Dark City

Plot synopsis:
John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakens in a hotel bathtub, suffering from amnesia. He receives a phone call from Dr. Daniel Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), who urges him to flee the hotel to evade a group of men who are after him. During the phone talk, Murdoch discovers the corpse of a brutalized, ritualistically murdered woman, along with a bloody knife. He flees the scene, just as the group of men (known as the Strangers) show up to investigate the room.
Eventually, Murdoch learns his own name, and finds he has a wife named Emma (Jennifer Connelly). He is also sought by police inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) as a suspect in a series of murders committed around the city, though he cannot remember killing anybody. While being pursued by the Strangers, Murdoch discovers that he has mind powers—which the Strangers also possess, and refer to as "tuning"—and he manages to use these powers to escape from them.
Murdoch explores the city, where nobody realizes that it is always nighttime. At midnight, he watches as everyone except himself falls asleep as the Strangers stop time and physically rearrange the city as well as changing people's identities and memories. Murdoch learns that he comes from a coastal town called Shell Beach, a town familiar to everyone, though nobody knows how to leave the city to travel there, and all of his attempts to do so are unsuccessful for varying reasons. Meanwhile, the Strangers inject one of their men, Mr. Hand (Richard O'Brien), with memories intended for Murdoch in an attempt to predict his movements and track him down.
Murdoch is eventually caught by inspector Bumstead, who acknowledges he is innocent, and by then has his own misgivings about the nature of the city. They confront Dr. Schreber, who explains that the Strangers are endangered extraterrestrial parasites who use corpses as their hosts. Having a hive mind, the Strangers have been experimenting with humans to analyze their individuality in the hopes that some insight might be revealed that would help their race survive.
Schreber reveals that Murdoch is an anomaly who inadvertently awoke during one midnight process, when Schreber was in the middle of imprinting his latest identity as a murderer. The three embark to find Shell Beach, but it exists only as a poster on a wall at the edge of the city. Frustrated, Murdoch and Bumstead break through the wall, revealing outer space on the other side. The men are confronted by the Strangers, including Mr. Hand, who holds Emma hostage. In the ensuing fight Bumstead and one of the Strangers fall through the hole, revealing the city as an enormous space habitat surrounded by a force field.
The Strangers bring Murdoch to their home beneath the city and force Dr. Schreber to imprint Murdoch with their collective memory, believing Murdoch to be the final result of their experiments. Schreber betrays them by inserting false memories in Murdoch which artificially reestablish his childhood as years spent training and honing his psychokinetic skills and learning about the Strangers and their machines. Murdoch awakens, fully realizing his skills, frees himself and battles with the Strangers, defeating their leader Mr. Book (Ian Richardson) in a psychokinetic fight high above the city.
After learning from Dr. Schreber that Emma's personality is gone and cannot be restored, Murdoch exercises his new-found powers, amplified by the Strangers' machine, to create an actual Shell Beach by flooding the area within the force field with water and forming mountains and beaches. On his way to Shell Beach, Murdoch encounters Mr. Hand and informs him that the Strangers have been searching in the wrong place—the mind—to understand humanity. Murdoch turns the habitat toward the star it had been turned away from, and the city experiences sunlight for the first time.
He opens the door leading out of the city, and steps out to view the sunrise. Beyond him is a pier, where he finds the woman he knew as Emma, now with new memories and a new identity as Anna. Murdoch reintroduces himself as they walk to Shell Beach, beginning their relationship anew.

Tags: revenge, murder

Review:
If not for that it would rate as a passably good noir thriller.In fact Dark City did not even lead to Heston getting his real screen break in his second film.
Later on DeMille learned about Dark City and had it run for him and was convinced even more.For a man who played such noble characters later on screen, Dark City presents Heston as a cynical gambler whose bookie joint got raided.
Needing some working capital to get back on their feet, Heston, Jack Webb, and Ed Begley find a sucker in the person of Don DeFore and rope him into a poker game.
And Heston is desperate to get some kind of line on the brother before he winds up dead.Part of the reason Dark City isn't a better film is precisely because Heston is not a nice guy.
Especially when he starts romancing DeFore's widow Viveca Lindfors in an attempt to get information on Mazurki.The film was later remade taking it out west as Five Card Stud with Dean Martin in the Heston role and Robert Mitchum taking Mazurki's part.
Doing it that way made you care more what happened to Martin than what eventually will happen to Heston.Lizabeth Scott as nightclub singer/girl friend of Heston, Harry Morgan as a retainer at the bookie joint, and Dean Jagger as the homicide cop round out the cast.It's interesting to speculate though what kind of turn Charlton Heston's career would have taken if Cecil B.
It's OK with me to use jargon, but let's only use it correctly, shall weAlthough Dark City certainly has elements of the Noir genre, there is a very simple reason why this movie really don't qualify as such: indeed the cynical main character Dan Haley slowly but surely turns into a better man, gradually allowing his conscience to play a more important role in his life, and taking several correcting steps after a life of causing sadness and anger.
We get first evidence of this, when he discovers that his poker game buddy Augie has been cheating in a game that left L.A. business man Arthur Winant penniless.Another indication of his double feelings about the world around him can be found in his relationship with Fran:Fran: Don't you ever need somebody Danny ?
Fran: Just to needAlthough he keeps on pushing lovesick Fran away when she's once more trying to get too close to him, he will remain -in his own particular way- loyal to her.So, if one of the reviewers complaints about the lack of chemistry between Heston and Scott, he seems to have completely missed the point this movie is trying to make.
In the end of the movie, he's only beginning to think about romancing again.Then, several small elements distributed cleverly along the storyline like Tom Thumb's crumbs will lead to big changes in Haley's life.
Charlton Heston is wonderful as a gambler with a conscience who plays a fixed game of poker with his war buddy and in turn is accused of the murder in which the companion actually committed suicide.
This film is crime noir since Danny Haley, its lead played admirably by Charlton Heston, in his first major Hollywood starring role is running an illegal bookie joint.
A stranger, Don DeFore, strikes up a conversation in Danny's hangout; he ends up in a poker game with Danny's bookie friends Soldier (Harry Morgan), Barney (Ed Begley Sr.) and Augie (Jack Webb).
DeFore loses 5000 dollars in a crooked game, pays with a cashier's check and hangs himself in his hotel room that night--some of the money was not his...But, soon after, Barney is found hanged, and the rope was just put around his neck to make the crime look like a suicide.
In this story about Danny, the man who escapes the "dark city" he had thought to hide from life in, Charlton Heston is very good for his age.
Jack Webb, a powerful radio actor, here turns in what I regard as his best screen performance ever as the nasty and cowardly Augie., Ed Begley Sr. was one of Hopllywood's best dramatic actors, infusing a small part in this feature with his usual dynamic intelligence; and Harry Morgan as the brassy "Soldier" is charismatic and effective.
Viveca Lindfors is very well cast I suggest as the suffering but courageous wife; Don Defore was very good at playing a man shallower than he appeared, and here he has a lot to work with.
Dark City is likely most notable as being Chuck Heston's film debut.
But it's also worth seeing for then-supporting actor Jack Webb (actually quite good) teaming with Harry Morgan, some 16 years before they'd pair up in the color reincarnation of Dragnet 1966.
Dark City, a pretty decent 1950 film noir, is fairly enjoyable, at times excellent, and might have been a minor classic had the dreadul romantic sequences, plus songs, not pulled it down a couple of notches.
Charlton Heston is a gambler who, with his friends Ed Begley and Jack Webb, play hardball poker with a hapless out of towner who signs over a check that doesn't belong to him to the gamblers and shortly thereafter hangs himself.
Heston is good though not wildly convincing as as the youngest and shrewdest of the gamblers, Lizabeth Scott is as enigmatic, mannish and unappealing as usual, and Viveca Lindfors is fine as the dead guy's widow, with whom Heston (inevitably) falls in love.
It was released in 1950 and Stars Lizabeth Scott and Charlton Heston.Heston plays a gambler (Danny Haley) who along with two friends sucker a man from out of town into a game of poker.
(There are Spoilers) Charlton Heston known for the Biblical epics and movies with cast of thousands that he made during his fifty or so year career in motion pictures started out in his very first movie, back in 1950, in a little known film-noir curiosity piece playing a small-time hoodlum running a bookie joint in Chicago.Having his gambling den raided three time in just over a month by the cops, even though he was paying them off, has Dan Haley, Charlton Heston,and his three fellow bookies Barney, Ed Bagely, Augie, Jack Webb, and Soldier, Henry Morgan, wonder if they should get into a much safer business like working a bar or being a croupier in a casino.
Trying to figure out where the next dollar is coming from Dan goes to the nightclub where his girlfriend Fran Garland, Lizabeth Scott,is doing a show and runs into out of town businessman Arthur Winant, Don DeFore.
Seeing Winant pull out a number of big bills, including a $5,000.00 bank check, from his wallet as he paid for his drink Dan invites him for a game of cards at his now closed down bookie joint with his friends Barney Augie & Soldier.
Superior film-noir thriller with Sidney Winant, who spent a number of years in a mental institution for the criminally insane, out hunting down and killing those responsible for his brothers, Arthur, death and going from Chicago to Los Angeles to Las Vages to do it.
The movie then moves to Las Vagas with Dan on the run getting a job as a card dealer at his friends Swede's, Walter Sande, casino and meeting his fellow bookie Soldier and his girlfriend from the "Windy City" Fran who both were working there.
This is a strange mixture of three genres:-the film noir:the dives,the gamblers,and the fact that Scott resembles Lauren Bacall.-the suspense:the killer with the ring who's doing away with the ones who were responsible for his brother's death:we only see his hand ,and it will remain so till the very last sequence.With hindsight,it would have been better if we had not seen him at all.The mystery would have been more disturbing.What a disappointment if we had seen the truck driver's face in Spielberg's "duel"(1974)!-the melodrama:the widow and her son gets in the way,as far as film noir is concerned.The way Heston redeems himself is much too predictable.Of course,Heston is very good and the supporting cast competent.But by trying to juggle three things at once,the movie loses much of its strength and the ending is anti-film noir..
While the most notable aspect of this film on paper maybe that it features the debut starring role of Charlton Heston, it actually has a lot more going for it, being a better than average noir thriller.
However when the victim hangs himself the next day in remorse at his loss and shame, the trio don't reckon on the man's avenging brother who hits town and starts to take retribution against them one by one.In a sub-plot, Heston is being also being pursued, although this time more agreeably, by sultry nightclub singer Lizabeth Scott while another notable background character is a supposedly "punchy" ex-boxer played by M.A.S.H.'s Harry Morgan, who acts as Heston's loyal, good-natured sidekick, although there's not much evidence provided as to his actual slowness, indeed he's one of the better judges of character in the movie.Director William Dieterle ratchets up the tension nicely as three become two becomes one and Heston's last man standing, now humanised somewhat by meeting and slightly improbably romancing the dead man's widow and befriending her orphaned child, awaits his turn at the massive hands of the revenging sibling wearing the big black ring.
The dialogue is sharp, the characterisations credible and I also liked the "Casablanca"-type, although more uplifting, ending.Besides capably employing staple noir devices like shadows, darkness and dread, the movie is notable for the excellent songs given to Scott to perform, the most famous of which is the evergreen "That Old Black Magic" but also featuring the superb torch-song "Letter From A Lady In Love".Heston leads the cast in already recognisably commanding manner and Scott, Morgan, Ed Begley and especially Jack Webb, later of "Dragnet", bring their characters to life in his wake.All in all, an effective lesser known noir well worth watching..
Dark city is classic film noir with legendary Charlton Heston, this was his first movie so I would say that maybe he was a little stiff in his film debut but sure he gave a decent performance.
One of the problems is that I expected more scary scenes with Mike Mazurki, it could been a much more tense and mysterious if the director was more focus on imaginative writers for the scenes of the movie, also music that is Lizabeth Scott singing too often prevent to convince the audience that there is a tense situation in the lives of the main characters.
Danny Haley character played by Heston I think was more like a depressed man then a hustler.
From 1950, Dark City is a noir starring Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Viveca Lindfors, Harry Morgan, Dean Jagger, Jack Webb, and Ed Begley.
Later, he hangs himself, and the group is questioned by a police detective (Dean Jagger) who feels that Danny is above the group in intelligence and potential, but is going to be murdered if he keeps going the way he is.The dead man's brother, a psycho, is committed to tracking down every single person at the game and killing him.
That's when he realizes how scary this guy really is.This is an effective film that for some reason has several long numbers performed by Lizabeth Scott, who plays a nightclub singer and Danny's girlfriend.
Scott pines for him with her breathless voice, and she's good as well.Fine film, interesting to see Heston at 27..
as this film that starts out rather slow becomes a Hitchcock-like game of cat and mouse across the country involving a psychopath bent on vengeance against a group of crooked gamblers that drove his brother to suicide after he lost money that belonged to his company in a card game.
And this is their one hope - to find out what the guy looks like so they can at least have a chance.At first Charlton Heston may seem out of place here as a gray character at the center of a film noir, but he carries the role admirably.
You'll see several actors playing against their normal type here including Jack Webb as one of the gamblers that is at first a bully full of bravado turned to quivering coward as the killer closes in, and Harry Morgan as an ex-soldier turned simple by something that happened in WWII that is never explained.Only one thing is a bit annoying in this film - for some reason the makers of this film seem to think Lizabeth Scott's nightclub singing is some kind of treat for the audience.
Being a huge "Dragnet" fan, I just had to see the two movies that Jack Webb appeared in with Harry Morgan before the two worked together in "Dragnet." "Dark City" is one of them and the other is "Appointment with Danger." Although "Dark City" was released in 1950, the year before "Appointment with Danger" was released, "Appointment with Danger" was actually filmed first (shot in the summer of 1949).
"Dark City" was Jack Webb's final filmed feature before hitting the small screen with "Dragnet" in 1951.
It contains one of the thinnest plots I've ever seen, and it tries to convince the audience that Charlton Heston somehow doesn't deserve to die, but Jack Webb and Ed Begley do, even though all three of them took part in cheating the killer's brother out of money.
There is a lot to like about "Dark City" and it's an excellent example of film noir.
The police bring in Webb and Heston and inform him that they know about the game and even know who the killer is--DeFore's psychotic brother who'd spent much of his life institutionalized in a mental hospital!!
Don DeFore does a great job as a doomed gambler, and so does Ed Begley Sr. In his memoirs, Heston called this a good B film.
Chuck Heston may be taller than Michael Jordan but he's a small-time gambler here, and not a very pleasant one.Chuck is a member of a group that runs a small bookie joint in Los Angeles, the others being Ed Begley, Jack Webb, and Henry (Harry) Morgan Or maybe it's Harry (Henry) Morgan.
Also more action - what little we have is confined to the beginning and the climax.Scott's performance is superficial, but Heston impresses in his professional screen debut, whilst Morgan, Webb and DeFore contribute solid support.
Unexpectedly, an opportunity to minimize their losses arises when Danny meets an out-of-town businessman in the local nightclub where his girlfriend Fran Garland (Lizabeth Scott) is the resident singer and notices that the friendly Arthur Winant (Don DeFore) has a $5,000 cashiers check in his possession.After Winant is lured into a rigged poker game, he gets ripped off so badly by Danny, Barney and Augie, that he loses all his money including the $5,000 which belonged to his employers and unable to come to terms with what he'd done, commits suicide in his hotel room by hanging himself.
Danny and his gang immediately fear the possible repercussions and things quickly get worse when Barney is murdered and they learn that Winant's psychopathic and very over-protective brother, Sidney (Mike Mazurki) is out for revenge.Soldier, who was not involved in the card game decides to leave Chicago and goes to work in a Las Vegas casino that's run by one of his old friends and Danny and Augie go to Los Angeles where Danny poses as an insurance investigator and romances Winant's wife Victoria (Viveca Lindfors), in an effort to acquire a photograph of the maniac who's out to kill him.
When it becomes clear that Victoria doesn't posses a photo of Sidney, Danny owns up to having deceived her and decides to head for Las Vegas where he's subsequently joined by Fran before some further surprising developments lead to his eventual confrontation with the fearsome Sidney.This movie provided a very young-looking Charlton Heston with his first Hollywood starring role and the character he plays is rather complex because he's a man who, after having been betrayed by his wife and his best friend whilst on military service in England, had become very disillusioned, cynical and embittered.
Early in Charlton Heston's career; Danny Haley(Heston)suckers Arthur Winant(Don Defore)into a crooked poker game; Winant ends up losing a check that belonged to his brother and goes back to his hotel room and hangs himself.
Survivors have no idea what their hunter looks like and Danny goes to Winant's widow Victoria(Viveca Lindfors)posing as an insurance agent needing a photo of Sidney...Danny is certain that Sid would like his check back that his brother lost in the poker game.
Strong players round out the cast: Lizabeth Scott, Dean Jagger, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan and Ed Begley..
Early in the movie, we see Fran (Lizabeth Scott) singing a song in a nightclub.
Moreover, just to get an objective assessment, I checked Internet Movie Database and Netflix, and neither of them classified it as a musical, but only as a crime drama or film noir.In reflecting on why this was so, I thought back on that earlier comment by her that she could not sing, followed later by another remark to the effect that singing in a nightclub was just a way of making a living, something she would gladly give up if Danny would marry her.
Charlton Heston, a man that worked extensively in the American cinema, was seen for the first time in an important role in "Dark City", a decent drama-mystery with shades of film noir.
The supporting cast is excellent, Dean Jagger, Don DeFore, Frank Morgan, Jack Webb, Ed Begley, and specially the brutish Mike Mazurski, contribute to the over all enjoyment of "Dark City" Victor Milner's black and white cinematography works well with the story being told.
Charleston Heston (In His 4th Film), Lizabeth Scott (Scared Stiff), Jack Webb & Harry Morgan (Dragnet), Ed Begley (12 Angry Men), Dean Jagger (The Magician), Don Defore (Hazel), Walter Burke (Support Your Local Sheriff), Mike Mazurki (Some Like It Hot) ...