Man in the Dark (1953)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A good noir thriller with a neat gimmick. Edmund O'Brien's Steve, part of an armored car robbery gang, gets caught, but he's paroled to a hospital for experimental surgery. He subsequently loses his memory. This cleverly sets up the archetypal noir hero's sense of alienation from society.For once in her noir career, Audrey Totter's character is sympathetic. As Steve's girlfriend, she starts out unconcerned about his fate, but, as she realizes what happened to him, her love for him outpaces her greed for the missing loot.The pacing keeps the plot moving at a pretty good clip. At first I thought the bumper car chase was silly, the cops gliding around in formation--as if on parade. And, from such close range, they should've been able to nail Steve. But then I remembered that Steve was having a nightmare. The mixing of memories and dreams with the main plot adds more and more, building into the palpably grotesque atmosphere of the amusement park. This long sequence is cooly spun into a quick finish. Steve 'squares' himself with the police, and he and Peg can finally have each other. The 3-D effects would probably look pretty cool in a theater. They happen quickly and don't detract much. But the trio of bad guys with goofy nicknames could've used more than the two-dimensional treatment that they're given. As a result, the middle of the movie does drag a bit, as they try to sweat out the whereabouts of the money from Steve.They can't be so dumb not to realize that he really doesn't know much about the past; why else would he have been on parole to have a mysterious operation as well as a new identity? Aside from dangling those chumps into the plot, Man In the Dark works relentlessly to keep our attention, and ultimately to bring O'Brien and Totter together. Along the way, the viewer's treated to a sort of noir Christmas.

****SPOILERS*** More like his previous movie D.O.A then the film it's based on "The Man who Lived Twice" Enmund O'Brian is gangster Steve Rawley who's undergone court order brain experimental surgery to cure his aggressive and anti-social tendencies. The operation worked but it obliterated Rawley's memory. One of the things that it also obliterated is his memory of where he hid the $130,000.00 he and his fellow crooks Lefty Arrnie & Cookie, Ted de Corsia Horace McMahon & Nick Dennis, ripped off in a payroll robbery.Kidnapped off the grounds of the hospital where he's recuperating by Lefty Arnie & Cookie Rawley is worked over in order to find where he hid the payroll money only to get absolutely nothing out of him since his memory has been wiped clean because of his brain operation. It's Rawly squeeze or moll Peg Benedict, Audrey Totter, who realizes that he's telling the truth and rekindles her hot and heavy affair with him not to get the money but him in, the the totally confused Rawley, in the sack together with her.Originally filmed in 3D and it shows in many of the scenes in the movie "Man in the Dark" especially it's heart dropping final at the Ocean Park, in Santa Monica, Amusement Park. Edmund O'Brain as the confused Steve Rawley recreates his role as Frank Bigelow in D.O.A as a man on he run and does it, he had a lot of experience by then, picture perfectly. Ted de Corsia is also perfect as the greedy and at times brainless tug Lefty who as much as he would love to do in Rawley can't until he finds out where he hid the loot that Rawley has no memory of. Audrey Totter turns out to be the gun moll with a heart of gold in forgetting about the stolen loot and just wanting to get back with her former lover, who has absolutely no idea who she is, Steve Rawley and screw the money and live happily after after together with him. But it's the 3D special effects that's the real star of the film with or without 3D capacity on your TV screen that makes the movie as good and exciting as it is.

Edmond O'Brien stars in "Man in the Dark," a 1953 film also starring Audrey Totter. O'Brien plays Steve Rawley, a prisoner who undergoes experimental surgery that's supposed to erase the criminal elements of his brain. It also wipes his memory of past events.Unfortunately Steve and some other thugs committed a big robbery and Steve hid the money. Now that he has no memory, he doesn't know where he put it. His old gang kidnaps him and tries to find out his hiding place. His old girlfriend Peg (Totter) is around, and she wants him to forget the whole thing and go away with her.Steve starts remembering things in the form of bizarre dreams. He and Peg attempt to follow the clues in the dreams to track down the money.Edmond O'Brien made a lot of these B films for Columbia. This one is no better or worse than many of them. The last part of the film takes place in an amusement park, and it's very good.Originally this film was in 3-D, and like some other films, it was filmed in the seen-better-days area of Ocean Park near Venice, CA. I always like seeing the old LA, and this film has lots of shots of it.I had one major problem with this film, and it's a major plot hole. If you had stolen a lot of money and hidden it, why would you agree to a surgery that is going to clean out your memory so that you don't remember where you hid it? I don't know the answer.

Edmond O'Brien has a severe case of retrograde amnesia, but he didn't contract it in the Pacific. He's a robber who got away with $130,000 in a Christmas Eve heist, was convicted and served his time. But he'll get a second chance if he submits to an operation to excise the criminal portion of his brain. Understandably, he's conflicted, and when they move it up from the scheduled day he balks: `I was born on a Monday. I may as well go on one – like dirty laundry.' But the operation proves a stunning success, so delicate that it erases all memories of his past life but leaves him with a perfect command of American slang.But the placid life he leads at the sanitarium – pruning hedges and daubing canvases – comes to an abrupt halt when he's kidnaped by his old gang, now led by Ted De Corsia. They want the money, which was never recovered; so does an implacable Javert of an insurance investigator. Even his old girlfriend (Audrey Totter) sees him only as a ticket to the high life, until she falls for the new, improved O'Brien and renounces her grasping ways. (The often ill-used Totter shines here, especially on a martini bender when she asks the bartender, `Oh, Fred, what do you do when you hate yourself?')Odd clues begin to surface from O'Brien's troubled nightmares, however, leading him and Totter (with the rest of the cast plus the police in pursuit) to claim a parcel left at an amusement park. And this is the big set-piece of the movie, originally released in 3-D. Cars come whooshing around the curves and down the dips of a roller coaster while pitched battles are being fought on the tracks. Watching these 3-D movies now is like drinking soda that's gone flat: All the ingredients are there but the sparkle's gone. But in their endearingly gimmicky way, they evoke their era, as do the flats equipped with party lines and furnished with lampshades bearing reproductions of paintings. Man in the Dark's too short, and needs an extra layer of complexity. But there's still a bit of fizz left in it.