Somewhere in the Night

One of the movies in the current Fox Movie Channel rotation that I haven't recommended before is Somewhere in the Night, which is airing tomorrow morning at 10:30 AM ET.

John Hodiak stars as a World War II veteran who got injured pretty badly in the war, and is suffering a case of amnesia as a result. The only things he knows is that his girlfriend was going to leave him for some reason, and his friend Larry Cravat left him $5,000 in a bank in Los Angeles. So, he heads off to Los Angeles, only to find out that he's unable to see Mr. Cravat, despite the fact that a lot of people out there would like to see Larry. And being a friend of Larry Cravat's might not be such a good thing for him. The other people looking for Cravat send thugs after Hodiak, leading him to escape into the dressing room of nightclub singer Nancy Guild (an actress who never really made it to the big time). She might be willing to help him, and thinks that her boss, Richard Conte, can certainly help him. Even better for Hodiak is the fact that there's a kindly police detective (Lloyd Nolan) who also wants the goods on Cravat -- apparently, that $5,000 Cravat had promised is part of a cool million.

Thus begins our tale of mystery and murder. The bad news is, it's an extremely twisty tale, one that you have to pay close attention to if you don't want to get confused as to what's going on. Also, the cast is mostly people who are OK, but not great. That having been said, it's not notably bad, either. If you're willing to put in a little effort, it's more than entertaining enough. But if you're trying to interest somebody who isn't already a fan of 40s movies and noirs in either genre, there are a lot of better movies with which to start off.

Fox went through a phase of releasing a lot of their noirs to DVD, with the result that there are a lot of 40s films from them on DVD that you might not otherwise expect. Somewhere in the Night is one of them.