The Night Runner

In the 1950’s, a combination of new financial incentives (Medicaid, Medicare), the introduction of antipsychotic medications, and growing exposure of abusive mental hospital conditions started the deinstitutionalization process through which American mental hospitals (“insane asylums!”) were closed, sending their patients home to rely on community-based treatment facilities. If we wanted to be generous, Abner Biberman’s The Night Runner, released in 1957, could be seen as an early warning against this deinstitutionalization and its liberation of the “primitive emotionalities” of a “disturbed personality” played by the handsome, underappreciated Ray Dalton. (Even before the opening credits, the trustees of a mental hospital are sitting around a table discussing the need to eject long-term patients prematurely to make room for new ones.) In truth, Biberman’s film is a small, simple, unambitious story in which Roy Turner (Dalton), a murderer released from his asylum, attempts to create a new life for himself by renting a hotel cottage where he’s soon haunted by his killer instincts, much to the misfortune of the innkeeper Loren Mayes (Willis Bouchey) and his daughter Susan (Collen Miller), who develops a romantic relationship with their charming new guest. It’s a somewhat sleepy film with muted suspense and very little visual excitement (the day for night aesthetic is done nicely though), but it hits enough notes for noir fans to find it enjoyable.