Programme notes CH 02 — Noir After Dark
Strange Illusion
A college boy dreams his dead father is warning him. Then his mother brings home the man from the dream.
Hamlet, moved to a comfortable California suburb and cut to PRC length. Ulmer plays it as a dream that will not end: a bright teenage hero, a widowed mother too happy to see the danger, and Warren William as the suitor, all charm and practised patience. The plot is pulp. The atmosphere is not: Ulmer gets from fog, shadow and a handful of rooms what bigger studios got from a budget, and the doubt is the boy’s as much as ours. Watch the opening nightmare, where the fog does the work a whole crew would have done at Universal.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Edgar G. Ulmer
- Photographed by
- Philip Tannura
- With
- Regis Toomey · Warren William · Charles Wagenheim · Gene Roth · Jimmy Lydon · Sally Eilers
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Ulmer at PRC in 1945, twice in one year on almost nothing. Detour lets fate win in a motel room; Strange Illusion lets a dream save the boy. Same fog, same cheap sets, opposite verdicts.