The Prowler **** (1951, Van Heflin, Evelyn Keyes) – Classic Movie Review 1311

Director Joseph Losey delivers a tense, grippingly performed, dark-toned thriller with plenty of seedy film noir atmosphere and an effective mood of desperation and despair. He has a very solid basis to rely on with Dalton Trumbo and Hugo Butler’s clever, fresh-seeming film noir screenplay that successfully rings the changes on an age-old, familiar plotline.

Evelyn Keyes plays the quintessentially bored housewife  Susan Gilvray, who summons world-weary car-patrol policeman Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) when she fears she may have heard a prowler at her home. Soon, however, sparks light between them, they’re desperately in love and planning to kill her hubby William Gilvray (Emerson Treacy), who’s in their way.

Both underestimated star players fill their roles with full emotional and psychological commitment, and Losey directs with great tension in one of his most interesting American outings before his exile in England enforced by the vile he 1950s Hollywood Un-American Committee anti-Communist witch-hunts in the US.

The film is produced by Sam Spiegel (as S.P. Eagle), who co-produced along with an un-credited John Huston, under their Horizon Pictures banner. Huston was at the time married to Keyes and the film was conceived as a star vehicle for her.

The radio announcer heard throughout the film is the voice of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who co-wrote the film originally uncredited. the original story is by Robert Thoeren, Hans Wilhelm.

Novelist James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia) named this his favourite film and described it as ‘a masterpiece of sexual creepiness, institutional corruption and suffocating, ugly passion.’

(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1311

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