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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Dead Man's Eyes (1944)

Starring Lon Chaney Jr., Jean Parker, Paul Kelly, Thomas Gomez, Jonathan Hale
Directed by Reginald LeBorg
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

After an artist is accidentally blinded, he's motivated to give up his career and beautiful fiancee, while his friends want him to hope for an eye transplant, someone badly enough to murder.

Another entry in the Inner Sanctum series of movies headlining Chaney, he plays the artist in this one, and I wouldn't call it a great performance, but it's less morose than his previous turns in the series, and he does a decent job of portraying a fall from being on the top of the world to a ruined life.  Acquanetta, in the role of his model who pines for Chaney despite Kelly's pursuit of her, doesn't fare quite as well.  She has striking features but lacks the talent of a professional actress, and can't carry across the emotional makeup of her character particularly well.  The rest of the cast is filled with familiar faces and some fine actors among them which help to carry the film, despite its flaws.  This was my second viewing of the film, and I liked it better this time around, focusing more on Dwight Babcock's script, and its build up of multiple suspects.  It also has that 1940s Universal atmosphere that I love so much.

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