George Brent while traveling on a train back to New York meets nice but frightened spinster lady Olive Blakeney and they strike up an acquaintance. He accepts her invitation to visit her posh home in Manhattan and then finds that she's died rather suddenly. That's enough to intrigue Brent, but when he meets the family head Paul Lukas and his beautiful wife Hedy Lamarr that's more than enough to keep him interested in the Bederaux Family.Hedy Lamarr was now away from the really big studios and on a downward slide in her career that was interrupted somewhat by Samson And Delilah. But she was still putting out some good product as Experiment Perilous demonstrates. This drama set during the Henry James/Edith Wharton period in New York is one creepy movie that presents Lamarr as a frightened, but self controlled woman not knowing what her millionaire husband will do next. A poet George Neise with whom she had an affair has already been done in and she's rightly scared. She reaches to Brent like a drowning woman for a life raft.Lukas is fresh off his Oscar from 1943's Watch On The Rhine and for a while and really for the rest of his career that Oscar guaranteed him some better character roles. He certainly wasn't a traditional leading man, but he notched above his fellow character players for the rest of his life.Director Jacques Tourneur kept the atmosphere murky, moody, and creepy not necessarily in that order. Experiment Perilous did get an Oscar nomination for Art&Set Direction for a perfect recreation of turn of the last century New York. And he got great performances out of his three leads and the ensemble cast RKO assembled.If you are a Hedy Lamarr fan this is one of her major films.

for the fans of noir movies, it is a really interesting. for each viewer, it can be a sort of gem. precise, dramatic, seductive, slice from golden age, Experiment Perilous has entire air of Hitchcock masterpieces. sure, it is not unique but it remains seed for a form of art who gives to thriller not only fear lines, tension or atmosphere but a special charm. it is a drawing. correct, interesting, beautiful. the virtues of 1944 cinema is basic note but , like important films of period, it represents a little more than part of chain. secret - the wise director who gives perfect nuances to each detail. dialogs. and the science to make ideal tension like a medicine.

Atmospheric account of a chance meeting on a train that leads a doctor (George Brent) into the strange world of a young woman (Hedy Lamar) and her much older husband (Paul Lukas) . The opening takes place on a night time train ride to New York through cascading rainfall, and the inclement weather conditions continue on into a snowy and cloudy New York of the early 1900's. A story of a rich and jealous older husband with a lovely young wife, whom he had groomed in Parisian salons to enter society, and now feels insecure when she's enjoying the very society that he paid thousands of dollars to educate her to be in, who grew up in Austria and became laden with guilt and who now is so damaged that he can't see clearly enough to recognize his own good circumstances, and thus ruins everything. Director Jacques Tourneur dissects this pathological family (they have a son whom they keep in a bedroom which is up a spiral staircase) with great attention, creating some believable menace in true psychological suspense style. The need for a hero figure (Brent) to rescue the pretty Lamar and her innocent young son and provide a suitable conclusion, and Lamar's rather distracted and distant acting style are legitimate quibbles, but the overall tone is intelligently dark and serious.

That HEDY LAMARR was one of the great beauties of the screen goes without saying. But whether she had the acting abilities to play a woman being driven slowly out of her mind by a calculating doctor husband (PAUL LUKAS) still remains questionable. There is no evidence in EXPERIMENT PERILOUS to suggest that she would have been up to the demands of the Ingrid Bergman role in GASLIGHT, which she turned down.Instead, she chose to star in this murky melodrama full of flashbacks and with an obscurely motivated script by Warren Duff. While it's by no means a complete failure, neither is it a resounding success.GEORGE BRENT as the friend who comes to Lamarr's aid is as stiff and wooden as ever, using just one expression throughout and obviously not too well connected to his role. Whether this was the director's fault or not, I can't say, but a more persuasive performance on his part would have made the whole thing more effective. PAUL LUKAS gives his usual professional performance as the doctor with an unhealthy perspective on how to deal with his wife and child.Jacques Tourner's direction leaves a lot to be desired. This is a story in the same mold as GASLIGHT, but nowhere as effective with a murky script and a dull payoff for the climax. As for Hedy Lamarr, she was much more at ease in other films, even though this is said to be one of her own favorite films.