TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Phillip Yordan and Frank Tuttle’s Suspense (1946) with Barry Sullivan, Belita, Albert Dekker and Bonita Granville

By David in TN
friday, january 3, 2025 at 6:14:00 p.m. est

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Frank Tuttle’s Suspense (1946) with Barry Sullivan, Belita, Albert Dekker and Bonita Granville.

David in TN: This one is recycled by Eddie Muller from 2020. What we said in the 2020 thread still applies. Film Noir Guide said, “Contrary to the title, the suspense is non-existent.”



By David in TN
Saturday, November 28, 2020 at 10:45:00 A.M. EST

Film Noir Guide: “Sullivan plays an ambitious drifter who gets a job selling peanuts at an Ice Capades-type show. He’s soon promoted by the producer (Dekker), whom he thanks for the career advancement by seducing his wife (Belita), the star of the show.

“Enter former girlfriend Granville. An avalanche and two murders do nothing to advance the lame plot, and several lengthy ice-skating numbers (designed especially for former ice-skating star Belita) only slow things down even more. Contrary to the title, the suspense is non-existent.”

David in TN: Although Suspense is a mediocre film, last week in his outro, Eddie Muller exulted how much he likes it.

In his intro and outro last week for Kiss Me Deadly, Eddie told how left-wing director Robert Aldrich hated Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer character (Aldrich considered it “fascist, McCarthyite”) and subverted it, making Kiss Me Deadly the “best” version of Hammer. When released in 1955, it failed at the box office. But (naturally) critics ever since love it. What Eddie doesn’t get is, it was Spillane who was “subversive,” not the left-wing film critics.

I first saw Kiss Me Deadly on The Late Show, while in college. It didn’t sustain the Hammer of the books. Ralph Meeker was a strong actor, and would have made a good Mike Hammer with the right script.

[N.S., 2024: The Late Show was a long-running, CBS movie feature that aired weeknights at 11:30, immediately following the local news. Some of the movies were excellent, while others were so-so. Following The Late Show, The Late, Late Show aired at 1 or 1:30 a.m., broadcasting inferior movies.

During the 1970s, when I began frequently watching The Late Show, it had a nifty, animated opening sequence, with a lonely man in his little house in bed. Suddenly, the roof would open up, the furniture would spin around to a cute, techy musical theme, and voila!, his living room was a theater under the stars!]

N.S., 2020: David, I have seen so many lefties thrive in 1950s and early 60s Hollywood, and so many later lie and say they were “blacklisted,” that I no longer believe anything I read or hear from them, their comrades, or their groupies.

N.S., 2024: Seeing stills from this movie, it occurred to me that I’d seen it, but all I remember was the murder weapon. Otherwise, it was completely forgettable.

That’s a shame, because its scriptwriter, Philip Yordan (1914-2003), had a great career up through The Battle of the Bulge (1965), writing scripts that became classics (Detective Story, 1951; Johnny Guitar, 1954; Broken Lance, also 1954; The Man from Laramie, 1955; and God's Little Acre, 1958) and masterpieces (The Harder They Fall, 1956).