Best known for radio work on the scary anthology show LIGHTS OUT*, Arch Oboler dabbled over the years in largely disappointing films. Debuting with a prestige piece, ESCAPE/’40, an appalling anti-Nazi story with Norma Shearer rescued from a Nazi concentration camp by Robert Taylor. Yikes! He redeemed himself on this tiny B-Pic about a car pool of aircraft factory workers on their way to defense plant jobs, recalling in flashback how they got here. Margo’s 'French Chanteuse' who was in the resistance; Robert Ryan’s race car driver injured out of the air force; James Bell’s prison warden forced to pull the electric chair switch on his own brother (featuring a rare flashback within a flashback); just crowned Miss America Amelita Ward learning that fame (and paid endorsements) ain’t all it’s cracked up to be; and John Carradine’s rail-riding intellectual hobo discovering even he owes a debt to society. The stories are neatly structured, speedy (all five in 70 minutes), generous with sharp character turns, and smartly helmed on a dime by John H. Auer who’d go on to make many a bad meller. All told, this reps the most sustained piece of film writing Oboler ever managed. Perhaps because it doesn’t attempt too much. Well played, especially by Carradine & Harry Davenport in the last bit.
DOUBLE-BILL: Portmanteau or ‘omnibus’ films were having a moment during WWII. Biggest of the lot, the all-star TALES OF MANHATTAN/’42 (see below).
LINK: *As always when Arch Oboler is mentioned, we post a LINK to his ten-minute LIGHTS OUT creep-a-thon masterpiece, THE DARK! It’s the one with a once-heard/never-forgotten sound effect of a man being turned INSIDE OUT!! And while nothing compares to the original broadcast sound cue, it’s hard to find on youtube so here’s a later version nearly as unsettling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSmEh8TxswQ
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