The most unsettling thing about THE PROWLER is the way Van Heflin inhabits the role of a corrupt police officer who worms his way into the life of an innocent woman (Evelyn Keyes), a bored housewife trapped in a loveless marriage with a jealous older man.From the very first scene, we know that Heflin is going to set a trap for this woman and that eventually she'll succumb to his dubious charm merely to break the cycle of loneliness she's used to. The plot sustains interest up until the cliffhanger of an ending in which all hell breaks loose.But along the way, there are several glaring faults in the script. Keyes falls in love much too quickly, needing him at her side so desperately that he concocts an accidental shooting to get rid of her hubby. And from then on, her motivations for lying at the inquest are shaky, to say the least. Credibility begins to slip as we lurch toward a very effective ending which won't be revealed here.In the meantime, the performances are professional, with John Maxwell excellent as a loyal friend and Wheaton Chambers fine as a reluctant doctor. Joseph Losey gets all the suspense he can out of the script, but in the end the bleak low-key photography and sparse sets gives it the feel of a hurried programmer rather than an A-film.

I hope Van Heflin never comes to my door when I need a cop...he is pretty darned scary. Only actor who might be scarier in this role would be Robert Mitchum.Not to be mean, but Evelyn Keyes had some big feet; just happened to notice this twice. Other than that, she does a good job as a restless housewife, Susan, who falls hard the local cop who responds to her call about a prowler, after learning they share a hometown in common.Van Heflin makes a plan, causing Susan's husband to call the police for a prowler and sure enough, hubby comes out with a gun. In this way, he is able to create an "accidental" shooting scenario and later convinces Susan that is was in fact an accident. Hubby is dead and they marry.Oh these fifties movies are so inane in some ways; right after she tells her new husband, Heflin, that she is four months pregnant (not in those words, of course) meaning from before the wedding, while her former husband was still alive (shocking enough for a "Code" movie, letting us know they actually were having an affair)-they tuck into twin beds on their honeymoon. The pregnancy is a problem in more ways than one; her late husband was apparently infertile or impotent, and also, Susan had testified at the hearing that she had never met Heflin before. So they have to leave their shiny newly-purchased motel in Vegas, and head out to a ghost town Heflin's cop partner had told him about. There, they set up housekeeping in a rough kind of way, to try to have the baby in secret. But nothing works out, when you are hiding a bigger secret...Heflin's loquacious former partner shows up at the motel to say hello to his old friend and decides to drive out to the desert to try to find and surprise them. Meanwhile, Susan goes into a dangerous labor and Hef heads to nearest town for a doctor. He has to flash his badge, which he kept after quitting, to get the old doc to come out. But even the doctor has a link to the ex-cop and they have to worry about him, too.In his distress, Susan decides she no longer believes that her late hubby's death was an accident. Now she fears he will kill the doctor and anyone else who interferes with his plans.That's enough spoilers for any one review, without giving away the ending. If you get a chance to see this film, it keeps moving at a good clip, has a noir feeling about it, and holds the interest. Maybe it was considered a "B" or a programmer, not sure, but it is a pretty good flick.

This one isn't around very often on television. I don't know why. It's a pretty good noir, in its own slightly screwy way. When we think of noir, we tend to think of some big dumb brute like Robert Mitchum being manipulated by a scheming woman. Here it's the other way around.Evelyn Keyes is a bored housewife whose husband is an all-night disk jockey in a thinly disguised Los Angeles. She reports a prowler one night and temptation knocks on the door in the form of police officer Van Heflin. Heflin smirks a lot but he seems to ignite Keyes and soon they are boffing each other while Keyes' elderly hubby is spinning records on the radio. She was unfulfilled before, her husband being impotent, but she's no long unfulfilled and falls in love with Heflin.I don't think I want to give away much more of the plot because this is one of those instances in which an inexpensively made movie actually has some unpredictable elements in it.Making this film must have been fascinating, in one way or another, for everyone involved. A middle-aged guy, John Maxwell, great name, pats his wife on the rump. Don't know how that made it past the gate. And the House Unamerican Activities committee was hitting its stride, of course. Joseph Losey, the director, simply gave up and moved permanently to England where he turned out some seriously perverted masterpieces like "The Servant" and some engaging whimsy like "Modesty Blaise." The writer Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted but continued working. Here he appears under the nom de plume "Hugo Butler," the name of a good friend of his.The producer, S. P. Eagle (aka Sam Spiegel) threw an expensive wrap party and asked everyone to chip in for it. But he'd worked the party into the budget, so he just pocketed everyone's contributions and walked away with the money. As Heflin's character says in a desperate attempt at self justification -- everybody is a little crooked, from bankers to grocery store owners. He could have added movie producers.I suppose it's possible to read communist propaganda into this movie. Movies cover a lot of ground and, like the Bible or the Constitution, you can pretty much find anything you're interested in finding. Why, for instance, did Heflin have to use bankers as one of several examples of crooked businessmen? True, Trumbo's lines did include grocery store owners and a couple of other working-class types but still -- bankers? Why cast such aspersions? Everyone knows bankers and brokers never cheat. And not just bankers. The protagonist is a greedy, murdering cop. Everyone knows cops are there to serve and to protect us. But there's your commie pinko talking for you, polluting our precious bodily fluids.Evelyn Keyes was just getting divorced from John Huston at the time this was shot, and her father-in-law, Walter Huston, had just died. That may account for the uneasy quality of her performance. She seems breathless and she trembles throughout. Van Heflin turns in a nice performance. His lies sounded very convincing, to me as well as to the object of his affection. And there are moments when he actually makes us feel sorry for him. But, honestly, wiliness and guile are not his shtik. He's better at straightforward villainy ("They Came to Cordura") and he was excellent as the simple but not unperceptive squatter in "Shane." The sets are minimal and uniformly bleak. The big "hacienda" that the wealthy Keyes lives in looks spare and barren. And Heflin's cop lives in what I guess is called a studio apartment and what I'm sure would be called a dump. Joe Friday was never this badly off.

Where do I start - heaping praise on this superlative film? From the very start there is something sinister and slightly creepy about Officer Webb Garwood (Van Heflin), who with a fellow officer is called to Susan Gilray's (Evelyn Keyes) house to investigate an alleged siteing of a prowler. Garwood, from his childhood, has always nursed feelings of deep resentment toward his father, who he feels didn't have the guts to get out of the rut and earn big money. He equates success with wealth and by the time they have checked out "the prowler", he is completely fascinated with Susan and the lifestyle she has. So when he goes back for a routine check, you know that he doesn't have his "kindly policeman's hat" on. His ruthlessness has drawn out Susan's vulnerability and over coffee she confides her unhappiness - after finding out that Webb comes from her hometown - "We Hoosiers have to stick together"!!I think Losey's plan never to show John Gilray - except for the one scene - draws the viewer closer into Susan and Garwood's web. Susan, initially, is an ambiguous character - does she have something to hide? was there ever a prowler? Then you realise, she is just a frightened woman, who married Gilray, not for love but because he could take her away from the life she felt she was falling into. Appearances can be deceptive - Gilray's soothing, folky voice (apparently Dalton Trumbo's) (he is a night time D.J.) hides a controlling, jealous personality - the way Webb's uniform hides an opportunistic nature. The last half of the film goes in a completely different direction as things unravel rapidly once Webb and Susan are on their honeymoon.Van Heflin, it goes without saying, is superb, like Spencer Tracy, a real actor's actor. With an odd nuance or gesture, you know instantly that he is not to be trusted (he says a couple of times he hates being a policeman and it is only when he leaves the force that he becomes more human). Evelyn Keyes is a revelation - I haven't seen her in anything other than "The Jolson Story" but she is more than a match for Heflin in this movie - her ambiguousness and highly strung personality, disappears in the last half of the movie when she becomes strong and resolute in her character.Highly, Highly Recommended.