Bill Williams

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

Deadline at Dawn

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Taxi driver Gus, June and Alex

A romance, a noir and a whodunit all in one, Deadline at Dawn is the only film Harold Clurman ever directed. A theatre director by background, Clurman wisely keeps it between the rails here with solid functionality. He shows us the stuff we need to see and nothing more. There’s no flash, no tricksiness. The same cannot be said for the timeline, which is jumbled about a fair bit. A smalltown soldier boy on leave in the big city wakes up with the mother of all hangovers and a pocketful of money. He has no idea where the loot came from, nor what he was doing the night before, beyond a hazy memory … Read more