Nightmare Alley #1

A classic that's actually in need of a remake, Edmund Goulding's Nightmare Alley (1947) stars the charismatic Tyrone Power (against type!) and the excellent Joan Blondell, but the rest of the cast can't manage the power of its stars. Worse yet, Goulding's film accelerates its antihero's downfall so that it makes almost no sense that he manages to fail so badly so quickly. All of a sudden, the man's helpless and out of his mind.

And then... it actually pulls its final punches.

In any case, I was with this for a long while. It's great to see Power in something other than a swashbuckling movie (although I love him in those too), and this is very different territory from the usual noir. It's too bad that the movie's last 40 minutes or so didn't hold up to its first 70.

I admit to being skeptical of the new Guillermo Del Toro film. It just looks so glossy – but I feel pretty certain that Del Toro will give us a better ending than the one for which Goulding opted.