Product Details

• Actors: Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling, Don Haggerty
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Timeless Multimedia
• VHS Release Date: December 1, 1991
• Run Time: 73 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303038867
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #312,166 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

In Cause for Alarm, Loretta Young is an elegantly tailored happy homemaker caring for her invalid husband (Barry Sullivan), a former pilot suffering from a mysterious heart disease that has driven him to almost complete madness. Convinced his wife and his doctor are in collusion to kill him, he's carefully recorded the "evidence" of their crime in a letter to the district attorney and prepares to turn the tables on them, but even his own sudden death can't stop the chain of events that plunges his wife into a waking nightmare. An unusual entry into the film noir school of paranoia, Tay Garnett's melodramatic thriller trades the dark alleys and long shadows of urban menace for the sunny, tree-lined streets of middle-class domesticity. Young, so often cool, calm, and carefully coifed in her studio roles, beautifully evokes the American Dream as the dutiful wife who collapses into a state of hysterical desperation. Spinning a web of lies to retrieve the damning letter, her world falls apart around her as she unwittingly sinks herself deeper into a morass of suspicion and circumstantial evidence. Though this is less slick and stylish than his claim to film noir fame The Postman Always Rings Twice, Garnett spins a simple premise into a tense, terrifying ordeal, and Young's deadened narration adds an eerie mood of doom to the suburban setting. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "This girl is in trouble!", June 24, 2005

By 

Dave (Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cause for Alarm [VHS] (VHS Tape)

-Quite the self-explanatory tagline, used for the 1951 theatrical release of "Cause for Alarm", an almost forgotten "B" film noir starring the lovely Loretta Young. Directed by Tay Garnett (who directed the noir classic "The Postman Always Rings Twice") and produced by Loretta's husband Tom Lewis, "Cause for Alarm" was originally a radio play. Actually, it's very interesting how Loretta Young got to play the starring role in this film. Tom Lewis initially wanted Judy Garland for the role of Ellen Jones, but Loretta's lawyer told him that he was discriminating against her because she was his wife. Needless to say, she got the role!

Lorreta Young stars as Ellen Jones, a patient, loving, and devoted wife of her sick, bedridden husband George (Barry Sullivan). Over time George has become firmly convinced that his wife is having an affair with his best friend Ranney Grahame (Bruce Cowling) and is plotting with Ranney to kill him. George writes all this down in a letter to the District Attorney and gets his naive wife to hand the letter to the mailman. That's when he drops the bombshell and confronts Ellen about his suspicions. She of course denies his ridiculous claims and tries desperately to assure him of her love and loyalty, but it's no use. Totally losing control, he struggles to his feet and tries to kill her, but instead he falls over and dies.

Although she is spared from his murder attempt, Ellen's troubles are just beginning. She quickly realizes that if the letter from her husband reaches the District Attorney she'll be charged with George's murder. She then races against time to get the letter back before it's delivered, but along the way she continuously makes many self-incriminating mistakes (You know, the kind that only a scared innocent person could make!) and has to deal with several annoying people (and one VERY bratty kid) before achieving her goal. Finally George's best friend Ranney Grahame comes to her rescue after hearing what happened, although it may already be too late to save her from a murder charge...

The main flaw of "Cause for Alarm" is the abrupt ending which totally disappointed me. I was hoping for and expecting much more after the continuous buildup of suspense but instead the ending was very flat and unimpressive. Overall, though, it's quite an entertaining movie, especially for a low-budget "B" noir. In my opinion both Loretta Young and Barry Sullivan were highly underated, and their exceptional performances in this movie helped overcome the absurdities of the plot. I first learned of this movie when reading Arthur Lyons superb book _Death on the Cheap: the Lost B Movies of Film Noir_ and I was very pleased with the restored picture and sound quality of the VCI video. "Cause for Alarm" is definitely recommended for classic movie buffs.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Paranoia, June 17, 2000

By 

James L. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cause for Alarm [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Loretta Young got some of her best roles toward the end of her film career, and this was one of them. She stars as the patient and loving wife of Barry Sullivan, a bedridden man who has become paranoid and who manages to implicate her in his own death. Through a winding series of events, she must race against time to save herself from a murder charge. Young is excellent in the role, being given more opportunity to show her dramatic range than in many of the other films she made. The tension builds well and the story manages to remain credible. Although a small film and hardly a classic, it is quite good.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Film noir comes to suburbia in this suspenseful gem, September 12, 2003

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cause for Alarm [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Cause For Alarm (1951) is something of an oddity in the film noir genre, bringing its gritty sense of increasing tension and suspense out of the shadows of the night into the bright, daytime light of suburbia. Only a talented actress could make this story work, and Loretta Young shines in the role of the distraught wife of a paranoid, dying husband. Her character Ellen Jones seems to be quite the devoted wife caring selflessly for her bedridden husband George (Barry Sullivan), and a flashback to the couple's first meeting reveals a husband madly in love with her from the moment he laid eyes on her. This happy-go-lucky fellow is a far cry from the man we meet upstairs suffering from a mysterious heart ailment, for he has come to believe that his wife and best friend/doctor, Ranney Grahame (Bruce Cowling), are plotting to kill him so that they can be together. He is so convinced of this that he sends a thoroughly incriminating letter to the district attorney before confronting Ellen with his charges. He tells Ellen all about the letter that she herself delivered into the hands of the postman but collapses before he is able to exact his mad revenge upon her personally. Ellen's in a real spot; the man she loves has just died trying to kill her, and the terrible letter already on its way to the D.A. will make everyone think she killed him. What she must do, of course, is get that letter back before it reaches its destination. What follows is a frustrating, maddening, increasingly suspenseful paper chase, with all manner of obstacles placed in Ellen's way. Trying to get a letter back from the postman may not sound exciting, but Cause For Alarm delivers an almost frenetically suspenseful plot that leaves one wondering what will happen at the very end. Not only did I wonder if she would get the letter back in time, I wondered if there was more to George's paranoid suspicions than there originally seemed, as Ellen climbs up to the very pinnacle of panic, enmeshing herself in an increasingly entangling web of lies and deceit that stand to bring upon herself the very suspicions that she seeks to avoid. Cause For Alarm really and truly kept me in growing suspense from start to finish, culminating in a perfectly effective and satisfying conclusion.