I Wake Up Screaming (1941)

Based on the novel of the same name by pulp writer Steve Fisher, this film is notable for being a rather unlikely proto-noir, foreshadowing the ‘shadowy’ camera work and compromised characters that would come to define the genera when it really started to emerge around the end of World War II. I say unlikely because the movie is a Betty Grable vehicle, with a script adapted by musical comedy writer Dwight Taylor. Yet the noir elements are there, especially in Laird Cregar’s excellent performance as an obsessed police detective. Victor Mature, looking very much the young Jerry Orbach, straddles comedy and supposed intensity to serve as the lynch pin to the films unevenness, although its a likable unevenness (like a less well handled They Drive By Night). Elisha Cook Jr. and Carole Landis also appear, the later in a role that (again with the foreshadowing) evokes her early death. 3 out of 5.