Kevin McCarthy is trapped in a noir nightmare.  In 1956’s Nightmare, he has a dream where he kills some guy in what appears to be a house of mirrors, ala 1947’s Lady from Shanghai.  He’s convinced he killed somebody when he discovers bruises around his windpipe and blood on his left arm.  He also discovers there’s a key and button in his fist, objects which were from the dream.

Another souvenir from his dream is music he heard in it, a simple four-note motif that doesn’t seem all that strange to me, though McCarthy keeps telling everybody how peculiar it is.  As a clarinetist in a jazz combo, he knows musicians, and he goes to clubs all around town asking if anybody knows the tune.  Nobody recognizes it, when all they need to do is listen to the soundtrack, as that snippet is worked into the score ad nauseum.  The answer to this puzzle arrives only when a turntable accidentally drops in speed when it is bumped. 

He also enlists the help of Edward G. Robinson, his brother-in-law who is a police detective.  Initially, Robinson doubts McCarthy was capable of murder, but even he starts to have his doubts after a while.  It doesn’t help McCarthy’s case that he takes the characters from one place to another he swears he’s never been to before.  It’s no surprise he will eventually lead them to the place where the murder took place in his dream—or did it really happen?

That is in a strange house where McCarthy, Robinson and Virginia Christie take shelter from the rain.  I think it is bizarre they think it is normal to essentially break into, and lounge around in, a house where they don’t even know who the owners are.  It’s like some bizarro world noir version of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”.

I didn’t want to spoil anything about the picture’s central mystery, except the poster already does that for me, as it says “HYPNOTISM…” across the top in huge letters.  I found the solution to the central mystery to be too ridiculous to be believed, and I have the nagging suspicion what we saw of McCarthy’s dream at the beginning isn’t fully explained by the conclusion.

A big part of noir is usually the look of a film.  This one is more in the spirit of the genre than in the presentation, as the shoot was largely on overlit interiors.  A notable exception is McCarthy’s bedroom.  He could probably rest more easily if he didn’t somehow light the room in a way that casts multiple large shadows of his ceiling fan, and from angles that would normally be impossible.  Somebody went a little over the top with the design here, as it looks like three fans are closing in on the room’s occupant when he’s in the center of the frame.

Nightmare is a strange, uneven film that I found to be a below-average noir. The set-up has some potential, but it squanders that with its rambling structure. It especially spends too much time on Connie Russell, as McCarthy’s girlfriend, belting out tunes. There was something about the pitches she hit which had me wincing. I guess, for me, the only real nightmare here was her singing.

Dir: Maxwell Shane

Starring Edward G. Robinson, Kevin McCarthy

Watched as part of Kino Lorber’s blu-ray box set Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XVII