Hangover Square **** (1945, Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell, George Sanders, Glenn Langan, Faye Marlowe, Alan Napier) – Classic Movie Review 2638

Director John Brahm’s lusty classic 1945 horror thriller stars Laird Cregar as classical composer-pianist George Harvey Bone, who goes crazy when he hears sharp noises, suffers from periods of amnesia and goes on a murder rampage.

Set in 1899, this eerie, lip-smacking gothic Victorian murder melodrama from the novel by Patrick Hamilton, the author of the plays Gaslight and Rope, is a thoroughly entertaining yarn.

But what lifts the movie really high up are:

(1) the three star performances of Cregar as the madman, George Sanders as friendly psychiatrist Dr Allan Middleton and Linda Darnell as lovely Netta Longdon;

(2) the stirringly notable score by Bernard Herrmann, who composes Bone’s piano concerto as played by Cregar in the final fiery scene;

(3) the atmospheric re-creation of foggy, repressed old London town, courtesy Lyle R Wheeler’s production designs and Joseph La Shelle’s black and white cinematography;

(4) the film’s hauntingly dark mood, especially in the gothic key sequence with Bone on Guy Fawkes Night, and…

(5) Brahm’s classy, stylish direction.

The screenplay is by Barré Lyndon, who makes a number of changes to the novel, including the transformation of George Harvey Bone into a classical composer-pianist and filming the story as a late 19th-century period piece.

It proved to be Cregar’s last film. He had slimmed on a crash diet to give role more physical appeal and died suddenly at 28. The film had to be shot entirely in sequence to be consistent with Cregar’s real-life weight loss. The movie was released in New York City on February 7 1945, two months after he suffered a fatal heart attack.

Also in the cast are Glenn Langan, Faye Marlowe, Alan Napier, Frederic Warlock, J W Austin and Leyland Hodgson.

Cregar, Sanders and Brahm had all worked together on the previous year’s hit The Lodger, and Cregar, a fan of the original novel, encouraged 20th Century Fox to buy the film rights.

But this time Brahm frequently clashed with Cregar, who used amphetamines to aid his rapid weight loss which led to his erratic on-set behaviour.

On April 10, 1965 Linda Darnell died aged 41 from burns in a fire at the house of her former secretary. She had been watching Star Dust (1940) on TV, one of the films that set her career in motion.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2638

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