It was great to see a restored version finally, screened by TPTV. I spent the whole film thinking that Steve Cochran seemed awfully like Robert Cummings, but of course I'd misread the credits. Robert Cummings is Robert Cummings. Cochran plays the baddie - and rather well, with intensity. He was in Best Years of Our Lives, briefly - the 'friend' that Dana Andrews' wife has brought home - also White Heat, then much on TV in the 50s/60s.
Michele Morgan is the femme fatale in this curious, dream-like film - and it's dreamlike even before the actual dream starts, for example the hood's Miami pad, with its cherub spyglass and strange statues everywhere. Philip Yordan adapted Cornell Woolrich's novel 'The Black Path of Fear' (based on his short story 'Havana Night') which sounds a more straightforward innocent on the run story, so it's Yordan who's introduced this twist dream element, which is also a timely commentary on emotionally disturbed returning war veterans.
Peter Lorre is at his most ruthless, too. With Lloyd Corrigan, Jack Holt. Photographed by Franz Planer. Interesting editing, with a couple of outstanding sequences of multiple dissolves, by Edward Mann. Music by Michel Michelet.
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