It is a performances centric movie

Great Film overall

Did you people see the same film I saw?

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Thanks to the ingenious William Irish/Cornell Woolrich original short story (published in 1943), this Monogram quickie is actually worth seeing. It has an excellent screenplay by Steve Fisher and topnotch direction by William Nigh. Adding to the tautly suspenseful script, cinematographer Mack Stengler has really excelled himself with fine compositions and moody lighting that gives all the movie's compositions a wonderfully rich, glossy sheen.Ah! No wonder the movie is so good. The producer is Walter Mirisch, a man of great taste who has brought out the best in his cast, headed by Don Castle, Elyse Knox and Regis Toomey. Another masterstroke is that Mirisch hired Otho Lovering to "supervise" the film editing. In other words, Lovering was actually on the set to supervise compositions and advise Stengler, leaving Nigh free to concentrate on the actors. Using music by Frederick Chopin for the score was yet another ingenious way to save money and yet enhance the movie's appeal.

By the late 1940s due to the success of "I Wake Up Screaming" Woolrich's former pulp writer friend Steve Fisher was in Hollywood writing scripts for "Lady in the Lake" and "Dead Reckoning". He was given a Monogram assignment to adapt Cornell Woolrich's "I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes". It was a huge task as Cornell's story was full of ambiguities and he had deliberately left the ending unresolved!! Woolrich worked fast, did not revise or polish and often didn't even re-read the finished piece. He also often abruptly closed the story without thinking about the fate of his characters. Fisher sought out his friend to see if they could come up with a solution that would satisfy movie goers but Cornell, whose talent was now on a downward spiral, couldn't care less about what they did to his story - he even told Steve to make up whatever ending he pleased.Don Castle and Regis Toomey who had both starred in another Woolrich adaptation - "The Guilty" were reteamed and beautiful Elyse Knox was Ann Quin. A married couple are at the end of their rope. She works in a dance hall, he is an unemployed dancer - both are hoping that California holds their pot of gold but it is only a pipe dream. When Tom (Castle) throws his one and only pair of shoes at some fighting cats his nightmare begins!! His shoes are mysteriously returned the next morning - but there is also news of a murder, an old janitor with a secret stash of old fashioned money and who lives in the same neighbourhood. Out the back Det. Judd (Toomey) finds a shoe print and the killer is almost in the bag. The shoe is unusual - it is a dancer's shoe that has been used for regular footwear (wonder whose it can be??) and to make matters worse Tom finds a wallet packed with money of (you guessed it) the old fashioned sort!! He is all for handing it over to the police but Ann..... and of course they do things her way!!When the police finally come calling Ann recognises Judd as being a regular at the dance hall - one who tips generously to those girls who prove sympathetic listeners. Adapted from Woolrich's moody novelette from a 1938 Detective Fiction Weekly, the ending was very different and in keeping with Woolrich's mysogynistic thoughts. This film is a gritty noir with lots of twists and turns.

This rediscovered little dilly wouldn't walk away with any awards, but it's the sort of grade-B fare that makes film noir aficionados jump for joy! As is remarkably common in such flicks, the fog of confusion comes in on little cat feet--this time in the presence of two fighting felines on a fence. The protagonist flings his shoes at them, and fate suddenly starts tromping roughshod over him and his hapless spouse. The plot is somewhat plodding by modern standards, but its patient unfolding allows realization to creep slowly over the viewer, so that the conclusion is all the more credible and satisfying. Fans of crime and mystery films of the forties and fifties should find this offering to be a runaway pleaser!

A film noir that was all but lost but recently resurfaced, I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes brings yet another of Cornell Woolrich's paranoiac nightmares to the screen. Don Castle, a hoofer on his uppers, shares a cramped room in a New York boarding house with his wife and sometime partner Elyse Knox. While he frets in his bathrobe, a fifth of gin on the bed-table, she entertains gentlemen at a buck-a-dance academy. One night, he hurls his good tap shoes (actually, his only pair of shoes) out the window at some randy cats. When he goes to retrieve them, they aren't there, but mysteriously reappear outside his door next morning.Next thing, he's hauled in for the murder of a reclusive old miser in the neighborhood. The impression of one of his shoes clinches the conviction (and it doesn't help that he just happened to find a wallet stuffed with the old-style bills the victim hoarded). He's waiting for his execution as the movie opens, and most of the story gets told through flashbacks. The third major character is a cop, Regis Toomey, who had met Knox at the tango palace and taken a shine to her. Desperate to clear her husband, she feigns reciprocation of Toomey's interest so he'll help her out. Toomey's another example of the obsessive, stalking cop, created by Laird Cregar in I Wake Up Screaming (1942) and reprised by Richard Boone in its remake Vicki (1953). He breaks a new development in the case by finding the tenant of another room within shoe-shot of Castle's, but this proves to be only a rather tasty red herring. As the clock ticks down to midnight and curtains for Castle, Knox stumbles upon the clue that cracks the case....Many forgotten films from the noir cycle turn out to be just what one might suspect: hackneyed, humdrum crime programmers. But, like Decoy, I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes surprises by its competence. The dancing couple exude appeal, Toomey and the other cops offer acting rather than shtik, and the plot unfurls with reasonable deftness. It even looks good. As a restoration to the noir canon, it's more than welcome.