Todeszelle Nr. 5

A film noir that was all but lost but recently resurfaced, I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes brings yet another of Cornell Woolrich's paranoiac nightmares to the screen. Don Castle, a hoofer on his uppers, shares a cramped room in a New York boarding house with his wife and sometime partner Elyse Knox. While he frets in his bathrobe, a fifth of gin on the bed-table, she entertains gentlemen at a buck-a-dance academy. One night, he hurls his good tap shoes (actually, his only pair of shoes) out the window at some randy cats. When he goes to retrieve them, they aren't there, but mysteriously reappear outside his door next morning.

Next thing, he's hauled in for the murder of a reclusive old miser in the neighborhood. The impression of one of his shoes clinches the conviction (and it doesn't help that he just happened to find a wallet stuffed with the old-style bills the victim hoarded). He's waiting for his execution as the movie opens, and most of the story gets told through flashbacks.

The third major character is a cop, Regis Toomey, who had met Knox at the tango palace and taken a shine to her. Desperate to clear her husband, she feigns reciprocation of Toomey's interest so he'll help her out. Toomey's another example of the obsessive, stalking cop, created by Laird Cregar in I Wake Up Screaming (1942) and reprised by Richard Boone in its remake Vicki (1953). He breaks a new development in the case by finding the tenant of another room within shoe-shot of Castle's, but this proves to be only a rather tasty red herring. As the clock ticks down to midnight and curtains for Castle, Knox stumbles upon the clue that cracks the case....

Many forgotten films from the noir cycle turn out to be just what one might suspect: hackneyed, humdrum crime programmers. But, like Decoy, I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes surprises by its competence. The dancing couple exude appeal, Toomey and the other cops offer acting rather than shtik, and the plot unfurls with reasonable deftness. It even looks good. As a restoration to the noir canon, it's more than welcome.