the audience applauded

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Lonely housewife Susan Gilvray calls the police when she thinks she sees a prowler outside her bathroom window late one night; her husband works as a late night radio presenter and thus she is alone. The police check it out and can do very little but one of them, Webb Garwood, returns later that night to "check in on her". Finding common ground with her, they share a few more evenings of "checking in" as a relationship grows between them. Eventually the pressure builds on Susan to divorce her husband but this poses all sorts of problems and Webb starts planning alternatives.I watched this film without knowing much about it beyond the title; so when the main characters are introduced I really didn't even know if they were the main characters or not, or where the film was going with them. Part of the reason I felt like this was that I didn't think the characters worked and I couldn't get into the relationship between them. From the very start Webb is really creepily overly familiar and pushy and he is this way to the point that I didn't believe that Susan would let him stay in the house. This continued across the whole first half of the film and I never really believed it. Webb occasionally is friendly and normal but as a character he really doesn't have the charisma to sell this intrusion and rapid affair. The character of Susan sort of helps because she is timid, lonely and slightly nervous – so as a dynamic maybe this is why such a pushy guy would make inroads as he does.The plot gradual turns to darker twists but even at this point I didn't buy it. The actions and motivations of the characters felt like things that were written rather than things that these characters would really do – in particular some of the bigger plot points felt like a matter of moving the story along. The second half is a bit better because events drive the narrative and as such these engage more easily, but it was a shame that the first half was weak because this is the core of the film. The two-hander with Heflin and Keyes should have been as thrilling as the later events but the writing of the characters don't give them the material to work with and neither really nail the relationship dynamics between their characters.This is the problem with the film and it is one that it never escapes. The central relationship never feels convincing and because this is where all the events stem from, they are built on weak foundations. The events of the second half provide some interest and pace but generally it is not a great film thanks to it not getting the basics right from the start.

The Prowler marked the last time Joseph Losey would be working in America for years. Still despite him being a prominent name on the blacklist, Losey turned in some real classics when he was working in the United Kingdom, especially when he teamed with Dirk Bogarde. I could easily have seen Bogarde in the role that Van Heflin plays here had The Prowler been done across the pond.Heflin stars as a cop who thinks that after being a high school basketball star that life should have given him a better existence. When he and partner John Maxwell stop at Evelyn Keyes's house answering a report of a prowler, Keyes remembers him as the bigshot high school jock he once was. With some trepidation Heflin and Keyes are soon carrying on behind her husband's back.She tries to break it off, but Heflin is obsessed with her, much like Montgomery Clift was obsessed with Elizabeth Taylor in A Place In The Sun. Being a cop Heflin frames up a murder where husband Emerson Treacy is killed by Heflin answering the call of another prowler on the premises. He gets away with it and Heflin and Keyes are married.Needless to say it all unravels as Heflin's obsession with both success and Keyes get intertwined. The Prowler is cleverly directed by Losey who brings out the degeneracy in Heflin's character. The Prowler has to rank as one of Van Heflin's best screen performances.Some elements of this film are also found in the Kurt Russell/Ray Liotta film Unlawful Entry from the Nineties. For fans of the director and the stars, a must see item.

This one isn't around very often on television. I don't know why. It's a pretty good noir, in its own slightly screwy way. When we think of noir, we tend to think of some big dumb brute like Robert Mitchum being manipulated by a scheming woman. Here it's the other way around.Evelyn Keyes is a bored housewife whose husband is an all-night disk jockey in a thinly disguised Los Angeles. She reports a prowler one night and temptation knocks on the door in the form of police officer Van Heflin. Heflin smirks a lot but he seems to ignite Keyes and soon they are boffing each other while Keyes' elderly hubby is spinning records on the radio. She was unfulfilled before, her husband being impotent, but she's no long unfulfilled and falls in love with Heflin.I don't think I want to give away much more of the plot because this is one of those instances in which an inexpensively made movie actually has some unpredictable elements in it.Making this film must have been fascinating, in one way or another, for everyone involved. A middle-aged guy, John Maxwell, great name, pats his wife on the rump. Don't know how that made it past the gate. And the House Unamerican Activities committee was hitting its stride, of course. Joseph Losey, the director, simply gave up and moved permanently to England where he turned out some seriously perverted masterpieces like "The Servant" and some engaging whimsy like "Modesty Blaise." The writer Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted but continued working. Here he appears under the nom de plume "Hugo Butler," the name of a good friend of his.The producer, S. P. Eagle (aka Sam Spiegel) threw an expensive wrap party and asked everyone to chip in for it. But he'd worked the party into the budget, so he just pocketed everyone's contributions and walked away with the money. As Heflin's character says in a desperate attempt at self justification -- everybody is a little crooked, from bankers to grocery store owners. He could have added movie producers.I suppose it's possible to read communist propaganda into this movie. Movies cover a lot of ground and, like the Bible or the Constitution, you can pretty much find anything you're interested in finding. Why, for instance, did Heflin have to use bankers as one of several examples of crooked businessmen? True, Trumbo's lines did include grocery store owners and a couple of other working-class types but still -- bankers? Why cast such aspersions? Everyone knows bankers and brokers never cheat. And not just bankers. The protagonist is a greedy, murdering cop. Everyone knows cops are there to serve and to protect us. But there's your commie pinko talking for you, polluting our precious bodily fluids.Evelyn Keyes was just getting divorced from John Huston at the time this was shot, and her father-in-law, Walter Huston, had just died. That may account for the uneasy quality of her performance. She seems breathless and she trembles throughout. Van Heflin turns in a nice performance. His lies sounded very convincing, to me as well as to the object of his affection. And there are moments when he actually makes us feel sorry for him. But, honestly, wiliness and guile are not his shtik. He's better at straightforward villainy ("They Came to Cordura") and he was excellent as the simple but not unperceptive squatter in "Shane." The sets are minimal and uniformly bleak. The big "hacienda" that the wealthy Keyes lives in looks spare and barren. And Heflin's cop lives in what I guess is called a studio apartment and what I'm sure would be called a dump. Joe Friday was never this badly off.

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.