Thursday, September 20, 2018

FOOTSTEPS IN THE NIGHT

Eleanore Tanin and Douglas Dick
FOOTSTEPS IN THE NIGHT (1957). Director: Jean Yarbrough.

Henry Johnson (Douglas Dick) has been trying to overcome a gambling addiction so he can marry his sweetheart, Mary (Eleanore Tanin of The Werewolf). Unfortunately, Fred Horner (Robert Shayne), who lives next door to Henry, challenges him to a card game and Fred winds up dead. Henry insists that he's innocent and goes on the run even as Lt. Andy Doyle (Bill Elliott of Love Takes Flight) and Sgt. Mike Duncan (Don Haggerty) pursue Johnson, and other leads as well. Then it occurs to Doyle that the motel where Johnson and Horner lived has a name very similar to another motel where temporarily resides a businessman, Bradbury (James Flavin of Irish Luck), who always flashes a huge wad of cash ... Could the wrong man have been murdered? Footsteps in the Night is a short, cheap TV-type production that has little to distinguish it, aside from Shayne's good performance as the murder victim. The other cast members are all solid as well.  Elliott was basically a western star who later played cops; this was his last feature film and final credit of many. He did four other movies before this in which he played the same character (although he is named "Flynn" instead of "Doyle" in the first feature.) This movie is so cheap that when a car crashes into a wall at the climax, all we hear is the noise but the crash itself is never shown.

Verdict: Not much to recommend this stale cop drama. *1.2, 

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