Night Editor

While it features no big stars and a misleading title (its story barely involves journalism), Henry Levin’s Night Editor offers a clever story, some nice surprises, and plentiful noir cinematographic effects. Janis Carter plays Jill Merrill, the fantastically wicked mistress of married police lieutenant Tony Cochrane (William Gargan), who, incidentally, refers to his wife as “Monkey Face,” possibly a direct lift from Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941) five years earlier. When the illicit couple witnesses a savage murder while parked at Lover’s Lane, Cochrane is unable to accost the killer or even admit to witnessing the scene out of fear of revealing his infidelity, yet he’s obligated to lead the murder investigation. The underappreciated Carter dazzles as the femme fatale (“I don’t need you; I can buy and sell you”), displaying a uniquely sadistic desperation, like when she pleads to get a peek at the victim’s brutally beaten body. It’s a small film, but one that entertains through steady sadism.