From the B-Movie Hive: Blind Alley

"Blind Alley" is a 1939 movie starring Chester Morris and Ralph Bellamy, which makes it perhaps not entirely deserving of belonging to the B-movie hive. Five years earlier, Chester Morris was a bona fide star and just a few year before that he was on about the same level another up and coming actor specializing in tough guys roles. Guy went by the name of Cagney. You may have heard of him. Bellamy also appeared in a number of A-list movies, but usually as the nice guy friend of the leading man who got his girl.

Preceding Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" by six years, "Blind Alley" has all the gritty hallmarks of a certain type of crime drama in which a group of people are essentially held hostage by a psycho. The prototypical example of this sub-genre is the classic movie that turned Bogart from a preening dandy into one of the greatest tough guys in Hollywood history: "The Petrified Forest." Where "Blind Alley" differs from most of its precursors and, in many respects, supersedes them, is the manner in which it centers on the fact that one those hostages is a psychologist. That psychologist, played by Bellamy, drives the narrative of what would otherwise be just another example of the generic offshoot by probing the subconscious drives of the prison escapee who his holding he and his friends hostage.

"Blind Alley" is a tightly constructed black and white film that quickly gets to the meat of the plot in which prison escapee Hal Wilson, his girlfriend Amy and other assorted tough guys take several people hostage in a house while they wait for a boat to take them to freedom. Bellamy's Dr. Shelby is a teacher and psychologist who quickly intuits that Hal Wilson has subconscious drives that urge his criminal behavior. Shelby plots to take advantage of Wilson's intelligence by asking questions about his past.

"Blind Alley" is actually one of the first movies to tackle the criminal drive from a psychological perspective. Ralph Bellamy takes advantage of the extremely rare chance to move away from playing the nice guy who always loses the girl in this role as a very intelligent and perceptive college instructor teaching psychology. One of his students is ready to leave the field of academia and head out into the world of psychological work. Without giving too much away, let's just say that Fred Landis definitely picked the wrong night to come out to Shelby's house for a goodbye drink.

The exploitation of the criminal Wilson by Dr. Shelby is what makes this crime drama so fascinating and sets it apart from those movies it most closely resembles. Yes, there is something to be said to the fact that Leslie Howard plays mind games with Bogart's desperado in "The Petrified Forest" but he's not a professional and that Freudian analysis of how childhood traumas can instigate deviant adult behavior is not central to the plot of that infinitely more stagey classic. You may be reminded of Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" in the way the story begins to circle around a deep, dark secret that acts as the thrust of the narrative drive. What makes Blind Alley a more effective psychological thriller is the way that director George Vidor eschews the stagy effect of interpreting a dream to discover the psychological root of the problem at hand. Yes, to a point, "Blind Alley" is even better than "Spellbound."

Hal Wilson is an extremely violent psychopath and Chester Morris provides a genuinely interesting character trait. Watch him closely each time he gets violent, especially after he kills. Every time this happens, his girlfriend Amy attempts physical contact, but Morris has Wilson push her aside in a manner resembling how a man might push aside a lover in the awkward moments immediately after lovemaking. Morris seems to be attempting to probe the subconscious of his character in his own way.

Those who view older black and white movies as lacking the maturity of today's films may well find themselves shocked by the brutal violence. Although the actual effects of the murders take place offscreen, the manner in which they are both surprising and surprisingly lacking in emotional depth is rather extraordinary. In fact, the lack of blood spurting or even just a body falling dead to the ground on-screen invests these scenes with a darkness that is lacking in today's crime thrillers where every drop of blood lovingly shown exploding from the body in slow motion.

"Blind Alley occasionally shows upon Turner Classic Movies. When it does, make sure to catch it. This is a little-known crime thriller that deserves far more recognition. The buzzing from the hive on this B-movie rings through loud and clear and the result of taking a chance is a pocketful of honey.