THE NIGHT HOLDS TERROR (1955)

Driving through the desert one day, engineer Gene Courtier picks up a hitchhiker named Victor and soon regrets it when he is terrorized by Victor and two other thugs: the tough boss guy Robert and the passive, occasionally sympathetic Luther. When he doesn't have enough money on him to satisfy the trio, they work out a plan whereby Gene will sign over his car to them and they'll sell it for cash. But due to office procedures, they won't be able to sell the car until the next day, so they make Gene drive them to his suburban home where they plan to spend the night with Gene, his wife Doris, and their two kids. Tensions arise not only between the crooks and the family but between the crooks themselves. Victor has a hair-trigger temper that Robert has to keep on eye on, and Luther, who gets cheated out of some of the money owed him, winds up trying to help Gene escape. The next day, when the men leave the house with Gene, Doris manages to call the police; meanwhile, when the thugs discover that Gene's father has some money, they decide to hold him hostage to get a better pay-off. The cops pair up with the phone company to try and trace the ransom phone calls. Nerves continue to fray until the nighttime climax.

I'm not a fan of the home invasion genre of crime film, claustrophobic B-movies which usually wind up as psychological thrillers. This one, for the most part, ignores psychology, but it also forgets to ratchet up the tension very often. The opening sequence when the crooks grab Gene plays out well, but as soon as the somewhat baroque car-sale plan goes into effect, things start to fall apart, for the crooks and the audience. When the thugs have center stage, things are interesting. Threatening hunk Vince Edwards (Victor) and tightly wound John Cassavetes (Robert) play off each other well, while David Cross (Luther) is a bit of a wild card, with his personality being the hardest to read. Hildy Parks, as Doris, is fine even if she has little to do except alternate between being nervous and being brave. Jack Kelly, as Gene, is a bit of a weak link, partly due to how the character is written. He swings from nervous to bold to foolish and back again throughout. One reason why the tension dissipates is that halfway through, when the police get involved, the movie goes to Dragnet-style docudrama, resulting in long sequences showing a kidnapping report going through police channels, the tracing of phone numbers, and the handling of the press—a major plotpoint is that the bad guys have a police radio in their car, so in theory they'll know if Doris calls the cops, but Doris doesn't realize this. The movie is well photographed, all on location which adds to the realistic tone. As others have pointed out, the title is not quite accurate—most of the action of the movie is set in bright, broad daylight. Some call this a film noir, but it's really just a crime film, watchable if rarely compelling. Nice line: Cassavetes telling the couple, "You've both seen too many crime thrillers." Pictured are Cassavetes and Edwards. [TCM]