Please don't spend money on this.

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

If you're a fan of film noir, don't be fooled by the many false references to this motion picture as film noir. Many people make mistakes about what is/isn't film noir, but of all the films that are mistaken as film noir, this one is probably the least noir. Here are but a few reasons why it isn't noir, keeping in mind that not all film noir have all the essential elements.The main element in film noir is an innocent man who makes a choice, that he knows he probably shouldn't make, but makes it anyway, and this choice starts a descent. Usually the choice is made based on the presence of a femme fatale.In this film the main character makes no real choice. He goes out to a show, his wife is killed, and he gets arrested.There is no femme fatale. In fact there is a middle west down-to-earth great woman who sticks by his side. You never see this in film noir.As a third essential element, film noir demands a sad ending. It's usually deadly, but it's never happy. This film has a happy ending. Boy gets girl. You can't be less film noir than this.A fourth main element in film noir is the photography - dark, asymmetrical, and reminiscent of the German expressionist films. This film has almost none of that (exception in the jazz club). Mostly it's bright and crisp.Film noir often takes place at night and in the rain. I don't recall a single rain drop, though there are many night scenes.A fifth element of film noir is the ragtag motley crew that usually accompanies the main villain. There is no gang here. And apart from Alisha Cook Jr, none of the characters are quirky or memorable.A sixth element of film noir is the emphasis on crime. The main character is usually from law enforcement (in this case he's an engineer!) and there is usually an ongoing murder or robbery involved. The main focus of this film seems to be on insanity, or "paranoia" as Inspector Thomas Gomez insists. Crime, per se, seems incidental.The only thing that might lead to to think this is film noir is the director, Robert Sidomak. Sidomak was a German and he did do some great film noir (e.g., The Suspect in 1944, The Killers in 1946, Criss Cross in 1949) but he also did lots of other genres (Son of Dracula, The Crimson Pirate, Custer of the West).So this isn't film noir. Is it any good? No.Franchot Tone thinks by stroking his hands and caressing his temple he looks like a crazy person. The central alibi revolves around a hat, but no one stops to think that the hat is irrelevant. The time line attested to by half a dozen people, places the engineer away from his home at the time of the murder. The fact that no one recalls the lady in the hat is irrelevant.

Film noir directed by Robert Siodmak from a story by Cornell Woolrich about a woman (Ella Raines) trying to clear the name of her boss (Alan Curtis), who is accused of murdering his wife. She's in love with the guy, of course, and will risk her own life to save his. Ella Raines is lovely and does a fine job. Alan Curtis has a voice made for film noir dialogue. Every line where he uses Raines' character's nickname "Kansas" is gold. Franchot Tone, Thomas Gomez, Regis Toomey, and Elisha Cook, Jr. are all good.It's a film with a lot of nice little almost Hitchcockian touches, such as the woman coughing at the trial as the verdict is read or the darkly comic fate of a frightened bartender. Then there's the film's most talked-about scene, the drum solo where Elisha Cook, Jr. gets all worked up over Raines in her sexy undercover outfit. Visually, it's got a very attractive noir style to it. Also the way Siodmak incorporates music is a big plus. The only major negative is that the killer is obvious from early on before he even appears on screen so there's not a great deal of suspense to be had there. But it's still intriguing to watch the buildup to him being caught. Definitely worth a look for noir fans.

This was the third of fourteen novels/short stories by Cornell Woolrich to be adapted for the screen in the nineteen forties. There had been one in 1929, one in 1934 and one in 1938 but the floodgates opened in the forties and though adaptations continued through subsequent decades it was the forties that were the most fruitful. The original novel, published in 1942, had another claim to fame inasmuch as it was the first time the pseudonym William Irish appeared in print - the publishers felt that the prolific Woolrich had published so many novels so quickly under that name - the name on his birth certificate read: Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich - that there was a danger of the public becoming sated, accordingly they suggested a new name might be in order and William Irish was the result. Woolrich/Irish quickly developed his own 'voice' and genre, psychological thriller-cum-terror and just a handful of forties titles adapted for the screen - The Leopard Man, Deadline At Dawn, Black Angel,Fear In The Night, I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes, Night Has A Thousand Eyes - illustrate this although arguably the finest adaptation, The Window, had a somewhat innocuous title. Phantom Lady is slightly different to the novel though the premise remains the same; following a quarrel with his wife the protagonist meets a woman in a bar and invites her to spend the evening with him (he already has two tickets to a popular show, one meant for his wife) and she agrees with the proviso that they do not exchange names,, phone numbers, or indeed any scrap of personal information. Returning home he finds his wife has been strangled with one of his own neckties and he, with no real alibi, is the only suspect. Tried and convicted his only chance to escape the chair is for someone to locate the phantom lady, whose only distinguishing feature is a singular hat, so that we are now in a race- against-the-clock scenario which, given the date, 1944, will, we know, inevitably resolve itself happily. Director Robert Siodmak created a fine, atmospheric mood, drawing liberally on the expressionistic roots of his native Germany, whilst the cast comprised some of the names familiar to buffs of forties movies, Andrew Tombes, Thomas Gomez, Elisha Cooke, Ella Raines, Alan Curtis and top-billed Franchot Tone, cast against type. Certainly watchable and a reasonable addition to the 'noir' gallery.

Phantom Lady (1944) directed by Robert Siodmak; is as nightmarish and psychologically aromatic as it is penetrating.Phantom Lady is a sadly neglected film noir based on a story by Cornell Woollrich and scripted for the screen by Bernard C. Schoenfeld. Stars Ella Raines as Carol "Kansas" Richman, Franchot Tone as Jack Marlow and Alan Curtis as the leading man Scott Henderson. The film also co stars Thomas Gomez (Key Largo) as perceptive Detective Burgess, the intelligent and compassionate detective who eventually comes around to believe in Scott Henderson's innocence.Phantom Lady utilizes the innocent man theme beautifully. Siodmak's directing creates an often nightmarish realm, the characters float in and out of. The intersectionality of crime melodrama and psychological thriller is framed nicely. Siodmak is a master storyteller who earned an Oscar nomination for The Killers in 1946.Although on the surface you would assume Phantom Lady to be a man in peril film, it actually works as a woman in danger because Carol "Kansas" puts herself in harms way in order to help her boss, whom she's in love with. Fay Helm's mysterious woman has a tragic trajectory herself as a woman who is spiraling into oblivion by mental decline after losing her beloved fiancé.Scott Henderson, spends the night with this anonymous woman he meets in a bar, after having been shunned by his wife for the last time. The woman who is obviously agitated and disturbed by something causing her pain, agrees to take in a show that Scott has tickets for,but the conditions are that they do not exchange names as it's just a way for both of them to keep themselves occupied at a moment when both are broken.The "Phantom Lady" is wearing a sensationally quirky hat which the film revolves around in a sense, because Scott returns home to find his apartment crawling with police after his wife has been brutally strangled, with one of Scott's expensive ties. This woman in a stand out hat is the only key to proving Scott's alibi.Scott proceeds to tell Detective Burgess, that he spent the night with this no name woman, after fighting with his wife and that there are several people who would have seen them together. The bar tender, the cabbie with a very memorable name, and the temperamental lead singer/dancer in the musical review could identify him accompanied by the phantom lady, because of her supposedly original yet quirky hat which the performer was wearing on stage. Aurora shoots daggers at the Phantom Lady for having worn the same design. You could see the fury on her face as she sings her musical number. Aurora played by Estela Monteiro has a melt down once she walks off stage and decrees that no one would have the nerve to wear one of her hats, and throws her own hat away.Detective Burgess takes Scott around to each of these witnesses but no one recalls having seen him with a woman at all. They all very curiously deny seeing the lady, and it becomes obvious that something is very wrong with the testimony from all these people who were obviously covering something up. The outcome looks bleak for Scott, because it appears that Scott is guilty of the crime he is sentence to death and faces the electric chair in 18 days. With no witnesses to back him up.Scott Henderson is a civil engineer in a loveless marriage, with a beautiful associate who works for him, which he affectionately calls Kansas. She never doubts his innocence for a moment and devoutly sets out on a mission to try and find this mysterious lady to prove she really does exist, before it's too late. She also tracks down those whom she knows have lied about seeing this woman.Along the way, Detective Burgess, confronts Kansas in her apartment and tells her that although he did his job at the time, he also believes in Scott's story because a child could make up a better alibi than the story he has stuck to so religiously. So now Kansas and Burgess set about to prove that someone has been tampering with these witnesses.What lies ahead is a very gripping story with several taut and fiery moments. Elisha Cook Jr. is fantastic as the tweaked sleazy drummer who's got an appetite for women in the audience. And Fay Helm is very palpable as the Phantom Lady who alludes the police after that one night at the Broadway show with Scott.The characters are very engaging, and the witnesses are despicable as they are being evasive, which creates an atmosphere of obstruction that is stirring and at times, maddening.Although at the time the film got critical acclaim, I'm surprised it wasn't more popular in the Noir film psyche of reviewers and critics. Today it seems like a forgotten gem amidst some of the more over- treaded Noirs and the popularity they still maintain.Without giving away any key parts of the plot development, I'll say that the film shows us a dark side of humanity. While the film doesn't describe to us why these characters are doing what they do with the use of flashback another Noir staple technique, we see who these people are by their actions. The film explores human nature in a slightly gritty naturalistic style. A nightmarish journey of the wrongly accused, the tragedy of loss, greed and true madness. And ultimately the love that bears its fruits by unrelenting devotion and the pursuit of the truth at any cost.