mission, his interest in vaults catches the eye of the perfidious moll (Marguerite Chapman). "He's dangerous and locks mean nothing to him." A skeletal junction of sci-fi and film noir, Edgar G. Ulmer country, bare and touching. Tragedy tinges the fantastical proceedings, down to the henchman (Boyd Morgan) who lowers his shotgun upon news of his own missing son's demise. (The gravity of the situation does not prevent little jests like the hood's weary "yeah" after being hit by an extended stream of technobabble.) A dab of animation vanishes the fugitive's flesh only for it to reappear in the middle of a bank robbery, giving the Dalían sight of a disembodied noggin with pistol and loot. Vacant spaces for a moving camera, a mercenary's moral decision. "There is a man who has unlocked every door, except the one to his own soul." The end is a despairing frontal query amid the fallout, where even the CIA is just another baleful power looming over frail humanity. With Cormel Daniel, Edward Erwin, Jonathan Ledford, and Patrick Cranshaw. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |