Experiment in Terror (1962)

April 13, 1962, release date

Directed by Blake Edwards

Screenplay by the Gordons (Mildred Gordon, Gordon Gordon)

Based on Operation Terror by Mildred Gordon, Gordon Gordon

Music by Henry Mancini

Edited by Patrick McCormack

Cinematography by Philip H. Lathrop

Glenn Ford as John “Rip” Ripley

Lee Remick as Kelly Sherwood

Stefanie Powers as Toby Sherwood

Ross Martin as Garland Humphrey “Red” Lynch

Roy Poole as Owen Bradley

Patricia Huston as Nancy Ashton

Ned Glass as Jim “Popcorn” Durgs

Anita Loo as Lisa Soong

Warren Hsieh as Joey Soong

Clarence Lung as Yung, Lisa’s lawyer

Clifton James as Captain Moreno

Al Avalon as the man who picks up Kelly at the nightclub

Gilbert Green as the FBI chief

William Bryant as Chuck, FBI agent

Dick Crockett as an FBI agent

James Lanphier as Mr. Cutter, Nancy Ashton’s landlord

Sidney Miller as the drunk

Frederic Downs as Welk

Sherry O’Neil as Edna

Mari Lynn as Penny

Harvey Evans as Dave

William Sharon as Raymond Burkhart

Don Drysdale as himself (pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers)

Distributed by Columbia Pictures

Produced by Geoffrey-Kate Productions

Glenn Ford is one of my favorite noir actors—one of my all-time favorite actors—and I looked forward to seeing him in this neo-noir directed by Blake Edwards. And I wasn’t disappointed. Experiment in Terror is a very stylish adaptation of the novel Operation Terror by the husband-and-wife team of Gordon Gordon and Mildred Nixon Gordon. This story of a woman attacked in her own home and coerced into stealing money from the bank where she works is full of tension and suspense. When the DVD I was watching cut out exactly halfway through the film, I went to my local library to get another copy as soon as I could!

For viewers, the tension in the story starts right away after the credits. Viewers know nothing about Kelly Sherwood, not even her name, when she drives over the San Francisco Bridge and the credits roll. When the credits are finished, Kelly Sherwood pulls into her garage and turns off the motor of her Fairlane car. Her garage door closes, and she thinks she hears something or someone in the garage with her. She becomes more and more fearful because she hears a strange sound, something like ragged breathing. Then a man grabs her suddenly from behind. While he holds her by her neck, he threatens her and her sister Toby if Kelly doesn’t agree to steal money from the bank where she works. (The film was originally released in the United Kingdom under the title The Grip of Fear, which is also an apt title.)

The man knows a lot about Kelly Sherwood and her sister Toby. He’s the one who reveals Kelly’s identity and even some intimate details about her and her sister’s schedules and habits. He threatens to assault both of them and kill them if Kelly won’t steal $100,000. He threatens to kill Kelly immediately if she calls the police. Once he leaves Kelly in the garage, she enters her house and makes the phone call to the FBI anyway.

John Ripley is the FBI agent who answers Sherwood’s call, but the man is still in the Sherwood home and attacks Sherwood. He gives her only this one chance: If she calls again, he’ll kill her. But Ripley knows that the phone call was ended abruptly, and he and other agents in the FBI office start calling Sherwoods listed in the local phone directories (the film was made when phone directories were still printed and distributed to telephone company customers). One of the agents finds the right Sherwood, but Kelly is hesitant about talking; she doesn’t want the intruder to know that agents at the FBI office called her back. Kelly Sherwood is resourceful, however; she pretends to talk to someone who has lost a lighter so she can give out details about her workplace as a meeting place, a sort of lost and found where someone could retrieve a lost item. Ripley puts surveillance details on Sherwood’s house and on the bank where she works.

(This blog post about Experiment in Terror contains spoilers.)

Nancy Ashton comes to the FBI office to talk to an agent about a friend in serious trouble, and she is assigned to Ripley. She leaves without giving many details, but she calls the FBI office again and asks Ripley to come to her home to talk about the criminal trouble her friend is in. Another FBI agent, Owen Bradley, accompanies Ripley to Ashton’s apartment, but when they arrive, they find Ashton dead. Soon, the apartment is swarming with investigators, and an FBI agent finds a piece of paper with Sherwood’s name and address on it in Nancy Ashton’s purse. It appears that the cases are connected.

Experiment in Terror comes with some twists, and some of them lead nowhere, which is probably very realistic and the most common experience of any law enforcement officer. For example, the man threatening Kelly Sherwood leaves a note in her sister’s bag when the sister, Toby, is at a swimming pool with her boyfriend. He wants to scare both Kelly and Toby, and the move is effective because the note asks Kelly to meet him alone at the Roaring Twenties nightclub. She decides to meet him, and she leaves the nightclub with a man, a stranger, that she thinks is an accomplice. It turns out that he thinks Sherwood is a prostitute, and the whole incident provides nothing about the identity of the would-be bank robber or any clues about his plans.

The FBI tracks down enough information about the man to know that he is Garland Humphrey “Red” Lynch and already has a lengthy criminal record. He likes Asian women, and one of them is Lisa Soong, but she seems to be another lead that goes nowhere. Ripley and Bradley track her down and interview her. She says that she doesn’t know Red Lynch. When they press her, she says that she wants to talk to her lawyer before she’ll talk any more to Ripley and Bradley. Once the lawyer shows up and offers his advice, Lisa Soong admits that she does know Red Lynch, but she hasn’t seen him recently and doesn’t know where he lives.

Ripley and Bradley find it hard to believe that Soong has seen Lynch only a few times since they met two years ago, so they decide to put her under surveillance. They follow Soong to the Kaiser Foundation Hospital, where she visits her six-year-old son Joey. Ripley talks to the boy about what he knows about Lynch, but it isn’t much. Ripley then confronts Soong, who doesn’t believe Ripley when he tells her that Lynch is a rapist and a murderer. Lynch has been very good to her and her son: He pays for Joey’s costly medical bills. The film spends a lot of time examining this plot point, but viewers never learn why Lisa Soong is such an important part of the investigation. Perhaps the uncertainty is meant to add to the unease, but I still wanted to know more Soong’s connection to the case.

If I have any complaint at all about Experiment with Terror, it’s the length: I wish the film had been a little bit shorter. I found myself wishing some of the later scenes had been faster paced. They were a little too drawn out and didn’t always keep up the suspense of the first half of the film. The director chose to linger on some shots and on some scenes, seemingly to draw out the tension, but I just didn’t think it worked in the last half of the film. I was craving progress in the story and more detail, not shots that lingered.

The film is based on the novel Operation Terror, which I read after seeing the film. I thought it would fill in some of the gaps presented in the film. For instance, in the film adaptation, Nancy Ashton’s connection to Garland Lynch and to Kelly Sherwood is never made clear; Agent Ripley offers a guess that Ashton probably found herself in a position similar to Kelly Sherwood’s, but nothing more is said about her once she has been found murdered. Lisa Soong’s connection to Lynch seems to be based solely on the fact that he has a predilection for Asian women, but that doesn’t explain his willingness to pay for her son’s numerous and expensive medical bills. The film never offers a motive for Lynch’s victimization of women in general, although maybe that, too, is the point: Evil doesn’t always have an explanation. (I’ll have to write more about the novel Operation Terror in a future blog post.)

I thought the camera work and the photography were beautiful when I first saw the film, but I could really appreciate each scene so much more when I took some screenshots for this blog post. The opening credits over the black-and-white shots of San Francisco at night let viewers know right away that they will be in for a treat. The musical score, courtesy of Henry Mancini, is perfect for building the tension in the story and adds to the stylishness of the film. And did I mention that the film ends rather spectacularly on the baseball field in Candlestick Park? In spite of any misgivings that I might have about plot gaps, Glenn Ford is definitely not the only reason to see Experiment in Terror.

Captain Carey U.S.A. (1950)

February 21, 1950, release date

Directed by Mitchell Leisen

Screenplay by Robert Thoeren

Based on the novel No Surrender by Martha Albrand

Music by Hugo Friedhofer

Edited by Alma Macrorie

Cinematography by John F. Seitz

Alan Ladd as Captain Webster (“Web”) Carey

Wanda Hendrix as Baronessa Giulia (“Julie”) de Greffi

Francis Lederer as Barone Rocco de Greffi

Paul Lees as Frank, Carey’s fellow OSS agent

Joseph Calleia as Dr. Lunati

Celia Lovsky as Countess Francesca de Cresci

Richard Avonde as Count Carlo de Cresci

Frank Puglia as Luigi

Luis Alberni as Sandro, the innkeeper

Maria Tavares as Lucia, inn employee

George J. Leweis as Giovanni, inn employee

Angela Clarke as Serafina

Roland Winters as Manfredo Acuto

Ray Walker as Mr. Simmons

Jane Nigh as Nancy

Russ (aka Rusty) Tamblyn as Pietro

Virginia Farmer as Angelina

David Leonard as the blind musician

Distributed by Paramount Pictures

Produced by Paramount Pictures

Captain Carey U.S.A. is all about grand themes of betrayal during wartime, in this case, during World War II, and settling old scores postwar. It is the story about an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agent, Captain Web Carey, who is looking to avenge the betrayal and murder of his OSS partner, Frank, and his civilian collaborator (and girlfriend), Giulia de Cresci.

After the opening credits, the film starts with a map and voice-over narration, creating a semidocumentary feel. The voice-over narrator explains how Nazis entered northern Italy in 1944 looking for American OSS agents who had parachuted into the country to spy and sabotage. After the brief voice-over introduction, the film turns to its fiction story, which begins with Carey’s war work in 1944. He and Frank, a fellow OSS agent, steal a German courier’s pouch containing troop dispositions and train schedules. Such information would be vital to the Allies because they could anticipate Nazi troop movements and prevent attacks. Frank begins coding the stolen information for radio transmission.

Web and Frank operate out of the basement of the de Cresci family palazzo. They have the help of Giulia de Cresci, who is the granddaughter of the owner of the palazzo and Web’s girlfriend. She tells Carey that her brother Carlo disappeared in Rome under mysterious circumstances, and they have little hope of discovering his whereabouts or what happened to him as long as the war continues and maybe even after its end. Their grandmother is heartbroken about it because Carlo is the last male de Cresci heir.

In a secret room in the basement of the de Cresci palazzo are several valuable paintings and all the supplies that the OSS agents brought with them. Giulia and Carey talk about one of the paintings and imagine hanging it in their living room one day. They want to marry after the war, but their plans are thwarted because Carey and Frank have been betrayed. German soldiers arrive at the de Cresci family estate to find them. Frank is killed. Carey is shot. Giulia is carried off by Nazi soldiers. The camera closes in on Carey’s bleeding face and off-camera, Carey and viewers hear a scream and a gunshot. Carey and viewers assume that Giulia has been shot dead.

(This blog post about Captain Carey U.S.A. contains spoilers.)

After the end of the war (four years later), Carey sees the painting that he and Giulia talked about in an art gallery in New York. The owner of the gallery tells Carey that the painting was obtained through the gallery’s agents in Switzerland, but he refuses to say any more than that. Carey tells the woman with him, his girlfriend, that he wants to hunt down the person who sold that painting because it was the person who betrayed him, Frank, and Giulia. The fact that the gallery owner refuses to reveal anything more about how he acquired the painting is a clue that the wartime black market is still in operation during peacetime and that the painting was likely obtained fraudulently.

Captain Carey U.S.A. is something of a history lesson for modern viewers. Recovering art stolen from Jews and others before and during World War II is an ongoing issue, even today. Click on each item list below for more information:

◊ The National Archives

◊ The History Channel

Carey makes good on his declaration about finding the person who sold the de Cresci painting and returns to Novara, the town where he was captured during the war. When he gets off the bus in the town square, an accordion player starts playing “Mona Lisa,” the film’s theme song. It is more than a theme song, however; it also served as a warning signal for the Italian Resistance during the war. With Carey’s return to Navarro, it seems the song “Mona Lisa” is now used to warn the townspeople of Carey’s arrival. All the townspeople take note and do their best to avoid Carey: They believe he is the harbinger of bad luck.

During World War II, the song was a way to communicate the approach of danger (usually approaching Nazi soldiers) for the Americans and for the Italians fighting in the resistance. The song is used throughout the film in different ways in different contexts. It always warns of danger, but the form of that danger changes as the film progresses. When Carey returns to Italy, the local accordion player uses the song to announce his arrival. That same accordion player uses it to warn Carey about the approach of police officers or of people who wish him harm as Carey’s investigation into Frank’s and Giulia’s deaths progresses.

Web Carey discovers that Giulia’s brother, Count Carlo de Cresci, is alive and back home after being reported missing during the war. Giulia is still alive too, and she is now married to Barone Rocco de Greffi, much to Carey’s (and Giulia’s) dismay. Carey asks about the painting that he saw in the New York City art gallery. But no one seems to know anything about it anymore.

• Countess Francesca de Cresci: “About the painting, Mr. Carey. You say it is valuable. What are we to do?”

• Carey: “When you lose something you thought was valuable? I don’t know, Contessa. Bleed a little. Forget it, I guess.”

Carey’s words refer to Giulia, someone he feels that he has now lost twice. He believed for years that she had died in the wartime Nazi raid, and now he finds that she is lost to him again because she is alive but she has married someone else. The painting was just a valuable clue to help him find what was really most valuable to him. But Carey and Giulia cannot forget, and it’s a good thing, too, or the film would have no more plot! The two of them decide to find out together what happened all those years ago during the war.

Captain Carey U.S.A. is a perfect example of a film noir in which the details matter. I have seen the film more than once, and it was only on second viewing that I had a much better grasp of the plot. Everything matters in this film. The theme song “Mona Lisa” is intricately woven into the plot. It serves as a warning song for different people and for different reasons throughout. From the first sequence in the film, viewers need to keep track of the characters and their activities because every detail comes up again later in the film. There are even shots in which the background is the most important focus for the action. It’s easy, I think, for modern viewers to focus on the foreground of a shot or a scene, but for Captain Carey U.S.A., it pays to examine both the background and the foreground in several shots, especially in the second half of the film.

Alan Ladd is the star and the narrative revolves around his character. Ladd gives a wonderful performance as the loyal and persistent Web Carey. But I don’t think you have to be an Alan Ladd fan to enjoy Captain Carey U.S.A. The story is well worth a look even if you are not a big fan of Ladd or of film noir because it is also a film about loyalty and true love. I suspect that when I see the film again, I’ll notice even more details.