Barbara Hale

The Clay Pigeon

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Jim Fletcher wakes up in a hospital bed with someone trying to strangle him

The issues are fascinating but the plotting swings about like a thing demented in The Clay Pigeon, a paranoid thriller written by Carl Foreman, of High Noon and The Bridge on the River Kwai fame, and directed by Richard Fleischer, estimable names both. Bill Williams plays a soldier who wakes up from a coma only to be told he’s about to be court-martialled for murder and treason for turning a fellow soldier over to the Japanese when both were PoWs. Since Jim Fletcher (Williams) has amnesia, he has no idea what the charges are all about but he is clear-minded enough to know he’s in a fix. Climbing out of his hospital bed … Read more

The Window

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Tommy, wide-eyed, witnesses the murder

If you like Rear Window you might like The Window, a thriller from 1949 running on the same fuel – impotent voyeurism. Both films are based on short stories by Cornell Woolrich. This one from a “boy who cried wolf” tale called The Boy Who Cried Murder, about a doughty kid who, on a hot summer’s night goes out onto the fire escape of his parents’ New York apartment to sleep, and while out there sees his neighbours killing someone. Tommy (Bobby Driscoll) is a bit of a loner who makes up stories to fill the gaps where friends should be, so when he tells his parents (Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy) what he … Read more