Dan Duryea, so often cast as villains, dirtbags, and smart-alecky sidekicks, takes a rare leading role in this brisk but dark film noir. He plays a songwriter who pines for his wife, a singer who left him when she hit it big, and becomes a hopeless alcoholic drowning his sorrows in drink after she's murdered. June Vincent costars as the wife of another songwriter, a young man who was blackmailed by the dead woman and is on death row for her murder on purely circumstantial evidence, and she rouses Duryea from his self-pity to help her prove her husband's innocence. The low budget crime drama is based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich and it has echoes of Phantom Lady, another Woolrich adaptation, with a twist of The Lost Weekend. Director Roy William Neill is a B-movie veteran who brought crisp style to his productions, including eleven "Sherlock Holmes" films with Basil Rathbone. He brings an appropriately dark, shadowy palette to key scenes and draws an achingly vulnerable performance from Duryea as he starts to fall in love with his married partner. It was Neill's final film before his death at the age of 59 and one of his best, a minor classic of film noir and a prime example of craftsmanship on a budget. The new blu-ray features well-researched commentary by film noir historian Alan K. Rode and a 21-minute featurette. Also on DVD from Universal Home Video with no supplements. Optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)