Matinee idol Tyrone Power played against type in director Edmund Goulding’s 1947 oddball noir Nightmare Alley, based on William Lindsay Gresham’s titular 1946 novel set in the worlds of carnival life and spiritualism. Power stars as Stanton Carlisle, a handsome, charming carny who is also selfish and ruthlessly ambitious.
The film’s rise-and-fall chronicle centers on Stan’s relationships with three women, beginning with Zeena (Joan Blondell), a sexy seer whose husband Pete (Ian Keith) is a former mentalist star turned broken-down alcoholic (poor Pete is only one step up from “the geek”—the sideshow attraction who bites the heads off live chickens to nurse his bottle-a-day addiction). While romancing Zeena, Stan accidentally (and unbeknownst to any others) gives Pete some hootch that turns out to be fatal wood alcohol.
Stan then sets his sights on learning the famous two-person language code that once enabled Pete and Zeena to be stars of the mentalist world, able to accurately predict—without ever seeing—actual questions from audience members. Helping out is Molly (Coleen Gray), who has a skimpily-clad act as the electricity-channeling “Electra,” and carries the proverbial torch for Stan. The pair eventually marry and leave the carnival to launch “The Great Stanton” show, in which a blindfolded Stan regales upscale nightclub guests with his seemingly magical mental powers.
But Stan always wants more and he finds it in a third woman, the aptly-named Lilith (Helen Walker), a takes-one-to-know-one cold-hearted psychologist who joins- Stan in a bid to bilk grieving rich patients through insider knowledge, which Stan then uses to convince marks that he’s an amazing spiritualist…at least until the wheel of fortune turns. Lee Garmes’s expressive black-and-white cinematography effectively conjures both the seedy world of carnivals and the high society life of Stan’s machinations as a big-game charlatan.
After a brief initial run in theaters, Nightmare Alley virtually disappeared—caught up in legal rights issues—and did not surface on home video until the first DVD release in 2005. Presented in a new 4K digitally restored edition, extras include a 2005 audio commentary featuring film historians James Ursini and Alain Silver, new interviews with critic Imogen Sara Smith and performer and historian Todd Robbins, a 2007 interview with actress Coleen Gray, an audio excerpt from a 1971 interview with Henry King in which the filmmaker discusses actor Tyrone Power, and a booklet with an essay by film critic and screenwriter Kim Morgan. An intriguing cult classic, interest in Nightmare Alley is likely to be high, especially given the upcoming remake by Guillermo del Toro, starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Toni Collette. Highly recommended.