Phenomenally effective B-pic from cinematographer-turned-director Ted Tetzlaff, a ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ thriller taken from the same Cornell Woolrich story Alfred Hitchcock reworked as REAR WINDOW/’54.* Very different here, the downmarket version, but lots of Hitchcockian touches including a neat visual reference to the famous nervous pacing heard (well, seen) thru the ceiling in Hitchcock’s THE LODGER/’27. (NOTORIOUS/’46 wasn’t Tetzlaff’s last lensing credit for nothing.) No REAR WINDOW soundstage Greenwich Village in sight, instead, terrific East Side tenement location shooting, and flawless matching Manhattan mock-ups as young Bobby Driscoll spends a hot night on the fire escape, accidentally witnessing a murder thru the window of an upstairs neighbor. Trouble is, he’s such an inveterate tall-tale fibber no one believes his story. Tetzlaff’s gets us involved right away with his exceptional cast and remarkably true-to-life grimy art direction inside & out. You can smell the cabbage & grease in the hallway. Then studs the action with twists & bursts of suspense that have you yelling back at the screen: DON’T FORGET THE PILLOW! or CHECK OUT THE FLOOR ABOVE!! And when nice mom Barbara Hale forces her terrified boy to apologize in person to the nice, quiet couple in the apartment above for lying about them, letting them know that he knows; it’s one of the great eyes-wide-awake nightmares in cinema. All in a tidy 73 minutes.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Morris Engel’s famous no-budget indie THE LITTLE FUGITIVE/’53 gets lots of credit for shooting around the back streets of NYC, while this film had ‘been there/done that’ four years before.
DOUBLE-BILL: *The same Woolrich short story (‘The Boy Cried Murder’) was also revamped by Tom Holland for CLOAK AND DAGGER/’84, a star vehicle for Henry Thomas soon after E.T.
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