Nightmare Alley
1947
Tyrone Power give the performance of his life as handsome scumbag, carnival baker, conman - Stanton Carlisle. He seduces fellow side show artiste Mademoiselle Zeena to learn the secret of once-lucrative mind reading act she performed with her alcoholic husband. Carlisle, a "born mentalist" secures the secret method and sets .. Read more
| Starring | Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Ian Keith |
|---|---|
| Director | Edmund Goulding |
| Genres | Drama |
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Nightmare Alley
Tyrone Power give the performance of his life as handsome scumbag, carnival baker, conman - Stanton Carlisle. He seduces fellow side show artiste Mademoiselle Zeena to learn the secret of once-lucrative mind reading act she performed with her alcoholic husband. Carlisle, a "born mentalist" secures the secret method and sets off with his new carnie wife, Molly to milk the bigtime as a spiritualist in Chicago. As Carlisle succeeds its only a matter of time before his greed - and twisted involvement with femme fatale psychoanalyst Lilith Ritter - bring his wold crashing down around him.
| Starring | Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Ian Keith, Helen Walker, Taylor Holmes |
|---|---|
| Director | Edmund Goulding |
| Studio | 20TH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT |
| Run time | DVD: 1 hr 51 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama |
| Language | DVD: English |
| Released | DVD: 14 Nov 2005 Production year: 1947 |
| Format | DVD |
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Critics' reviews (3)
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Tyrone Power, 20th Century-Fox's most bankable and romantic leading man at the time, gave his image a jolt with this bizarre study of mental breakdown, in which he was reunited with his Razor's Edge director, Edmund Goulding. Power is a bogus mind-reader in a small-time carnival who revives Joan Blondell and Ian Keith's long forgotten act as a means to get rich, with tragic results. The picture is a curious hybrid: bits of Tod Browning's notorious 1932 film, Freaks, and Freudian psycho-babble from Hitchcock's Spellbound are drafted in, and the result is peculiarly, gloomily hypnotic. The script, by Jules Furthman, is based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, a writer obsessed by the emotional nakedness of circus performance who eventually committed suicide.
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Unusual road to ruin melodrama, a striking oddity from Hollywood at the time, and still quite interesting and well done.
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Most helpful member's review
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Crackling pulp noir
This is a great little dark gem that has been 'lost' for years. It was Power's pet project and by far his finest role. It all revolves around how low a man can sink, before he becomes a carnival 'geek' - the lowest of the low, a drunk who bites the heads of live chickens for a bottle a day. Geeks aren't born, they're made, and the story details Stanton Carlyle's position as exploiter then exploited. Great stuff, just a pity that a lot of the original story had to be cut to get past the censors of the day.
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Most recent members' review
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1 out of 1 person found this review helpful
Go watch the geek
A noirish look at the seedy world of second-rate carnivals with its charlatans and losers. Tyrone Power is cast against his usual swashbuckling roles as 'The Great Stanton' who takes his carnival mind reading trick into high society where he finds people who are just as corrupt and gullible.
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Nightmare Alley
Tyrone Power give the performance of his life as handsome scumbag, carnival baker, conman - Stanton Carlisle. He seduces fellow side show artiste Mademoiselle Zeena to learn the secret of once-lucrative mind reading act she performed with her alcoholic husband. Carlisle, a "born mentalist" secures ...
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