User Reviews

An old carnival mind-reader launches into his spiel: gazing into his "crystal ball" (a liquor bottle) he sees rolling green hills, a barefoot boy running through the grass, a dog at his side... "Yes, yes!" his listener eagerly confirms, at which the mentalist reveals it's just a stock reading: "Every boy has a dog," he laughs scornfully. Nightmare Alley is about the weaknesses of the human mind, the need for emotional comfort and assurance that leads people to trust tarot cards and psychics, not to mention religion and psychoanalysis. It's about how these weaknesses can be exploited and about the high cost—for the exploiter.

Nightmare Alley opens at a seedy carnival offering a strongman, scantily clad girls, a mind-reader, and the "geek," a grotesque and pitiful freak who bites the heads off live chickens for shock entertainment. The carnival is gorgeously filmed, from the sweaty crowds and banners to the foggy, deserted midway late at night. Circulating among the crowds is a new carny-worker, Stanton Carlisle, a gum-chewing hunk in a t-shirt watching the old hands at work. He's particularly intrigued by a verbal code that Zeena, the mentalist, once used in a highly successful mind-reading act, before her partner Pete became a hopeless drunk. Stan is obviously unscrupulous, ambitious, and ready to use his wiles on Zeena, but we don't see his true nature until a scene in which he saves the carnival by bluffing a sheriff (who has come to shut the place down) with a display of his "second sight." His face shining like a choir boy's, he spouts vague, sentimental mumbo-jumbo, manipulating and feeding off the man's emotions until he's putty in Stan's hands—and Stan loves every minute of it, reveling in his power, the primal joy of fooling a chump.

We learn that Stan was raised in an orphanage, where the combination of mistreatment and bible verses instilled a deep cynicism about faith and morality. In reform school he learned to get out of trouble by feigning spiritual conversion. Handsome, glib, charming, intelligent and shameless, Stan holds all the cards. He's lucky, too: Pete dies after Stan, who wants to get him drunk to pick his brains, inadvertently gives him wood alcohol instead of moonshine. (No one, including Stan, is ever sure if it was really an accident.) Stan teams up with Zeena and learns the code, then cheats on her with beautiful young Molly, and when they're forced to marry by Molly's enraged former boyfriend, he takes the opportunity to blow the carnival for a high-class nightclub act. Still unsatisfied, Stan drifts into spiritualism, bilking wealthy clients in exchange for contacting their dead loved ones. He finally goes too far, talking his wife into impersonating the ghost of one man's dead sweetheart; and he meets his match in Dr. Lilith Ritter, an icy psychiatrist who conspires with Stan only to cheat him. Since Stan's identity is built on his ability to cheat and feel superior to others, when someone else does the same to him, he falls apart. Stan's crack-up and rapid descent into alcoholic degradation happen a little too fast, but they've been foreshadowed from the beginning. Stan has always had a morbid fascination with the geek, and with Pete's disintegration: they speak to a hollowness at the heart of him, the lack of any love or faith. This one vulnerability in his otherwise hard-boiled character is what allows the audience to care about him, to see him as tragic and not merely a heel who gets what he deserves. The obviously tacked-on "happy" ending is laughable; the love of a good woman won't save this guy.

Matinée idol Tyrone Power, freed from the limitations of swashbuckling, is perfect as Stanton Carlisle, an homme fatale who blatantly exploits his good looks and sex appeal, even making a declaration of love to his wife (maybe honestly, maybe not) to get her to participate in a despicable scheme. It's hard even for the viewer, who sees how callous and selfish Stan is, to resist his oily brilliance and amorality. Power was eager to play this complex and unsympathetic role, and he does it justice, at the end of the movie undergoing a more thorough de-glamorization than any classic Hollywood beauty. Joan Blondell, no longer the bright-eyed cutie of the early '30s, is superb as Zeena: blowsy, aging but still attractive, she's a sharp yet good-hearted woman who sees through Stan, even if she can't fight her yen for him. Colleen Gray looks lovely and acts adequately in the ingenue role of Stan's ever faithful wife Molly, and Helen Walker is chilling as Dr. Ritter, the only person smarter and more ruthless than Stan. Her eyes shine with joy as she reveals what a fool she's made of Stan and cruelly mocks his mental weakness.

Nightmare Alley may be the most inky-black entry in the noir canon. There are no guns, robberies, arrests, or beatings, only the torments of the mind. As Pete says of booze, "The only thing this will help you forget is how to forget." Memory is the waking nightmare.

Even Judged by film noir standards, "Nightmare Alley" is irredeemably bleak. Its story involves scams, swindles, deceptions and betrayals as well as the ruthless exploitation of people who are either gullible, vulnerable or simply unwitting victims of treachery practised by those in whom they'd placed their trust. The central character's elevation from being a charismatic opportunist in a carnival to being a sophisticated nightclub mentalist is fascinating to watch but his inability to recognise his own limitations leads inevitably to the movie's most tragic and uncomfortable scenes.

Stan Carlisle (Tyrone Power) is a drifter who joins the carnival and quickly becomes interested in the mind reading act performed by Zeena Krumbein (Joan Blondell). He soon gets a job as her assistant and gets to know her alcoholic husband Pete (Ian Keith). Pete's predicament had been brought on by Zeena's past indiscretions and his level of degradation is only surpassed by that of the carnival "geek" (a debased human being who bites the heads off live chickens for the price of a bottle a day and somewhere to sleep it off).

Stan finds out from Molly (Coleen Gray), who is the assistant to the carnival strongman that Zeena and Pete used to be a top of the bill act in vaudeville and that their success was achieved by using an intricate word code. He subsequently charms Zeena into teaching him the code and later seduces Molly.

Stan and Molly leave the carnival and find great success with their new act in an exclusive venue in Chicago. During one of their performances a psychologist called Lilith Ritter (Helen Walker) tries to trick them by asking a question about her mother but is both surprised and impressed when Stan accurately replies that her mother is deceased. Stan and Lileth meet some time later in her office and when he realises that she routinely records the confidential information disclosed by her wealthy clients, sees an opportunity to use this material to move into a new role as a spiritualist.

Lileth, Stan and Molly subsequently conspire together to carry out an elaborate and potentially very lucrative stunt but when Molly becomes uncomfortable with the religious style which Stan adopts, she exposes the fraud. Stan is also then betrayed and swindled by Lilith. This sudden financial loss and the loss of his reputation combined with some feelings of guilt that he'd been harbouring for some time, ultimately bring about his spectacular and tragic downfall.

"Nightmare Alley" was not a box office success when it was first released and the cult status that it's since gained was due to the fact that a legal dispute over distribution rights led to it being unavailable for many years. This is a shame because it's a movie that deserves recognition on its own merits, Its story is engrossing and the portrayals of its colourful characters are top class. Tyrone Power is exceptional as the selfish conman who discovers that by using his considerable charm he's easily able to exploit others for his own gain. Coleen Gray is thoroughly believable as the unsophisticated and likable Molly and Ian Keith and Joan Blondell also contribute great performances. The most chilling characterisation, however, is provided by Helen Walker who is absolutely convincing as one of the coldest, most calculating and inherently evil women ever seen on screen. The low key lighting used by cinematographer Lee Garmes also perfectly matches the downbeat mood of the film and contributes strongly to its haunting atmosphere.