***Out In The B-Film Noir Night-Strange Illusion

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

Strange Illusion, starring Jimmy Lydon, Warren William, 1945

Any mother or father of a college student would be justly proud of, and consider it money well spent, if her of his son or daughter used his or her college career wisely and pursued one of the learned professions, doctor, lawyer, professor, and the like. And any mother of a college student would be justly proud of, and consider it money well spent, if her son used his college career wisely and was, beside the pursuing the rigors of intellectual studies, doubling up as an amateur sleuth to figure out who killed his father. All without showing from the film’s beginning to end any signs of cracking a course book, or getting his suit and tie all messed up. That mythical search for his father’s killer, like something out of the Greek mist of time, is what drives the suspense in the film under review, Strange Illusion. Beautiful work, beautifully done and then back to the books if such mundane tasks will even appeal to him then.

Our college student, Paul, our 1945 college student and therefore more likely to be from the upper crust in the days before the colleges opened up a more democratic vista, and at a time when half the graduating class of any high school could have been covered by the cost of tuition of one student today ( a little topical social commentary, sorry) had a vision, a vision from beyond the grave that his father, a stern old Puritan judge, who had supposedly been killed in an accident but had actually been murdered. Murdered by a man, a man about town, Bret, who was courting his mother with designs on marrying her. No, Paul was not crazy if that is what you think, not certifiably so anyway, since as it turned out Bret was in fact out for revenge on the judge for sending him up to stir on what he considered a bum rap. Of course Bret had a little extra problem, he liked young women, no, not under age, just young like every guy dreams about grabbing, and then moves on. Brett is, ah, more active than that and it turned out to be part of his undoing.

See Bret was not the main guy pulling the strings to marry Paul’s poor widowed mother and grab her dough. He had a confederate in a quack shrink, a doctor running a rest home for the mentally weary who needed some dough to maintain his lifestyle. Our boy seer Paul smelled a rat, and was hip to what was up from about minute one, and so was the suspense except an off-hand grope of Paul’s sister and a couple of slugs to the heart for Bret. All in a day’s work for a college guy. Now get back to the damn books.