The Prowler (1951)

I purchased, "The Prowler" on DVD a few years ago. It includes several extras, with a full length, excellent commentary by Noir expert, Eddie Muller. Van Heflin gives a stellar performance as a cynical police officer who doesn't "protect and serve" anyone other than himself. Officer Webb Garwood (Heflin) blames all of the people along the way in his life, for the fact that he isn't a great success. He is a shiftless and lazy character who sees the finer things in life as his, for the taking. The film opens with Garwood and his partner, Officer Bud Crocker (John Maxwell) responding to the home where a prowler has been reported. Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) has just finished bathing, and tells the officers she saw a prowler. Bud Crocker is a true-blue cop who loves his job and treats Mrs. Gilvray with courtesy and respect. Garwood doesn't really believe there was a prowler, and doesn't care if there was; for then he might have to do some actual work! Susan's somewhat older husband hosts an all night radio program and thus, she is alone. The Gilvrays are financially secure, but Susan the woman, is insecure. Evelyn Keyes shines in the role of Susan! The body language gives credence to the two main characters, who otherwise might have seemed contrived and caricatured. Webb sees an opening for himself with the vulnerable housewife who is left alone each night. She isn't QUITE alone, as the radio is always on. Her husband's voice (doing his idiotic radio show) in the background, provides a level of quirky tension to the goings-on in the Gilvray residence! I certainly won't give anything more, but hopefully I've given just enough of the plot from, "The Prowler", to interest you! I have seen Van Heflin in numerous films, and he is wonderful; playing a guy choosing to do the "right thing" in those films. Heflin's off the chart performance as Webb Garwood is the complete antithesis of the Van Heflin roles I was familiar with. It's an absolute joy to see him in the role of a morally bankrupt cop who hates the world and wants something for nothing! Evelyn Keyes bangs it out of the park in her role as Susan Gilvray. Keyes wanted a role she could sink her teeth into. She'll leave you with some bite marks, too; giving a believable performance as a married woman without children, and lonely. She has morals, and tries to believe she is happy with her life. Webb Garwood senses her vulnerability and pounces, figuratively and literally. "The Prowler" is fun-fun-fun from start to finish. See it, love it and own it!

Van Hefflin stirs paranoia as an odd, bored cop who takes a liking to a neglected wife on his beat and ends up bedding her, killing her husband, and marrying her, then whisking her off to a ghost town where she can have their baby in secret.Evelyn Keyes is also good as the at-first hard-to-get, then desperately clingy unfaithful woman. This naive, repressed woman paints herself into an unenviable corner by lying for her lover on the stand then pleading for their baby's life when she realizes the child's due date will reveal their affair.I actually felt for this neurotic, amoral couple as they played house in their dusty hideaway. A sense of foreboding grew as one thought about Heflin's character being responsible for delivering a baby amid coyote howls and drifting tumbleweed. This film conjures Zola's "Therese Raquin" as the lovers turn on each other. In all, a surprisingly good, and creepy, thriller.---------------------------------------------------------------- "So I'm no good...I'm no worse than anyone else!"-------------------------

I hope Van Heflin never comes to my door when I need a cop...he is pretty darned scary. Only actor who might be scarier in this role would be Robert Mitchum.Not to be mean, but Evelyn Keyes had some big feet; just happened to notice this twice. Other than that, she does a good job as a restless housewife, Susan, who falls hard the local cop who responds to her call about a prowler, after learning they share a hometown in common.Van Heflin makes a plan, causing Susan's husband to call the police for a prowler and sure enough, hubby comes out with a gun. In this way, he is able to create an "accidental" shooting scenario and later convinces Susan that is was in fact an accident. Hubby is dead and they marry.Oh these fifties movies are so inane in some ways; right after she tells her new husband, Heflin, that she is four months pregnant (not in those words, of course) meaning from before the wedding, while her former husband was still alive (shocking enough for a "Code" movie, letting us know they actually were having an affair)-they tuck into twin beds on their honeymoon. The pregnancy is a problem in more ways than one; her late husband was apparently infertile or impotent, and also, Susan had testified at the hearing that she had never met Heflin before. So they have to leave their shiny newly-purchased motel in Vegas, and head out to a ghost town Heflin's cop partner had told him about. There, they set up housekeeping in a rough kind of way, to try to have the baby in secret. But nothing works out, when you are hiding a bigger secret...Heflin's loquacious former partner shows up at the motel to say hello to his old friend and decides to drive out to the desert to try to find and surprise them. Meanwhile, Susan goes into a dangerous labor and Hef heads to nearest town for a doctor. He has to flash his badge, which he kept after quitting, to get the old doc to come out. But even the doctor has a link to the ex-cop and they have to worry about him, too.In his distress, Susan decides she no longer believes that her late hubby's death was an accident. Now she fears he will kill the doctor and anyone else who interferes with his plans.That's enough spoilers for any one review, without giving away the ending. If you get a chance to see this film, it keeps moving at a good clip, has a noir feeling about it, and holds the interest. Maybe it was considered a "B" or a programmer, not sure, but it is a pretty good flick.

Where do I start - heaping praise on this superlative film? From the very start there is something sinister and slightly creepy about Officer Webb Garwood (Van Heflin), who with a fellow officer is called to Susan Gilray's (Evelyn Keyes) house to investigate an alleged siteing of a prowler. Garwood, from his childhood, has always nursed feelings of deep resentment toward his father, who he feels didn't have the guts to get out of the rut and earn big money. He equates success with wealth and by the time they have checked out "the prowler", he is completely fascinated with Susan and the lifestyle she has. So when he goes back for a routine check, you know that he doesn't have his "kindly policeman's hat" on. His ruthlessness has drawn out Susan's vulnerability and over coffee she confides her unhappiness - after finding out that Webb comes from her hometown - "We Hoosiers have to stick together"!!I think Losey's plan never to show John Gilray - except for the one scene - draws the viewer closer into Susan and Garwood's web. Susan, initially, is an ambiguous character - does she have something to hide? was there ever a prowler? Then you realise, she is just a frightened woman, who married Gilray, not for love but because he could take her away from the life she felt she was falling into. Appearances can be deceptive - Gilray's soothing, folky voice (apparently Dalton Trumbo's) (he is a night time D.J.) hides a controlling, jealous personality - the way Webb's uniform hides an opportunistic nature. The last half of the film goes in a completely different direction as things unravel rapidly once Webb and Susan are on their honeymoon.Van Heflin, it goes without saying, is superb, like Spencer Tracy, a real actor's actor. With an odd nuance or gesture, you know instantly that he is not to be trusted (he says a couple of times he hates being a policeman and it is only when he leaves the force that he becomes more human). Evelyn Keyes is a revelation - I haven't seen her in anything other than "The Jolson Story" but she is more than a match for Heflin in this movie - her ambiguousness and highly strung personality, disappears in the last half of the movie when she becomes strong and resolute in her character.Highly, Highly Recommended.