The Night Holds Terror

Producer, director, and writer Andrew L. Stone, whom noir scholar Foster Hirsch described to Heart of Noir as “the discovery of the 50’s,” released a string of notable noirs during the second half of the cycle, from the glossy, full-color The Steel Trap (1952) to the gritty, location-based Cry Terror! (1958). Part of this string was The Night Holds Terror, a family hostage noir that might have had a greater impact if it hadn’t been overshadowed by the similarly plotted, Bogart-starring The Desperate Hours released the same year. Stone’s film stars a baby-faced John Cassavetes, Vince Edwards, and David Cross as the hitchhikers who take Gene Courtier (Jack Kelly) hostage and then take over his pleasant 1950’s suburban home, where wife Doris (Hildy Parks) tries to hold it together. Like with other later-cycle noirs, the crime and violence here are more chaotic and illogical, delinquency colliding with domestic harmony, revealing a form of nihilism in the invaders as they attempt to negotiate with law enforcement while keeping a step ahead of them (the contemporary glass house atop a cliff where the action culminates is seriously groovy). Worth noting is Stone’s frequent documentary-like detours where we observe the seemingly mundane activities of telephone operators and circuit technicians as call tracing was a novel development at this time.