User Reviews

This is a great little movie, full of interesting characters and situations. While not in the same class as some of the better-known movies of its time, it is still extremely watchable and memorable. The scene where Zachary Scott, sitting on a bus, casually steals the airman pin from the lapel of a coat thrown over the seat next to him, is terrific. It defines his character beautifully -- a guy who's so low, he'll purloin something of inestimable value to a war veteran, to use as a prop in his various charades. He lies easily as the situation calls for, and captivates the women in the Fenchurch household with his irresistible charm and that killer smile.

I couldn't help wondering if this movie was made to capitalize on the success of Mildred Pierce. Scott and Bruce Bennett were teamed again, and Faye Emerson bears some resemblance to Joan Crawford, with her facial bone structure and large eyes. Also, the Mona Freeman character is not unlike the odious Veda in Mildred Pierce.

I agree with a previous comment that the ending to the movie was too pat, with the convenient tumble over a cliff for "Ronnie Mason", Zachary Scott's character. Also, in one of the final scenes, we see bratty Mona Freeman reunited with the boyfriend she had previously scorned in favor of the older, smoother Zachary Scott. I think the script should've called for her to be chastened for her behavior and for her cruelty toward her sister, instead of treating it as just a typical adolescent episode. But these are minor flaws in an otherwise enjoyable and well-made movie.

"Danger Signal" is a very good movie from Warner Brothers. However, here and there it has a few plot problems that prevent it from being even better.

When the film begins, a smooth man responds to a sign asking for a border. Ronnie (Zachary Scott) is extremely charming and ingratiating....and the woman of the house and her oldest daughter take to him. Soon, the daughter, Hilda (Faye Emerson), and Ronnie are dating.....and in no time they are engaged. However, oddly, Ronnie tells her to keep this a secret for now.

Soon the youngest daughter, Anne, arrives home. She's been ill and is recuperating...so she and Ronnie are both home together very often. After learning that Anne has an inheritance coming after she marries, suddenly Ronnie is making the moves on her.

When Hilda finds out, she isn't jealous but afraid, as she has come to realize that much of what Ronnie's told everyone about himself is a lie But Anne is so in love (and a tad stupid) that she won't believe Hilda. So, Hilda decides to take matters into her own hands and kill Ronnie! But how and when? And does she actually have the nerve?

The basic story is excellent, as is the acting (especially Zachary Scott who always plays sleazebags very well in movies). But a few times the plot lets you down. First, if Hilda has all these concerns AND finds a hidden gun among Ronnie's things, why not go to the police?! Second, she later comes up with a poisoning plan involving Botulism...which makes no sense in so many ways...especially when she tells Ronnie she's done this to him (he likely would have strangled or beaten her to death on the spot). Still, the basic story is good and the ending very gritty and exciting...and very realistic once they jettison the Botulism idea. Well worth seeing despite a few complaints.

Robert Florey and James Wong Howe gave this a frightening, Expressionistic look. Scenes are shot at weird angles -- especially scenes involving figurative and literal lady-killer Zachary Scott. His sociopathic behavior presages another superb, medium-budget movie, "The Stepfather," by more than two decades.

The entire cast is excellent, though (though no fault of her own) it's hard to think of Joyce Compton as anyone but the singer in "The Awful Truth.") Scott, Bennett, Emerson, DeCamp (especially, and though playing an older woman looking gorgeous) -- they couldn't have been topped.

Setting a creepy lodger-in-the-house-of women story against a background of psychiatrists is a risky trick that pays off beautifully. Nothing corny at all.beautifully. Nothing corny at all.

The resolution is a little pat, unfortunately. Not Emerson's getting together with Bennett. That makes sense. But Scott is dispatched too quickly. I seem him more as a Mr. Ripley character, who could have escaped everything -- the botulism, the murder rap, the jealous sisters -- and disappeared into the great world beyond this story. That would not have impeded the essentially happy ending of the secretary and her boss finally getting together.

No one ever played the handsome cad better than Zachary Scott, who could make you grudgingly admire his skill at deception and manipulating women even while you hated him for it. Case in point, when he gives the ring to Faye Emerson that he stole from his murder victim and tells her it belonged to his grandmother. Now that's chutzpah!! The movie cleverly puts Scott's slimy Ronnie Mason into a house with three women - two sisters and their mother, and he casts his spell over all of them. It wasn't exactly clear to me why he wanted to marry Faye, since she was a "working girl" and not rich, but I guess she was a good enough victim until he found out that her younger sister had an inheritance. (Though the crass way Ronnie dumps one sister for another is not up to his usual level of smoothness). There's another female in the mix, a psychiatrist who sees through him, and their verbal sparring makes for one of the movie's best scenes.

Scott is great in this role, of course. Faye Emerson was a nice surprise. She was later known primarily for being a "personality" and society woman but she gives a good, nuanced performance here. She's equally believable as the "ugly duckling" flattered by Ronnie's attention and as the wised-up, scorned woman who seeks revenge. Rosemary De Camp is very good as the psychiatrist and I wish she'd had a bigger part. Bruce Bennett, who was also the "good guy" counterpoint to Scott's heel in "Mildred Pierce," seems miscast as Faye's scientist suitor. He plays the part almost as a cartoon version of the nerdy scientist. (Though one with the build of an ex-Olympic athlete). Joyce Compton is cute as always in a small part as Faye's office mate, and look for a brief appearance by young Robert Arthur, best known for playing Kirk Douglas' reporter protégé in "Ace in the Hole."

As other reviewers have covered it in detail, I will skip over that ludicrous climactic chase on the cliffs, and then the subsequent jarring shift in tone from film noir to Andy Hardy movie. But there's enough good stuff leading up to those unfortunate last few minutes to make this movie rate a solid 7.

I don't feel like writing a whole review on this, but I can't believe the high rating this worse-than-average movie gets here.

It just unfolds. There are no plot twists, nothing the least bit unpredictable. Until the end, that is, I guess.

SPOILERS

Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, some guy shows up and chases the anti-hero. I had no idea who he was. I had to go back and replay the movie from the beginning and found that he last appeared 14 minutes into the film, almost 75 minutes before his sudden, unannounced, unexplained reappearance. I had completely forgotten his existence by then!

Then the guy falls a whole 10 feet to his death! And all this happens in like 2 minutes with no development whatsoever! I was going to give this a 5/10 before the ending came along.

END SPOILERS

The only thing that makes this movie worth watching is Faye Emerson. She is not bad looking, although a bit odd, and her acting is excellent!

In the 19th century there was a whole established school of the psychology of personality called physiognomy. We don't hear much about it anymore. Physiognomy was a method of deducing personality traits from appearance alone. Pointy ears meant a bad temper. Heavy eyelids meant a reserved character. Physical features were to physiognomists what bumps on the head were to phrenologists.

Sorry. I only mention this because no physiognomist would believe a word of what Zachary Scott said. The poor guy was tall and had a smooth voice but he resembles some kind of underwater creature with his goggle eyes and that mustached brushed backwards like the whiskers on a carp.

He puts that semi-handsome but eely presence to good use in "Danger Signal," a short and well-done B drama in which Scott goes about murdering women for their money and then blowing town.

In the opening scene we watch him coolly knotting his tie over the dead body of his latest conquest, removing the golden ring he gave her, and stuffing her money into his suitcase before exiting through the window as the landlady pounds on the locked door of the hotel room. We don't know anything else about him and yet we know all we need to know. He's a murderous, psychopathic bottom feeder.

If we had any doubts -- could this obvious set-up be a trap for the viewer? -- they're laid to rest in the next scene. Scott is on a train headed for Los Angeles. A man settles in behind him and throws his jacket over the top of the seat. The lapels flop down into Scott's view. Scott dispassionately notices the "ruptured duck" pin on the lapel, a sign of recent discharge from the armed forces, removes it, and drops it into his own pocket. From now on he will pose as a short story writer, which he is, but will falsely claim that he has just been medically discharged after having been wounded in the South Pacific.

His fluidity, his reasoning, his charm work wonders. He seduces Faye Emerson, a pretty but colorless office drone, slips her the golden ring ("from my grandmother") and promises to marry her when his ship comes in. It's not clear exactly what he wants from her since she doesn't seem to have a large stash around.

But when Emerson's yummy younger sister, Mona Freeman, moves back into the house and reveals that she's about to inherit a good deal of pelf, he seduces Freeman and begins to ignore Emerson. Now -- he may be a bright guy, in the way that psychopaths are bright, but it's a very bad idea to try dumping a thirtyish spinster with whom you've raised the question of marriage. It leads to Scott's undoing.

I missed the last twenty minutes or so, and can't comment on the ending, but what I saw was a respectable black-and-white drama shot on a modest budget, competently direct, and nicely photographed -- good enough, that is to say, that I'd like to watch it again from beginning to end.

Danger Signal is based on the 1939 novel of the same name by Phyllis Bottome. She lived in Nazi Germany prior to the war and was the first Hollywood writer to warn about the dangers of Nazism in her 1940 film, Mortal Storm, starring Jimmy Stewart. Bottome wasn't able to have her novel made into a film until six years later since the female protagonist in the original story was guilty of committing murder without punishment. The Hays Code prevented Danger Signal from reaching the silver screen until the producers agreed to sanitize the narrative. There was another reason why the script had to be sanitized-Faye Emerson who played the protagonist Hilda Fenchurch, was married to Elliot Roosevelt, the president's son. Emerson could hardly play the part of a woman guilty of murder who in real life was connected to the Roosevelt family.

Danger Signal was a box office success probably owing a great deal to the presence of Zachary Scott who became well known at the time for his role in the classic noir, Mildred Pierce. Scott plays Ronnie Mason aka Marsh. At the beginning of the film he manipulates a married woman with whom he's having an affair to write a suicide note on the pretext that he's suffering from writer's block while writing a short story about a woman who plans to kill herself. When he actually kills the woman he uses the fabricated note to throw the police off the trail in their investigation of her murder.

Ronnie skips town and ends up in Los Angeles where he pretends to be a wounded veteran, renting a room owned by a widow, Mrs. Fenchurch, and her two daughters, Hilda (Emerson), a public stenographer and younger sister, Anne. The long-winded act two starts out lugubriously with Hilda falling for the manipulative Ronnie, who charms all the women in the family. When Anne finally returns home after being away, she reveals to Ronnie that she'll be getting a $25,000 inheritance from an uncle-Ronnie immediately switches his allegiance to Anne and unceremoniously dumps Hilda, causing a great amount of friction between the sisters. Soon afterward, Ronnie plans on doing Hilda in, inducing her to compose a suicide note, just as he did with the woman he disposed of at the beginning of the story.

The plot only becomes mildly interesting when the conflict between the two sisters erupts-but it sure takes a great amount of time to reach that point. There's a subplot involving Hilda's boss, a research scientist, Dr. Lang, who has an unrequited crush on her. Also in the mix is Dr. Silla, a psychologist, who works with Lang at the university. Silla, who has a thick Germanic accent, is obviously based on Bottome herself. She gets involved by meeting Ronnie and analyzing him-concluding that he's a psychopath. She warns Hilda not to try and kill him after Hilda admits she's been thinking of doing so.

When Lang and Silla discover that Hilda has lured Ronnie to Silla's beach house (in which Hilda has the key after the psychologist urged her to get away for a weekend), they drive to the beach in an desperate effort to prevent Hilda from trying to poison Ronnie (this is after Hilda steals a test tube at Lang's lab containing botulinum bacilli). There's a lame chase scene as the two "doctors" elude the police after they've been spotted speeding (the film is so devoid of suspense, that the scenarists inserted the unnecessary car chase scene).

The ending might go down as one of the lamest in film noir history. True to Hays Code directives, Hilda tells Ronnie she's poisoned him with the bacilli in Lang's test tube. Suddenly Lang and Silla burst in and Hilda confesses she didn't have the nerve to go through with the murder. Practically in a split second, Ronnie leaves and is chased off a cliff by the husband of the woman he murdered at the beginning of the film. Then the two sisters, who both so easily fell for a scheming psychopath, see the error of their ways and go for the two remaining good guys (Hilda agrees to a date with Dr. Lang and Anne takes up with her old high school boyfriend, the goofy "Bunkie").

Danger Signal doesn't have enough suspense to hold one's interest throughout and relies on a most unsatisfying climax to tie up all the loose ends. It's an extremely dated piece of screenwriting compromised by the interference of the Hays Code censors.

Kudos to the unnamed stuntman who (as the Ronnie Mason character) near the end of the film takes a tough fall over the cliff and lands in the ocean at an angle. I really cringed.

Also, like others I found the acting, direction, camera work and overall atmosphere in this film were terrific. Two caveats though:

First, as noted, the ending was indeed too pat and a little sugary.

Second, Anne went through some some real difficult to believe 180 degree turn arounds in this film . She quickly goes from the family devoted, all-American girl next door--to a seemingly older person who immediately assumes all of the worst about her sister--to (at the end) the innocent high school girl unaffected by what should have been deeply troubling events.

Tepid noir too slack for its own good, despite smooth work from both an amoral Scott and a de-glamorized Emerson. Of course, movie buffs will spot a plot line from Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt and actors from Mildred Pierce. In fact, the film as a whole appears cobbled together from each of these betters. However, the main trouble is that director Florey and/or the screenplay fail to generate the kind of suspense the movie depends upon. Thus we get a slack series of developments instead of a driven series once Emerson knows Scott's planning to kill her. As a result, the movie's dark psychological core is dissipated instead of concentrated. Also, the climax is dissipated by having Scott stand around talking instead of more plausibly (and suspensefully) menacing Emerson for poisoning him. Even the final chase scene is drained by an unexpected abruptness, as other reviewers have noted.

Too bad, because Scott's Ronnie Mason is one of the most cold-blooded schemers in noir annals. His duel of wits with psychologist DeCamp is, I think, the movie's best scene—both unusually well written and expertly performed. But whose idea was it to cast the handsome ex-Tarzan Bruce Bennett as a timid-soul chemist. Not only are those shrinking traits beyond his range as an actor, but his sheer athletic presence shouts miscasting even louder. My guess is producers wanted someone impressive for leading lady Emerson to fall back on. Still the movie does have Scott, an interesting actor whose early movie career was fascinating, before apparently being diverted into TV by a rafting accident. He certainly had a different look for the time. With sharp features and dagger-like moustache, he's perfect as a certified scoundrel. On the other hand, his sympathetic sharecropper in Renoir's The Southerner (1945) and hapless whipping boy in Flamingo Road (1949) demonstrate a surprising versatility. Anyway, it's too bad that this movie fails to live up to its many promising elements, despite the generous comments from other reviewers.