This is a really good and sadly overlooked film noir. No happy endings are to be found here, just good performances and writing and a close to perfect example of the film noir genre.

Joseph Losey's fourth feature, an intelligent film-noir made in the US soil before he exiles to England due to HUAC witch-hunting. Written by Dalton Trumbo under pseudonym, it is a strikingly captivating two-handler between a lonely married woman Susan (Keyes) and a petrol policeman Webb (Heflin).In 1918, Susan, leads an unhappy life with her much-older husband in a posh estate in the California suburb. One night she spots a prowler from her bathroom window, which introduces Webb into her life, both from the same town, Webb is displeased at his current vocation and he falls for Susan instantly. Susan's husband is a night-time deejay, which secures their nightly rendezvous as a foolproof secret, but with the husband in the way, they cannot be together as a proper couple, so a sinister murder plan is brewing.Inevitably, the resemblance of Billy Wilder's DUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) cannot be dissipated, and alerted by the usual default of a femme fatale, we hold our reserves about Susan, despite she seems to be quite harmless and docile, poles apart from Barbara Stanwyck's cold-blooded conspirator Phyllis Dietrichson. It could be her front since the film is exclusively told from Webb's angle, we see what Webb is scheming and doing, yet we are intrigued to guess maybe Susan is his unseen partner-in-crime, that's an excellent manoeuvre from Trumbo's savvy script, at some point, Susan's abrupt change of heart to ask Webb to take her away does makes her suspicious, and Webb's rational response is even more head-scratching, not until his "prowler" plan materialises that audience realises his real motive, and a subsequent "happy union" proves Susan her innocence.What is next? The undoing of the murderer and Susan's ultimate discovery of the truth, again, Trumbo shuns from all the secondary fodder, and let their own bad seed become their Achilles heels, which also ingeniously echoes the catchphrase earlier "Sometimes a little delay does the trick", only if they had a little delay, they could get away from it with all the blessings of the world. Losey gallantly sets the finale in a blustering ghost town, after the brief peace, the ominous record of Susan's dead husband bugles the doom of the wrongdoer, whose indignant condemnation of the unjust society rings true before his "halt halt halt" fate.THE PROWLER is an epitome of film noir, spins a murder plan under the minimal setting, it is an intensely engrossing drama with two superb performances from its leads, and casts a shadow to our current society long after its own time, it deserves more credits and should be enshrined along with other tested masterpieces.

In "The Prowler", an adulterous affair born out of greed and betrayal leads inexorably to murder as a manipulative man pursues the wealth and status that he believes have only been denied to him in the past because of "lousy breaks". His cynicism is perfectly exemplified when he says, "so I'm no good, but I'm no worse than anyone else", and his ambition to own his own motel in Las Vegas is attractive because it offers him the chance to be able to earn money even when he's sleeping. This sordid tale contains numerous elements that are immediately recognisable as being similar to "Double Indemnity", "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and a number of home invasion movies but it's also brilliantly directed, extremely tense and full of interesting twists.After a woman who lives in an affluent neighbourhood of Los Angeles reports the presence of a prowler on her property, a couple of cops call by to investigate. When the older, more experienced Bud Crocker (John Maxwell) interviews Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes), his partner, Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) checks around for any obvious evidence that might help to identify the intruder. Although no evidence is found, Susan seems reassured by the officers' prompt response and the advice that she's been given about how to avoid attracting peeping toms in future and the police officers leave. Shortly after, Webb returns, ostensibly to make a follow-up call and this proves to be the first of a series of nightly calls that he makes to Susan's house.It transpires that Susan is a lonely, bored housewife who spends her evenings alone because her husband is a night-time radio D.J. She doesn't particularly like Webb at first but after they discover that they both came to California from Indiana and she remembers seeing him during his time as an accomplished basketball player, she warms to him and they embark on an affair.Webb had been attracted to Susan because of her looks and her obvious wealth but one evening after seeing her significantly older husband's will, he becomes aware that she'll be the recipient of an enormous inheritance after his passing and so concocts a plan to kill John Gilvray (Sherry Hall). His plan works perfectly but Susan is immediately horrified because she believes that he's murdered her husband.In the coroner's inquest that follows, Webb's account of the circumstances under which he killed his victim are believed by the jury and Susan also feels compelled to lie in support of his evidence because to do otherwise could expose the fact that they were having an affair and she might be suspected of being an accomplice. A verdict of accidental homicide follows and so does Webb's next plan to convince Susan that he's genuinely innocent of the crime.A short time later, after Webb has brought Susan around to the belief that he's innocent and he's finally left the job that he despises, the couple get married and buy a motel in Las Vegas but just at the point where he thinks that all his scheming has finally paid off, Susan tells him that she's four months pregnant and the implications of this information becoming widely known sends them into hiding in a desert ghost town before a series of further twists follow.One of the creepiest features of "The Prowler" is the way in which John Gilvray's voice always seems to be present during the couple's affair and is even heard after his death when they're hiding out in the desert. His regular way of signing off his broadcasts with the words "I'll be seeing you, Susan" is similarly disturbing and makes her betrayal seem even worse. The insinuation of voyeurism that Joseph Losey's direction emphasises at the very beginning of the movie and the way in which Webb is then shown framed by the bathroom window a little later, are both wonderfully executed and inherently sleazy.Webb and Susan were both dissatisfied with their lives and were desperate for something better but their union didn't ultimately achieve what they'd hoped it would. Van Heflin is totally believable as Webb and Evelyn Keyes does a great job in giving out the mixed signals that are symptomatic of someone who's in constant turmoil because her desires and her sense of guilt are constantly in conflict with each other.

Van Hefflin stirs paranoia as an odd, bored cop who takes a liking to a neglected wife on his beat and ends up bedding her, killing her husband, and marrying her, then whisking her off to a ghost town where she can have their baby in secret.Evelyn Keyes is also good as the at-first hard-to-get, then desperately clingy unfaithful woman. This naive, repressed woman paints herself into an unenviable corner by lying for her lover on the stand then pleading for their baby's life when she realizes the child's due date will reveal their affair.I actually felt for this neurotic, amoral couple as they played house in their dusty hideaway. A sense of foreboding grew as one thought about Heflin's character being responsible for delivering a baby amid coyote howls and drifting tumbleweed. This film conjures Zola's "Therese Raquin" as the lovers turn on each other. In all, a surprisingly good, and creepy, thriller.---------------------------------------------------------------- "So I'm no good...I'm no worse than anyone else!"-------------------------