Eye like this one! (Eyes in the Night (DVD))

Member Name: Ailran

Product:	Eyes in the Night (DVD)
Date:	12/07/09 (103 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good plot, nice twist with the detective

Disadvantages: simplistic compared to modern movies

Eyes In The Night is a B Movie murder mystery made in 1942 that, while being very similar in many ways to all its contemporaries also manages to be very very different in one signature way.

Norma is having trouble with her stepdaughter Barbara. Barbara is dating a much older man, one that Norma knows is no good because she had had an affair with him in the past herself. She tries desperately to stop Barbara from seeing the man, Paul Gerente, so when he turns up dead Barbara's first thought is that her jealous mother is the killer.

Luckily for Norma she is good friends with a detective called McClain. McClain understands the predicament that Norma has been put in and makes her a promise that he will do what he can to stop the circumstantial evidence that is piling up against her from putting her in prison, and save her from the electric chair.

Eyes in the night is a wartime mystery and as such is has a convoluted plot involving Nazis, spies, dastardly plans and nasty evil thugs. It is a clever plot though as it leads you along for a while before you realise exactly what is going on. It twists and turns its way through the deep and dark side streets of the city, giving you possible perpetrators by the handful as the investigation progresses.

While the overall movie is quite enjoyable, and would have been perfectly acceptable viewing on its own what raises it a to a must see movie is the little 'twist'.
McClain is blind and gets about using a guide dog and a stick. This one fact changes everything about the movie and its story. McClain needs his dog to get about and his comedy assistant
(a standard for 90% of the B movie series detectives of the era) is actually needed for a change. For example the assistant is there to describe everything at the murder scene when McClain visits it.
As the comedy sidekicks, while fun occasionally, are normally just annoying and a waste of space it is great to see one that has a purpose in the story. McClain needs him, he needs his help to do things that he cannot and not just to be the normal sounding board and plot explainer.
When McClain visits the original murder location he uses his brain power to ask for a VERY detailed description of the room and use the answers to work out what could have happened there. This whole take on the Detective movie genre is so fresh and novel that it is a real breath of fresh air.

A lot of these old murder mysteries run along a similar pattern and the main characters could easily be interchanged with each other with ease. In this case the whole script has to be tailored specifically to McClain. His blindness, which doesn't dominate the script, and his guide dog are new facets that can be used to push a scene, and the other characters, in a completely different direction.

For example a fight scene is a fairly standard thing in this genre of movie but there is one in Eyes that shows that the director and/or writer had a touch of genius about them. McClain manages to even the odds in a bout of fisticuffs in a truly novel, and at the same time hilarious, way.

If having a blind detective wasn't enough though McClains dog is much more than a guide dog. He is an Alsatian version of Lassie who can follow pretty much every command, even ones that cannot possibly be trained. He is also far far smarter than McClains assistant (who oddly enough was also The Falcon's assistant in some of that series) and his poor put upon butler (who also appeared in a number of the Charlie Chan series of films). The poor butler is even outsmarted by the intelligent dog whenever he tries to get some time off... the poor guy!
This is a dog that is capable of doing almost anything, how McClain would cope with just a normal guide dog I just don't know!

Eyes In The Night is an unknown gem of a movie. Thrilling and mysterious with touches of comedy it takes on the bigger A movies and beats some of them at their own game.
It has a witty script barked out by quality actors, including a young Donna Reed as Barbara, and is worth seeing not only because of the unusual main character but also because the story is actually quite enjoyable as well.

Purchasable from the world of Amazon sellers for only £2.64 at this time of writing

Summary: One of the best of the 30's & 40's B movies