Wow! Such a good movie.

Boring

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The very end of the movie, when the cops shoot Van Heflin in the back while he's climbing up a dirt mound without knowing whether he even has a gun, seems very callous towards human life. He's just a suspect at this point.Other than that, I can't praise the film highly enough - and I'd never heard of it until I read about it on a Top Ten film noir list!

Webb Garwood (Van Heflin), a dissatisfied LA police patrol officer, answers a call about a prowler with his partner, "Bud" Crocker (John Maxwell), a desert enthusiast who explores abandoned mining towns along the desert drive from LA to Las Vegas. Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) had been in the bathroom of her upscale home when she spotted a prowler peaking through the window. Heflin's Garwood sizes her up and returns later to put the make on her. She's married to local radio personality who's at least twice her age, and it doesn't take long for her to fall for Heflin. It's a hard decision to make between who's better, Heflin or Keyes. Heflin had the capacity to play the cowardly types up against the macho man's world of the postwar better than any actor ever. And Keyes excels in each scene along her route of discovery of Heflin's true nature. The entire affair between him and Susan is extremely sordid for 1951, but the director, Joseph Losey and the studio, Eagle, were camped far out on film noir's fringe.

No need to repeat the plot. When not preening with muscle magazines or complaining about frustrated ambitions, unhappy cop Webb Garwood is plotting cold-blooded murders. So what is it with this guy. The casual folks he meets seem happy enough, satisfied I guess with ordinary lives. But not the ambitious Webb. When you think about it, he's really one of the more dislikable guys in all noir. But you do have to think about it, because actor Heflin underplays to the extent that it's hard to know at times what Webb is thinking. His actions, however, add up to about as unsympathetic a character as any to come out of that ambiguous movie genre. So, when he finally tumbles down that symbolic slag heap, I'll bet there isn't a wet eye in the crowd anywhere, any time.He is, nevertheless, a fascinating character as outlined by ace screenwriter Trumbo. And that, I think, is one big attraction of the film. Just what does lead the wayward cop down the path of eventual self-destruction. To me, it's a sense of a lifetime entitlement bred by his big success as a school–age athlete. Watch him preen and reminisce about it with an adoring Susan (Keyes), his eyes fairly glowing with self-congratulation. The trouble is that's about as far as his sports abilities will take him, a lot less further than he wants to go. But unlike frustrated actress Susan who's settled for conventional marriage, Webb can't face up to the hard reality of limited ability and accept the ordinary life of a cop. In short, he's an early victim of what we might now call the celebrity syndrome. So he hangs on to the past, projecting it instead as entitlement to more than a conventional future, whatever the cost to others. But there's paradox here, and I'm not sure if it's writer Trumbo's way of further denigrating the guy. After all, you'd expect Webb to be aiming for some kind of big money glamour or celebrity, after taking all those risks. But no, instead he yearns for a modest motel, not a big- time something like most crime schemers. Just something he might have gotten if he'd simply saved his money. Odd that his dreams would take such a petit bourgeois form. Then again, maybe Trumbo is implying that for all his clever scheming, the frustrated cop is not very intelligent, after all. Maybe that's also why the slag heap he almost surmounts is no higher than it is.Actor Heflin is excellent in a role surprisingly unlike his sturdy paragon of decency in such later films as Shane (1953) and Patterns (1956). And I really like actress Keyes in the conflicted wife part. She looks like she's been around the block a few times and just can't help herself. The way the two bounce off one another is almost comical, like yo-yo's in their on-again off-again affair. But she's got a sense of right and wrong that keeps catching up and pulling them apart. On the other hand, is the glue drawing them back together and that, I guess, could only be from some really steamy sex, of course, not showable during that Production Code era. But do they actually love each other as they appear to at times. Maybe she does, but he appears too self-centered to commit to anyone else.In the noir universe, things don't always work out for the best, that is, unlike the typical Hollywood product of the time. I think that's why many of us are drawn to noir and its less predictable world. Things certainly don't work out here for Webb and Susan. Just check out that parched landscape where they end up. No wonder left-wing artists were drawn to a kind of canvas that provided room for social criticism. So when artists like Trumbo and Losey were blacklisted, it wasn't just people who were blacklisted—it was noir as well. Check out the drop-off of recognizable noir after 1951, the year of major UnAmerican Activities hearings. That ambiguous universe was simply too unconventional to fit in with the emerging Soviet rivalry. Too bad, because Cold War also spelled the end of disturbing little features like The Prowler.(In passing—Calico, the movie's featured ghost town, has since been restored and is now a popular tourist attraction northeast of LA.)

Where do I start - heaping praise on this superlative film? From the very start there is something sinister and slightly creepy about Officer Webb Garwood (Van Heflin), who with a fellow officer is called to Susan Gilray's (Evelyn Keyes) house to investigate an alleged siteing of a prowler. Garwood, from his childhood, has always nursed feelings of deep resentment toward his father, who he feels didn't have the guts to get out of the rut and earn big money. He equates success with wealth and by the time they have checked out "the prowler", he is completely fascinated with Susan and the lifestyle she has. So when he goes back for a routine check, you know that he doesn't have his "kindly policeman's hat" on. His ruthlessness has drawn out Susan's vulnerability and over coffee she confides her unhappiness - after finding out that Webb comes from her hometown - "We Hoosiers have to stick together"!!I think Losey's plan never to show John Gilray - except for the one scene - draws the viewer closer into Susan and Garwood's web. Susan, initially, is an ambiguous character - does she have something to hide? was there ever a prowler? Then you realise, she is just a frightened woman, who married Gilray, not for love but because he could take her away from the life she felt she was falling into. Appearances can be deceptive - Gilray's soothing, folky voice (apparently Dalton Trumbo's) (he is a night time D.J.) hides a controlling, jealous personality - the way Webb's uniform hides an opportunistic nature. The last half of the film goes in a completely different direction as things unravel rapidly once Webb and Susan are on their honeymoon.Van Heflin, it goes without saying, is superb, like Spencer Tracy, a real actor's actor. With an odd nuance or gesture, you know instantly that he is not to be trusted (he says a couple of times he hates being a policeman and it is only when he leaves the force that he becomes more human). Evelyn Keyes is a revelation - I haven't seen her in anything other than "The Jolson Story" but she is more than a match for Heflin in this movie - her ambiguousness and highly strung personality, disappears in the last half of the movie when she becomes strong and resolute in her character.Highly, Highly Recommended.