Customer Reviews

Cause for Alarm [VHS]

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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-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.

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.

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.

I really like this film. It's very entertaining, and makes the viewer wonder what will happen next. Loretta Young is great in the role of the young housewife. Her husband kills himself, but writes a suicide note accusing her. A letter that she mailed incriminate sher and she must get it back from the postman before it reaches th epolice. She goes through a frantic and stressful fight to get it back. She ends up finding love and a new life with a doctor who hd een her friend for years. It's a film well worth seeing.

I'll watch anything with Loretta Young, a great actress often denigrated for her beauty, a strange beauty which seemed to preclude changes of expression, as though Botox had been invented way back when and she was its first recipient. Even when she's playing Suzy Homemaker, a caricature of the suburban wife in CAUSE FOR ALARM, she is astonishingly gorgeous. The movie opens with a "verite" type shot of her pushing a vacuum across a tastefully tiki split level living room, and it truly looks as though she's never handled a vacuum in her life. Director Tay Garnett must have introduced this shot as a way to signal his audience to watch out, this will be a Loretta Young you've never known before. Wish I had seen this in a first run movie theater to hear the gasps when Loretta Young looked frazzled and harried.

She's the wife of an insanely jealous and paranoid lunatic who is cooking up a scheme to destroy her. This fellow is played by Barry Sullivan, who had a similarly evil part in the Lana Turner-Ray Milland Cukor picture A LIFE OF HER OWN. Here he lies in his twin bed, dreaming up schemes to bring his wife to her knees, for he's jealous of her affair with his doctor--an affair that exists totally in his head. She waits on the dope hand and foot, completely sacrificing her life to his, and she's always there to fluff up his pillows, bring him his meals, give him sponge baths, try to boost his confidence. Barry Sullivan is terrifying for he can turn on a dime from sulky to manic. His monologue about a ship in a bottle he had as a boy is illuminating. He tells Loretta Young that this toy was his most treasured possession, and another neighbor boy tried to swipe it. "I went for that boy with my rake, and my mother stopped me before I killed him, but his face was pouring red with blood . . ." As Loretta Young listens to this tale her expressions actually change, from placid sympathy to outright horror.

All the period touches make CAUSE FOR ALARM even more of a must-see than other contemporary noirs. How many noirs are set in the sunlit, manicured blocks of suburbia? A little boy rides his tricycle down the sidewalk, dressed like his idol Hopalong Cassidy, blasting toy six-shooters at imaginary villains. Loretta Young's Aunt Clara drops by bringing a soupy bowl of jellied consomme to her favorite "invalid." On TV when they play this movie, an "info" screen drops down showing its 2 star rating and a squib which reveals, "Loretta Young spends the whole movie trying to retrieve an incriminating letter." That intrigued me, even though it turns out that she doesn't actually even begin to try retrieving that incriminating letter until about 45 minutes into the picture.

Although her name doesn't appear in the credits, the scenario is so much like a novel by the late thriller queen Charlotte Armstrong that I'd be surprised if she didn't lend an uncredited hand to the proceedings.