Sunday, April 17, 2016

Day of the Nightmare (1965)

Psycho-like Detective Drama


This one is a lot like watching an episode of Dragnet or Route 66 and and combing that with Hitchcock's Psycho.  John Ireland plays Detective Sgt. Dave Harmon  who reminds me a little bit like Sgt. Joe Friday or even Buz Murdock with his cool demeanor and smooth talking detective style. Cliff Fields plays Jonathan Crane who will remind you all to much Norman Bates. There are a lot of differences of course from this film and Hitchcock's Psycho but you can easily draw parallels between the films and characters Jonathan Crane & Norman Bates.

While this film is very similar to Psycho in it's way it is in no means a rip-off of Hitchcock's classic. This film is a story of it's own - and it's a pretty good one.

One thing I did not like this film - the ending. The ending to me was hurried, a bit sloppy and could have been rewritten into something conclusive. But it is an unsuspected ending which is nice - must have been a shock to audiences in 1965.

7/10



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