Nightmare Alley

from NoiroftheWeek.com

This week I've been thinking about Nightmare Alley. It's a 1947 noir starring Tyrone Power

Time has been good to this one. The indispensable 70s movie book King of the B's: Working Within the Hollywood System has a fascinating piece on the film in an article written in 1974 by Clive T. Miller.

He writes: "Nightmare Alley (1947) is the quintessential B movie spoiled by an A production. If the studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, had left well enough alone, Nightmare Alley would have be hard and nasty. Or if they had turned it into a full-fledged A project, it would have become a classic." Not true anymore. The film is a classic. And a damned good film noir.

Now, I know, the book is something completely diff...

Tyrone Power is at his most alluring in this compelling story of "Stanton Carlisle". He starts out working as a general factotum with a travelling show where he meets "Zeena" (Joan Blondell). She is part of the mind-reading act with "Bruno" (Mike Mazurki) - a man who hits the bottle just once too often. She begins to teach him the tricks of their trade and soon they are the toast of society - fleecing the green and the gullible. It is at one such show that he alights on "Ruth" (Helen Walker) - a professional psychiatrist who is not averse to a little bribery and corruption herself. Soon she is feeding him confidential information that enables "Stan" to try to trick the mourning millionaire "Ezra Grindle" (Taylor Holmes) out of $150,000. Edm...