The Unguarded Moment

There’s something unexpectedly captivating about Harry Keller’s The Unguarded Moment, in which Esther Williams plays Lois Conway, a beautiful high school music teacher who is stalked and assaulted by the star of the football team, Leonard Bennett (John Saxton, with the voice and style of a young Brando). Not only does Leonard later deny her accusations, but both students and faculty ostracize and mock Lois as the instigator; only police lieutenant Harry Graham (George Nader), with whom she begins a romantic relationship, believes her, in part because he suspects the assault could be related to another young woman’s recent murder. The couple soon learns that Leonard had been forbidden to date girls by his frail, odd father (Edward Andrews) who has hated all women ever since his wife abandoned them (“You ought to be wiped off the face of the earth, every one of you”). The film’s all-American setting in a 50’s high school where one might find Sandra Dee cheer-leading or Richie Cunningham studying is reassuring, but this makes the creepiness and psychosis on display even more unsettling (think David Lynch’s Blue Velvet). While the script misses some opportunities, the chemistry between Williams and Nader is very natural, the mental instability portrayed by Andrews is quite disturbing, and the cinematography by Daniels effectively heightens the most suspenseful scenes.