I Wake Up Screaming (1941)

Promoter Frankie Christopher being grilled by police in the murder of model Vicky Lynn recalls in flashback: First meeting her as a waitress Frankie decides to parlay her beauty into social acceptance and a lucrative career. He succeeds only too well: she's on the eve of deserting him for Hollywood...when someone kills her. Now Frankie gets the feeling that Inspector Ed Cornell is determined to pin the killing on him and only him. He's right. And the only one he can turn to for help is Jill the victim's sister who's been cool toward him...System Requirements:Running Time: 82 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: MYSTERY/SUSPENSE UPC: 024543244547 Manufacturer No: 2234454 Product Description

Something worth screaming about

I Wake Up Screaming is one of quite a few films that give the lie to the notion that Victor Mature couldn't act, with his likeable press agent very different in tone and delivery from many of his roles. But good as he is, it's Laird Cregar's creepy cop patiently and cheerfully (well, as cheerfully as he can manage) shadowing him and turning up everywhere like a bad penny who dominates the film - this is a guy who makes Hank Quinlan look like a poster boy for acceptable face of law enforcement without even raising so much as his voice. Terrific dialogue and a cast of likely suspects from Alan Mowbray to Elisha Cook Jr. actually gives this one a convincing whodunit element - you actually do start wondering if Mature could be guilty towards the end. Great stuff.
May 12, 2008

awful music

Following my film noir search I have to admit I really enjoy this movie, I only regret listening as love theme the main theme from Over The Rainbow by Harold Arlen. Very interesting collection this Fox Film Noir, 5 new other titles are on the way. October 3, 2007

Among the Earliest "Gritty" Noirs, A Film That Paved The Way For More Memorable Examples of the Style

As it originally emerged, Film Noir was as glossy as it was tough, a genre photographed in a remarkable visual style of light and shadow and offering cynical and often witty tales of slick anti-heroes and dangerous dames--and films like THE MALTESE FALCON, THIS GUN FOR HIRE, MILDRED PIERCE, THE BLUE DAHLIA, and DOUBLE INDEMNITY remain great classics of their kind. At the same time, however, 20th Century Fox was releasing a stream of "pulp" crime dramas. Often overlooked or flatly dismissed by critics, they would pave the way for the shift in Noir style that came in 1948 with the "true crime," gritty style of NAKED CITY.

The first of these 20th Century Fox films, based on a novel by Steve Fisher, was I WAKE UP SCREAMING. Jill and Vicky Lynn (Betty Grable and Carole Landis) are two sisters living in New York; Vicky is working as a waitress when she is noticed by promoter Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature), who is soon convinced he can turn her into a star. But Vicky proves perfidious: once success is within her grasp she drops Frankie to pursue a career in Hollywood. Her career never comes to pass: she is found dead in her apartment, Frankie standing over her. And police inspector Ed Cornell (Laird Cregar) makes it clear that he intends to nail Frankie for Vicky's murder.

Although the dialogue is clunky, the film structure is intriguing, often telling the story through flashbacks in a way upon the 1944 LAURA would improve. But the real power of the film is the sharp edge with which director H. Bruce Humberstone endows the film--and the truly memorable photography by Edward Cronjager, a truly gifted cinematographer who would receive no fewer than seven Oscar nominations during his long career. And then there are two powerhouse performances that drive the film: Carole Landis and Laird Cregar.

Originally from Wisconsin, Carole Landis began her career playing bit parts in such films as A DAY AT THE RACES--but in 1940 she had a major breakthrough in the film ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. In hindsight, it is obvious that Landis was a competent if slightly limited actress; at the time, however, she was generally dismissed by critics as just another pretty girl without significant talents. In a very real sense, I WAKE UP SCREAMING would be the high-water mark of her career; she was thereafter generally overlooked by the studio and often miscast. By 1948 her career was over, and she took her own life.

Laird Cregar, however, was a different matter, immediately recognized for his gifts. But Cregar was an extremely large man, weighing in at 300 pounds. It was a fact that limited his career, and although he appeared to tremendous effect in such films as THIS GUN FOR HIRE, HEAVEN CAN WAIT, and the exceptional THE LODGER, leading man status eluded him. Determined to cross the line, Cregar went on a crash diet and dropped over 100 pounds. It got him the lead in HANGOVER SQUARE, which many regard as his best film--but it also strained his health to the breaking point, and he died of heart failure in 1945.

In spite of its innovations, the firey performances of Landis and Cregar, and an unexpected plot twist that can still drop jaws today, I WAKE UP SCREAMING is a slightly awkward film, largely due to the flippant nature of its dialogue and the "goody goody" quality of the role assigned to Betty Grable, who reads here as somewhat saccharine. Nonetheless, this is a film that fans of Film Noir cannot afford to miss, for it points the way to the new style. The quality of the picture is a bit hit and miss, but the DVD has a surprising number of bonuses--including a memorable audio commentary by film historian Eddie Muller. In comparison to such contemporary films as THE MALTESE FALCON and the slightly later LAURA, it is pretty mild stuff--but the film has a historical importance in terms of the Noir movement, and fans of the genre will find it indispensible. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer August 17, 2007

I Wake Up Screaming

One of the first Hollywood whodunits to build an atmosphere of torment and menace around its two protagonists, Humberstone's enthralling psychological thriller opens with two police interrogations that quickly establish character, motives, and the events leading up to the murder via flashback. Mature and Grable give complex performances as a pair thrown together by circumstance and drawn into a love affair, but the film really belongs to Cregar, whose brutish portrayal of an unscrupulous policeman was a career high. This stunningly photographed, ominous early noir will leave you "Screaming." June 25, 2007

Orson Welles watched this one for sure

Nobody seemed to have noticed the striking common points between Ed Cornell, the big, fat, rotten policeman, and Hank Quinlan from Touch of Evil (1958). Orson was a genius, but he used the good old classics to inspire him. April 21, 2007

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