The celebrated novel is condensed and reshaped into a 68-minute noir from Monogram. Raskolnikov becomes student Larry Crain (Peter Cookson), who, as in the novel, murders his pawnbroker. The police characters are the good cop/bad cop duo of Warren William and Nestor Paiva. Crain falls in love with the pretty but impecunious Eileen Stevens, played by Anne Gwynne.
Cookson's approach to playing Crain reminded me of Hurd Hatfield in the title role in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945), flat, affectless, but somehow managing to remain "there" as the character. With effective cinematography and lighting, the whole thing rocks along well, especially by poverty row standards... until the last few minutes. The final stretch has two (2) ingredients (a truck or similar motor vehicle, then a dream) that would appear in Michael O'Donoghue's "How to Write Good", which appeared in National Lampoon around 1970. "Fear" ends sappily in the manner of the best (or worst) productions of eighteenth century literary mutilator Colley Cibber. Or W. C. Fields' "The Bank Dick" (1940).
What could director Alfred Zeisler and his Monogram colleagues have done with (or to) "War and Peace"?
Cookson's approach to playing Crain reminded me of Hurd Hatfield in the title role in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945), flat, affectless, but somehow managing to remain "there" as the character. With effective cinematography and lighting, the whole thing rocks along well, especially by poverty row standards... until the last few minutes. The final stretch has two (2) ingredients (a truck or similar motor vehicle, then a dream) that would appear in Michael O'Donoghue's "How to Write Good", which appeared in National Lampoon around 1970. "Fear" ends sappily in the manner of the best (or worst) productions of eighteenth century literary mutilator Colley Cibber. Or W. C. Fields' "The Bank Dick" (1940).
What could director Alfred Zeisler and his Monogram colleagues have done with (or to) "War and Peace"?