I've read the other reviews here and they're all completely correct: Cause For Alarm Exclamation Point is corny, contrived, nonsensical and an utter failure as an attempt at a film noir. It is also hilarious.Housewife Loretta Young is taking care of her husband George who is bedridden with a heart condition. He is SO bedridden that the very act of getting out of his bed- even to take a few steps to look out bedroom window- is worthy of comment and concern by neighbors and friends. His other problem? He's clinically insane and paranoid delusional- so much so that he thinks his wife & doctor are working together to try to kill him so they can make off with his insurance money and live together happily ever after. The entire story takes place in one day, in almost real-time, as George writes a letter to the district attorney fingering his wife and doctor should any tragedy ever befall him. Faithful, loving wife Ellen (Loretta Young) mails said letter unaware of its contents and that's where the real fun begins. George tells her what he wrote and then conveniently dies of his magical mystery heart disease, leaving Ellen in frantic pursuit of the incriminating letter. The obstacles she encounters as she tries to get the letter back (nosy neighbors, a meddling Aunt, a neighborhood kid who thinks he's a cowboy) are nothing compared to the ultimate bureaucratic nightmare of suburbia: the post office.Cause For Alarm! is unintentionally hilarious, almost an "Airplane!" take on film noir movies (The Postman Always Whines Twice) and will have you laughing yourself silly at the unbelievable circumstances that have Loretta Young changing clothes and putting on makeup with her dead husband five feet away so she can look presentable in front of the Postmaster. If you're looking for serious, gripping film noir you should look elsewhere, but if you're looking to laugh at a movie that doesn't seem to realize how absurd it is check out this little gem.And don't forget to put proper postage on all your outgoing mail.GRADE: B+

I generally like Loretta Young, but unfortunately this script requires such dumb behavior on her part, that I found myself getting angry with her stupidity rather than the clumsy machinations of the villain.Barry Sullivan is largely wasted in this one note performance, he was so good in Tension.Irving Bacon adds some much-needed comic relief as a whiny postman who talks the ears off everyone on his route.A similar story and situation has been brought to life far more enjoyably in Sorry, Wrong Number and Gaslight which I highly recommend.Although the film is only 74 minutes long, it still seems to drag. There are some drawn-out scenes with a neighbor kid on a trike who I guess was supposed to add a cuteness factor, but didn't really advance the plot at all.

This is a nail-biter! Loretta Young is so good in the lead role of an ordinary housewife faced with her life being destroyed, that she evokes the utmost sympathy for her peril. It may be her finest performance on screen. She starts out as a smiling, contented suburban wife who is looking after her husband who is upstairs in bed with a heart condition. The film throughout uses an interior monologue technique for her. And this is where Loretta Young especially excels, for she has perfectly timed her changes of expression to coincide with the passages of narration, and shows more changes of thought and emotion on her face than most actors or actresses could do in such circumstances. Without her ability to make this convincing and moving, the film would have been a miserable failure. The film was thus a risky venture, but it worked beautifully, and the result was the most desperate tension imaginable. The film was directed by Tay Garnett, who is perhaps best known for directing John Garfield and Lana Turner in the noir classic THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946). After the mid-fifties, Garnett turned to directing for television, including several of the Loretta Young Show episodes. Young's problem in this film evolves dramatically in front of our eyes. Her loving husband, played by Barry Sullivan, has developed a serious mental illness coincidentally with his physical illness. He has developed paranoid fantasies about her carrying on with another man who is a friend of theirs and also their doctor (played by Bruce Cowling). But this has evolved into a potentially violent psychotic state. Until the very last moment, she is blissfully ignorant of his mental condition, which is so far beyond her comprehension. At first she manages to brush aside her husband's accusations of an affair, telling herself he is just under a lot of stress because of his illness. But then he informs her that he has written a long letter to the Los Angeles District Attorney saying that she and the doctor, 'her lover', were conspiring to kill him. Young has innocently posted this fat letter that very day, thinking it was insurance papers of some kind. But when her husband pulls a gun on her and, having locked the door so that she cannot escape from the bedroom, she finally realizes that he really intends to kill her. He struggles to rise from the bed in order to shoot her dead, but before he can pull the trigger, he collapses and dies of a heart attack. She is seized with shock and fear and tries to pull the pistol from his hand, but sets it off and fires a shot into the floor, which is heard outside, but only by a cute little boy on his tricycle playing at being the film cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy. There are amusing scenes in the film between Young and 'Hoppy', as she calls him (the first credited screen performance, aged 9, by Brad Morrow, credited here as Bradley Mora, his real name). Fortunately the woman next door, who is such an inquisitive neighbour watching all the comings and goings, did not hear the gunshot. Then Young panics and realizes that she and the doctor will be blamed for her husband's death because he claimed they were over-dosing him on his heart medication and plotting to kill him, and they had over-ordered some, as some had been spilled. So she rushes out in a dead sweat to try to persuade the postman to return the letter to her. But he says it is against regulations, although she can go and see the superintendent at the post office if she can get there by 2:30, and he can return the letter to her. Meanwhile, the husband is lying dead at home. Young goes to see the superintendent but he says he can only return the letter if her husband signs a letter requesting it, seeing as he is confined to bed. This poses something of a problem, considering that the husband is not alive anymore, but she cannot tell him that and becomes more and more desperate. She pleads and then demands, and is dismissed by him after he loses his patience entirely. Her dilemma has been made far worse by her husband's aunt coming round and wanting to go upstairs and see him, and a number of other visitors appearing or interfering and delaying her. Young becomes more and more dishevelled and pouring with sweat, running along the streets in the intense summer heat like someone running for her life, which she is. Before our eyes, she turns from a quiet, demure housewife into a desperate, pleading, bullying, insistent vixen fighting for her life. The transformation is so convincing that Young carries us along with her as she disintegrates in front of our eyes and loses all self control. Her outbursts are tempered with interior monologue rebukes to herself telling herself that she must be calm, must be calm. It is all extremely harrowing. The ending is most extraordinary, a touch of genius, but I cannot reveal it. You need strong nerves to watch this desperate tale.

With all the positive spin put on this flick by the reviewers on this board I felt I might have missed something. But I think not. There have been film attempts by husbands to drive their wives crazy (1940's "Gaslight" and 1958's "The Screaming Skull"), but here you actually have a crazy husband (Barry Sullivan) trying to implicate his wife (Loretta Young) and personal physician (Bruce Cowling) with an illicit love affair. Something interesting could have been made with this concept, but once old George spills his guts to Ellen about the letter to the DA, the whole thing starts to unravel.Seriously, the guy was a basket case. All the good Doc would have to have done is put George in the hospital for observation and kept a set of notes. Having wife Ellen go apoplectic over retrieving the letter from the postman on the beat struck me as one of the prime examples of government bureaucracy gone completely out of control. COME ON - this was 1950's small time America. You can cite all the regulations you want, but do you actually believe the mail carrier you know by name wouldn't hand you back a letter you gave him just a few minutes ago? This postman was unbelievable, I mean, WHO WOULD KNOW if he handed her the letter back? The guy carried on like he would be off to the federal penitentiary. This was made even more hysterical later on with the supervisor who wanted all manner of forms and signatures filled out.But poor old Ellen, she just kept digging her hole deeper and deeper as the story went on. Like trying to pry the gun from George's cold, dead hand. What??? Now her fingerprints are on it, and the gun has been fired! Her goose would really have been cooked if the bullet hit George in the head. Wouldn't that have been something? Even Dr. Grahame would have been running for cover by that time.You know what had me more amused? The little kid on the bike in the Hoppy outfit. I thought with some certainty that that was Alfalfa from the Little Rascals until I realized the math on his age couldn't have worked. Then who shows up later? Alfalfa Switzer himself helping his buddy fool with the hot rod. How does that work? Look, I don't want to bad mouth the film too seriously. Loretta Young does a competent job with a loser of a script. But there are an inordinate amount of viewers here calling the picture film noir, and that it certainly is not. This one might better be classified under the heading of Postage Due.