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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0024543173151
Format: Closed-captioned, Black & White, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
Label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Region Code: 1
Release Date: June 07, 2005
Running Time: 111 minutes
Sales Rank: 21785
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: October 28, 1947
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Editorial Review:
Description:
In this engaging melodrama, Stanton Carlisle (Tyrone Power) is a lowlife working in a carnival. Knowing a good con when he sees one, he learns the tricks of a mind-reading act from Zeena (Joan Blondell), then tosses her aside. In time, he becomes ?The Great Stanton,? star attraction of swanky nightclubs and the darling of society. But with all his notoriety built on lies, it?s only a matter of time before exposure brings Stanton?s world crashing down around him.
Amazon.com:
The long-awaited emergence of Nightmare Alley into the light of DVD should achieve two things: make a legendary film noir available to a new generation, and restore the horrific charge to the lately watered-down term geek, a concept that once had the power to give people very bad dreams indeed.
To his lasting credit, Tyrone Power--20th Century Fox's extraordinarily handsome but not terribly interesting star of the '30s and '40s--begged for the chance to play Stan Carlisle, the predatory charmer who snakes his way through this bracingly unwholesome story. A spieler for--and lover of--carnival mind reader Zeena (Joan Blondell), he displays uncanny skill at 'reading' the susceptible rubes, including a tough sheriff who turns to jelly after Stan psychs him out. Once Stan's mastered the intricate code used in Zeena's act, he's set to dump her for the younger, sexier Molly (Coleen Gray) and go bigtime as nightclub psychic 'Stanton the Great.' After that, it's only a blasphemous bank shot to superstardom as a miracle worker with his own tabernacle and radio show.
Few '40s films ventured as deeply into cynicism as Nightmare Alley, or dealt so frankly with sexuality (with ripplings of polymorphous perversity yet) and power-tripping. The movie's rhythm is uncertain and Jules Furthman's screenplay telegraphs things, but the overall tone is remarkable, as are individual sequences: the freaky forced marriage of Stan and Molly in accordance with carny morality, and a creepy night scene in a park when Stanton the Great raises a ghost for a high-society client. Cinematographer Lee Garmes's chiaroscuro creates a relief map of the carnival world and what passes for life there. As for the geek... well, you'll find out what geek means. Stan does. --Richard T. Jameson
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This is one of the great film noirs and there's no need to say more. But a little known fact about the film is that Nightmare Alley was the favourite film of Elvis Presley's manager, 'Colonel' Parker. Now doesn't that tell you a lot about the Colonel? Parker was an ex-carnie before he latched on to Elvis. One wonders what Parker's repeated viewings of this film taught him about huckstering. Was Elvis the geek to Parker's mind games?
Rating:  -
I looked up Lilith's name in the library at: 1. Lilith. Rebecca M. Lesses. Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. Vol. 8. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. p5458-5460.
Pesahim 112b, warning men not to go out alone on Wednesday and Sabbath evenings because of the presence of "Agrat, the daughter of Mahalat," has been taken by some commentators as a further reference to Lilith. However, as Gershom Scholem maintains in his essay on Lilith in the Encyclopaedia Judaica ... Read More
Rating: -
Published in 1946, William Lindsay Gresham's NIGHTMARE ALLEY was one of the great shockers of the era--and although hard to find today it remains a scorching expose of the carny and spiritualist scams. Typecast in pretty-boy roles, Tyrone Power was so eager to show serious acting chops that he actually bought the screen rights to the novel and prevailed upon 20th Century Fox to film the novel with him in the leading role.
Given the book's popularity and Power's pull at the box office, NIGHTMARE ... Read More
Rating: -
A terrific cast and good writing lead the way with this film noir from 20th Century Fox. Tyrone Power is cast against type as a carnival shill who, through a mishap, kills another carnie and finds himself privy to a secret mentalist trick code. The code takes his act to uptown clubs where he meets assorted shady characters, which eventually leads to down fall and ultimately, redemption. Joan Blondell as the "older" woman (not THAT much older), Coleen Gray as the sweet young thing and Helen Walker as the psychologist ... Read More
Rating: -
This anomalous drama, light years ahead of its time in 1947 is set in a rustic time and place of American history. This is the Carnivals that once traveled from town to town where for a couple of hours the tedious routine of hard working people of the small villages and farms across the land could be shattered as a result of having their minds stretched by bizarre sideshows and their pockets emptied with fixed games of chance favoring the establishment.
By 1947 Tyrone Power---once considered one of the handsomest ... Read More
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