The Scar/The Limping Man (VCI Film Noir Double Feature)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: C+ Films: C+/C
As a
companion for their restored release of the lost Film Noir Blonde Ice (reviewed elsewhere on this site,) VCI offers a Noir
double feature of The Scar (1948,
aka Hollow Triumph and The Man Who Murdered Himself) and The Limping Man (1953) as a continuance
of more lost Noirs recovered.
The Scar offers Paul Henreid in dual roles
as a lead gangster and a doctor, as the gangster plots to take the look-alike
medical man’s place to push more major gangsters out of the rackets and get
bigger bucks for himself. This is one of
the few such films that actually works, and is the best show on this DVD. Joan Bennett, Eduard Franz, and Leslie Brooks
also star.
Lloyd
Bridges went to England to make The Limping Man with more than a few moments of Musical and
Melodrama segments. That gets in the way
of it having impact and is likely why it is not remembered the way Carol Reed’s
The Third Man (1948) is, or why
British cinema is only known for so many Noirs.
Of course, there is the original 1950 Jules Dassin version of Night and the City, and this is also a
film about an American in England.
Instead
of a hustler, Bridges is a G.I. who has come back to pick up where he left off
with an ex-girlfriend (Moira Lister) who is in more trouble than seems
obvious. When it sticks to that, the
film is at its best, but when it gets sidetracked it takes some time to get
back on track. When they mix, it gets
odder still, but it gets points for an intentionally odd storyline that offers
something different. The ending is also
questionable.
The full
frame, monochrome image is average on both prints, and a little less so on the
bonus TV show Dark Stranger, shot by
George E. Diskant, A.S.C from 1954. Jonah
Jones shot Limping Man, while the
great John Alton shot The Scar,
though that transfer does not look as good as it should either. It is still the best shot of the three
programs. The Dolby Digital 2.0 is Mono
on all three programs. Limping Man has background noise and
distortion throughout, but it also has a good score by Arthur Wilkinson, while
Sol Kaplan composed and conducted for The
Scar.
Extras
include Dark Stranger hosted by
Edmond O’Brien (from The Star and the
Story, directed by Arthur Ripley), a poster gallery that runs over 2.5
minutes, you get trailers for the underappreciated Slightly Scarlet, T-Men,
Raw Deal (1948), Impact, D.O.A. (1950), Blonde Ice and the two features from
this DVD.
Dark Stranger may or may not be typical of its
series, but is one of several precursors to Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. An author
(O’Brien) discovers he may have the power of life and death from the key
strokes of his manual typewriter. This
becomes more evident when he recognizes the lead form his new book walking the
streets at night! Jill (a fine early
performance by Joanne Woodward) seems too good to be true, but he soon
discovers it is really her. The
problem: she dies at the end of his
book! What can he do to stop this? You’ll have to see.
That one
is so interesting, one could actually consider this DVD a triple feature. Regardless of how you think about it, you
should definitely see all of it.
- Nicholas Sheffo
