Van Heflin

Possessed

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Louise in bed in the hospital

Superb and quite mad, Possessed gives us Joan Crawford at full hatstand, eyes boggling, jaw tight, fists clenched, a portrait of an unhinged woman, a stalker before the term was coined. This melodrama from 1947 comes from a time when they knew how to do this sort of thing unapologetically. It opens calmly but oddly enough. After big, blaring, noirish opening credits we’re on city streets at dawn, where a discombobulated lone woman (Crawford) is stumbling about looking for someone called David. She’s clearly in the midst of some kind of breakdown and winds up in hospital, in the Psychopathic Ward, in a catatonic state. The doctor, after opining that there’s a lot … Read more

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

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Kirk Douglas and Barbara Stanwyck

What exactly is so strange about the love of Martha Ivers in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers? Unfortunate, maybe? Random, perhaps? Convenient, possibly? Strange – not so much. But then that is this noirish, gothic 1946 melodrama all over, promising much and not quite delivering. It’s largely remembered these days as the film debut of Kirk Douglas, who plays the husband of Barbara Stanwyck’s Martha Ivers, whose birth name was Smith, by the way, and whose married name is O’Neil, and so isn’t really an Ivers at all. But before all of that, first a preamble brilliantly setting the scene for what’s to follow. A young Martha (played winningly by Janis Wilson) is … Read more

Act of Violence

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Janet Leigh and Van Heflin

A man arrives in a small, neat town in California. It’s a bright sunny day but he’s brought a sliver of dark, noirish New York with him on the Greyhound bus. And also a gun. As he limps across the street away from the bus station, a band plays, veterans march and flags flutter. It’s Memorial Day. Joe is in town to kill an old Army buddy. Like those implacable, remorseless creatures from It Follows, Joe relentlessly pursues his victim. To the nice house in the suburbs that his quarry, war veteran Frank, helped build. Out to the lake where Frank has gone fishing. Back to his house after Frank realises he’s being … Read more

The Prowler

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Mrs Gilvray opens the door to cop Webb Garwood

“A masterpiece of sexual creepiness” – writer James Ellroy’s verdict on 1951’s The Prowler, a film that gave two good actors roles of a lifetime and which languished in the pit of obscurity until it was rescued by a restoration in 2011. The “sexual creepiness” arrives early on. Married woman Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) calls the cops after seeing what she thinks is a prowler outside her window, peeking at her as she got out of the bath. The cops turn up. No one there. Or is there? One of the policemen, Webb Garwood (Van Heflin), has taken an instant interest in Mrs Gilvray and he returns later that evening, ostensibly just to … Read more