Here’s one I really didn’t expect to get to the bottom of.
In March of 2019, I posted an entry here detailing my faint reminiscence as a child of watching a strange, black-&-white noir film with a haunting sequence. Here’s how I described it.
I can’t remember where I was, who I was with or how I old I was when I saw it, but I remember watching a film on television -– a black-&-white mystery, possibly “noir” -– involving a protagonist haunted by a recurring nightmare or vision. In that mysterious scenario, he’s in some clandestine chamber that holds some horrible secret –- a murder, perhaps? The thing that makes it distinctive, however, is that there is music playing -– a strange, lulling, creepy dirge. Again, the protagonist is driven to distraction by this eerie vision, but cannot connect the dots as to where it happened or its significance.
Later in the film, he's at some social function, and there is music playing via an old-time record player. At one pivotal point, a woman near that turntable bumps into it with her elbow, inadvertently changing the speed of the turntable to a slower revolution-per-minute, like dropping from 45 to 33 1/3. When she does this, the music playing suddenly replicates the creepy music in the protagonist’s recurring vision, and he becomes convinced that the clandestine chamber with the horrible secret is immediately nearby.
So, yeah, my quest was to divine the name of that film. A cinephile friend of mine suggested posting the link and the query on Kindertrauma, a pop culture blog devoted to arcane horror cinema, so I did that. I was not at all expecting anyone to respond. I figured it would be one of those things that I’d never figure out.
Until today...
A reader named Lisa H. wrote in and had this to say…
Hey, I read your 2019 post on Kindertrauma. I believe the film is "Nightmare" (1956). (Your description sounded so intriguing I got obsessed looking for it :-) )
Duly intrigued, I took to Wikipedia, and stumbled upon this telling descriptor of the plot:
"Nightmare" is a 1956 American film noir crime film directed by Maxwell Shane starring Edward G. Robinson, Kevin McCarthy and Connie Russell. The story is based on a novel by William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich). The book also became a 1947 film, "Fear in the Night," made by the same writer-director. "Nightmare" had been the original title of "Fear in the Night."
PLOT: New Orleans big band clarinetist Stan Grayson (Kevin McCarthy) has a nightmare in which he sees himself in a mirrored room, killing a man, while in the background, haunting dirge-like music plays. He awakens to find blood on himself, bruises on his neck, and a key from the dream in his hand. Grayson goes to his brother-in-law, police detective Rene Bressard (Edward G. Robinson), about the problem but is dismissed. Later, the two men go on a picnic in the country with Grayson's girlfriend and sister. Grayson leads them to an empty house, the house of his dream, when it begins to rain. They find a record player, switch it on, and a catchy jazzy tune begins to play. While dancing, Grayson's girlfriend bumps into the record player, changing the speed. Slowed down, the dance music becomes the tune from the nightmare. They are then shocked to see that the house has a mirrored room just like in Grayson's dream. After it is found out that a murder did indeed take place, Grayson becomes Bressard's number one suspect.
It goes on from there. I don’t want to ruin it for you further, should you be intrigued enough to track it down.
In any event, YES! THIS IS THE FILM! I clicked on over to YouTube, and the film can be seen in its entirety there, including the turntable scene I first spoke of (from whence the screen grab at the top of this post comes from).
So, there you have it. Mystery solved!!! Thanks to Lisa H. and Kindertrauma for settling this.
Here’s the film. Check out the opening sequence, featuring the recurring nightmare in question….
Recent Comments