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| Dana Andrews makes a homecoming to an America he wasn't fighting for. |
Streeting on June 7 is the seventh volume of Kino Lorber's box set series FILM NOIR: THE DARK SIDE OF CINEMA. Fans of horror and fantasy may find this set of particular interest as the three films collected represent the "dark side" of a few directors well-known within the genre: THE BOSS (1956) is directed by Byron Haskin (THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE OUTER LIMITS); CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL (1957) is directed by Sidney Salkow (THE LAST MAN ON EARTH); and THE FEARMAKERS (1958) is directed by Jacques Tourneur (CAT PEOPLE, CURSE OF THE DEMON). I leaped ahead to the Tourneur film because I've known him to excel in a variety of other genres, and his earlier work in film noir particularly includes one of the very best such films, OUT OF THE PAST (1947). THE FEARMAKERS also finds Tourneur working for the third and last time with actor Dana Andrews, the star of his two previous outstanding features, the Western CANYON PASSAGE (1946) and the classic horror fiim NIGHT OF THE DEMON (US: CURSE OF THE DEMON, 1957). In fact, Andrews specifically requested Tourneur to direct the film as a condition to his own participation.
The film opens with a montage of a bearded, long-haired Andrews being beaten and tortured as a prisoner of war in North Korea—an under-the-titles sequence that now recalls the similarly disorienting pre-credits sequence of 2002's James Bond offering DIE ANOTHER DAY. After the titles, Andrew's character Alan Eaton is reintroduced shaved, well-groomed, but obviously affected by his ordeal on a flight back to his home base of Washington DC, where he intends to rejoin his partner in their public opinion polling business. He spends the long flight enduring another form of torture, the talkative seating companion, who in this case is of the "small world" variety: he's a professor affiliated with a committee for nuclear disarmament, who recommends a place to stay and quotes Shakespeare by way of saying goodnight with Eaton escapes into a nap. (The Shakespeare quotation is perhaps the only moment in the film when we feel the "vesperal" tone of Tourneur's films for producer Val Lewton, as described by J.P. Velotte in his book DREAMS OF DARKNESS—and it's used here to underscore a character's obnoxiousness.) Back on terra firma, Eaton goes to his former office, finds his former partner one year dead, and the business signed over to an overbearing stranger (Dick Foran as Dick McGinnis), who has taken this once-honest business in the "new" direction of designing pre-determined polling—a first step in proposing "alternative facts" in postwar America. After bungling into another room where Eaton finds an anti-Semitic poll in progress, he starts digging into his company's current affairs and finds them dedicated to fomenting fear in the general public to prime them for buying a peace that only their paying associates can assure them.
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| Marilee Earle, Dana Andrews, and Mel Tormé. |
The film is based on a 1945 novel of the same name written by Darwin L. Teilhet, which must have been quite a shocker in its day. Seen today, it's not the idea of rigged public opinion polls that startles, because these have become such a big part of American life; rather, the startling part is that the film so frankly depicts the people behind such scams as murderers, criminals, spies, and thugs—un-American to a man. It's hard to believe that in just 64 years, the brainwashing of Americans by predetermined polling and biased broadcasting has become accepted by a large share of the country as its fundamental source of news and information.
The casting of Dana Andrews (the homecoming star of William Wyler's early postwar masterpiece THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES) in the lead role lends Eaton a special resonance the character would not otherwise have had. Singer Mel Tormé has a rare dramatic role as a compromised employee in bottle-thick eyeglasses whose susceptibility to criminal overtures is psychologically tied to his sexual insecurities. The leading lady, Marilee Earle, isn't much of one; she has a completely inexpressive face and, when Tormé makes a sweaty pass at her, we get the impression she's the only woman he's ever been near. While Dick Foran plays his role competently, the only roles with any impact are those of the Loders, the husband-and-wife whose B&B is recommended to Eaton by his flight companion, and who turn out to be stooges of McGinnis. They are played by Kelly Thordsen (who, in his later scenes, appears to be wearing Orson Welles' clothes from TOUCH OF EVIL) and sultry Veda Ann Borg, who don't bother to conceal their beer-fueled fights from their guests.
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| A Hitchcockian climax at the Lincoln Memorial. |
THE FEARMAKERS is unusual cinema because it speaks to us from a familiar era in a voice we don't recognize as native to that time or place. We tend to recall 1958 as a time of gracious living in America, a time of prosperity and plenty, yet this is a film that throbs with subterranean danger and it speaks candidly, even forcefully, about a threat to our national security that might still be nipped in the bud if we all act now. Alas, "now" was then—and then was probably not at all as we remember it because what we remember was likely fed to us by television. Seen today, this film's pleas for our caution and vigilance come much too late and, worse still, are put across with much too heavy a hand, causing the film to fail as both entertainment and fair warning. Tourneur himself was unhappy with the way the picture turned out. Part of the problem rests with Andrews, who cared enough about the film and its message to demand Tourneur and (according to the commentary) to stay off the sauce during production; nevertheless, he looks bloated and slurs his words occasionally, and his couple of attempts at self-defense have to be boosted with camera trickery. The script by Elliot West and Chris Appley (a first and last feature credit for both) stays on the soapbox as much as possible, evincing little affinity for visual storytelling and giving Tourneur few if any opportunities to bring his best game—though the film was shot and cut by the seemingly sure-fire team of Sam Leavitt (1954's A STAR IS BORN, CRIME IN THE STREETS, THE DEFIANT ONES) and Tourneur's fellow Val Lewton alumnus J.R. Whittredge (CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, THE BODY SNATCHER, MADEMOISELLE FIFI).
If the main feature falls short of our expectations, the audio commentary by Professor and film scholar Jason A. Ney repays its debt as a whole. With his engaging energy and smooth delivery, Ney covers the film's fascinating production history (it passed through a number of other hands before reaching Tourneur's desk), its cast (with a startling sidebar on Veda Ann Borg), its historical situation, its adaptation and the omissions from the source novel, its critical reception, and its place on the margins of noir, all the while grappling with the ideas it puts across and the occasional flaws in its makeup and rhetoric. In the only book about Tourneur's films published to date (Chris Fujiwara's otherwise appetizing JACQUES TOURNEUR: THE CINEMA OF NIGHTFALL), THE FEARMAKERS gets six discouraging pages. Here you get a lot more to chew on.
(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
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