The Worst Film Ever

the audience applauded

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

FEAR is a short, middling thriller from Monogram. The main character is a student deeply in debt to an unscrupulous loan shark, who keeps demanding his next payment. In a fit of anger he murders the moneylender, but thereafter finds himself pursued by a dogged detective who believes he's responsible for the murder but has no proof. So far so straightforward; there's a fair amount of suspense inherent in the premise and it all flows along quite quickly. Darren McGavin has a tiny role early on in his career. However, the whole experienced is soured by one of those ridiculous 'twist' endings which ruins the whole thing.

If it were not for the ending, I'd rate this moody, well photographed noir much higher than "2". But the way the movie concludes is a real cop-out that not only disappoints but that doesn't make a gram of sense. A pity!This Monogram version of "Crime and Punishment" is well-acted too, particularly by Peter Cookson (hero), Anne Gwynne (an unusual heroine), Warren William (in a rather small part - alas! - as the determined investigator), Almira Sessions (the shrewish landlady), and Francis Pierlot (as the grasping moneylender).It's a shame that all this clever writing, good acting, moody photography (Jackson Rose) and suspenseful direction (Alfred Ziesler) comes to nothing when the cop-out conclusion suddenly bursts on the screen. And the movie is now available on a very good Grapevine DVD too!

***SPOILERS*** Updated version of the Fyodor Dostoevsky crime classic novel "Crime and Punishment" as well as Fritz Lang's 1931 classic crime film "M" but with a major twist in the end. The person committing the crime does get what's coming to him but not the way he and we watching the film expected it to be. Medical student Larry Crain, Peter Cookson, is down to his last dollar and about to be evicted from his boarding house and thrown out of medical school for not being able to pay the tuition. Desperete for cash to pay his bills and stay afloat Larry goes to collage Prof. Stanley, Francis Preriot, who besides teaching medicine is also the school's unofficial loan shark as well.Things don't go that well with Larry and Prof. Stanley who demands a cut of 20% for every dollar he lends him even before Larry has a chance to pay it back. Talking things over with his fellow students about Prof. Stanley Larry hears that the professor doesn't believe in banks and has all his cash in his apartment. This gives Larry the bright idea of whacking Prof. Stanley and taking his money the next time he sees him to pay him back what he loaned him. Tricking Prof. Stanley to turn his back on him by trying to pawn off a silver ashtray Larry smashes his skull in with a fireplace poker killing him. But as Larry soon finds out the place where Prof. Stanley keeps his cash a steel safe-box isn't that easy to open. And when Larry finally opens it a number of Prof. Sanley's customers, fellow medical students, are banging at his door trying to get a loan from him.It's all downhill for Larry from then on with after whacking Prof. Stanley in his hast not taking a cent of the what seems like thousands of dollars that was in his safe-box but also freaking out the next day when an article he wrote for a local crime magazine was accepted and him being given a $1,000.00 check for it! There's also the fact that the police are now on the case of Prof. Stanley's murder with Larry feeling that their on to him as well and he'll soon to be arrested for it.****SPOILERS*** Guilt ridden and at the point of hysterics Larry's consciences starts to take over. With Det. Shaffer, Naston Paiva, seeming to stalk him at every turn and police Captain Burke, Warren William, taking a keen interest in him in the Prof. Stanley murder investigation. Larry now feels for certain that his goose or butt is going to soon be cooked in the state's electric chair. The surprise ending in the movie takes a while to digest in that it come on so unexpectedly that all the characters in it have to be reintroduced to us. That's after Larry gets away Scott-free as an innocent but mentally unstable man the house painter,Earnie Adams, confessed to the murder that he in fact committed!

A desperate student murders a pawnbroker, but is hounded by an odd but persistent detective... and his own conscience. Sound familiar? No attempt is made to credit Dostoyevsky, but the film is quite clearly a modern adaptation of "Crime and Punishment". And for a quickie (just over an hour) B-movie production with a cast of no-name actors, it's not too shabby. The performances aren't great, but I liked Anne Gwynne as the love interest and Warren William as the crafty police chief. Zeisler pulls off a few nice flourishes and delivers a tight little package. The story makes for prime noir material, and is hard to mess up. However, they blew it with a cheap ending. Not just cheap, but woefully predictable. I should research C&P adaptations.... Kaurismaki's is okay, but there ought to be a better one out there.