Only 54, Jacques Tourneur couldn’t have known he’d made his last good film (NIGHT OF THE DEMON/'57) the year before he helmed this inept political thriller. Both star Dana Andrews (also in Tourneur’s CANYON PASSAGE/’46 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/03/canyon-passage-1946.html), here as a psychologically damaged Korean War vet, a prisoner-of-war prone to migraines and psychotic episodes, but determined to return to his old D.C. polling firm. Only where’s his old partner? New owner Dick Foran now runs the place and has twisted it into a ‘push-polling’ propaganda mill working for . . . whom? Pro or anti-commie? The script very vague on specifics, but not on windy speeches passing as normal dialogue right from the start. Andrews takes a pretty secretary into his confidence when he starts to suspect Foran of murdering his old partner; also trying on nerdy research man Mel Tormé to dig into office corruption. (You read that right; Mel Tormé.) From there, the wheels really come off the cart right thru a theater-of-the-absurd finale featuring fisticuffs between Foran & Andrews in front of rear projection/reverse angles of the Lincoln Memorial & the Washington Monument. Lots more craziness, like a boarding house trap for Andrews run by a bickering couple out to fleece, recruit or incriminate him. A pity as the subject matter of political persuasion via modern Public Relations & media leaks pretty advanced stuff for 1958, but you’ll be laughing (or wincing) too hard to notice.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Stick to last year’s NIGHT OF THE DEMON. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/11/night-of-demon-1957.html
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