The Night Runner

Ray Danton is in a psychiatric asylum; under pressure, he had cracked and tried to kill some one. His psychiatrist thinks he is getting better, but not yet ready to be released. The supervisors point out the overcrowding, the fact he is carrying more than three times his recommended patient load, and asks how much good he can do Danton or his other patients. And so Danton is released. He tries to get a job as a draftsman, but when asked about the two-year gap since his last employment, he runs. At a bus stop near the ocean, he finds the people friendly, so he moves into a motel run by Willis Bouchey and his daughter, Colleen Miller. He starts to feel better, and falls in love with Miss Miller, and perhaps she with him. But how long can this return to normalcy last?

Abner Biberman's last movie as director -- he continued to work on episodic television until the early 1970s -- is a well-meaning study with a plea for better psychiatric funding. It's directed in a dry fashion, and Danton is pretty good in the lead role, aided by George Robinson's subtle lighting changes and a score that well reflects the moods of the lead.

The course traversed by The Night Runner careens from the mildly impressive to the disappointing. On the one hand, there are a few strikingly shot night scenes, a tight story line, and an able performance by its handsome but less than mesmerizing star, Ray Danton (later to star as the `Aspirin Kid' in The Beat Generation and in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond). On the other, there's a budget of about $699, a forgettable supporting cast, and a self-sabotaging way of not following through on its strengths but settling for narrative clichés instead.

Owing to economic pressures, Danton gains release, against the better judgement of his doctor, from the mental institution where he's been confined - there was a vague, violent incident in his past. But he's unequipped for the outside world. In Los Angeles, he bolts from a job interview when asked to fill in the holes in his resumé and starts to assault a man in the street he bumps into. Trying a geographic cure, he gets aboard a Greyhound, takes a liking to a little coastal town during a rest stop, and decides to stay.

He books a room in an off-season motel where he raises suspicions in the owner (Willis Bouchey) but falls for his daughter (Colleen Miller). The salt air, a new job in the aerospace industry and the prospect of romance do wonders until Bouchey, having ferreted out the dark secret, locks Danton out of his room and bids him hit the road. Whereupon Danton kills him, making it look like a robbery, and carries on his courtship with the bereaved Miller as if nothing had happened. But when evidence that he played a part in the slaying starts surfacing (even though one character observes that `A lot of people spill nail polish on money'), his false façade of stability starts to topple....

The man behind The Night Runner, Abner Biberman, was a minor actor (often playing Asian roles!) from the mid-1930s until he turned to directing in the mid-1950s. Frustratingly, he shows glimmers of talent, even sensitivity, but ultimately chooses a facile, melodramatic path (though Universal International Pictures may have forced his hand). The script is prescient about the too-early release from institutions of psychiatric patients not yet ready to cope with the stresses and responsibilities of daily living, an enlightened view underscored by Danton's largely restrained performance. But then the inexorable machinery of the suspense plot demands that he erupt as a psycho-killer. Still, the movie's end unmasks Danton as not quite a monster but rather a misfit with some sad insight into why the `normal' life he craves can never be his.

This is psychologically interesting, since it delves into the mind of a recently released mental hospital patient, who was reluctantly released by his psychiatrist who didn't consider him cured well enough, but his colleagues insisted on the release, so our man got his chance. Did he succeed in becoming a normal person again? He probably would have if the jealousy of a blundering father hadn't interfered, when he fell in love with his daughter. A case like this needs some delicacy in handling, which the father was incapable of. He didn't get what he deserved, but our over-sensitive nervous patient of some liability might have cured himself in taking responsibility for his consequences. It is a beautiful low-budget film with a booming sea and exquisite music all along, so it deserves being considered as something more than just a B-melodrama.

I can't say I am too familiar with Ray Danton, but his dashing good looks and considered performance go some way to keeping this sad and complicated melodrama out of the doldrums. We know from the start that he has been released from a psychiatric hospital (initially against the advice of his doctor who was rather brow-beaten into changing his mind by his board colleagues). It is fairly clear that this man, "Roy", is prone to less lucid moments and his past does limit his opportunities in his new, bustling, environment. "Roy" takes a bus up the coast and along the way alights at a garage where he quite quickly befriends "Hank" (Harry Jackson) and "Amy" (Merry Anders) and decides to take a chalet at a local motel. This is where he encounters "Susan" (Colleen Miller) who's the daughter of the owner "Loren" (Willis Bouchey). There are definite sparks between the young couple, and soon they are all but courting with their friends from the garage. A letter arrives and is read by the father that could change all this - it details the nature of the illness and causes him to lose his temper with his visitor and a rather calculated red mist descends... This is quite a savage indictment of the treatment of mentally ill people who are released, ill-equipped and with no ongoing treatment plan, into a society that is equally ill-equipped to deal with people requiring understanding, tolerance and compassion. At times "Roy" is like a young child exposed to an adult environment where emotions are running high (even when they are not) and Danton plays that character quite effectively. Miller provides for quite a decent foil too and the writing and direction leave much of the man's increasingly overwhelming predicament to our imagination. It is terribly over-scored, far too much heavy and loud music to create a tension that is doing fine by itself, and the pace isn't always the best but otherwise this is a surprisingly thought-provoking low-budget drama that is certainly worth a watch.

A patient released prematurely from a mental hospital tries to find a new life at a roadside stopover.

I can't imagine more than ten people saw this little oddity in a theatre. I expect the movie's risky downer material got made because it was so cheap to produce. Reviewer bmacy's right —the budget is rock bottom, a few shots of the Malibu coastline, an office interior, and that's pretty much it, along with a minimal cast. So why has the movie stayed with me over the years, instead of being just another forgotten cheapo.

The film's not a minor gem—that would be too much of a stretch. Instead, I think Danton's performance manages a level that truly disturbs, especially with the tight script and noirish background. Catch the occasional little motion or grimace betraying Roy's (Danton) inner turmoil as he struggles with a society full of minor pressures. It's a carefully calibrated performance that shows how an emotive "more" can be expressed by a judicious "less". And since Roy is basically a likable guy, his plight becomes doubly affecting as he tries to blend into a normal life. That last lonely shot of him is, I think, one of the more disturbing to come out of the generally cheerful 1950's.

On a different note—I suspect Hitchcock, also at Universal at the time, caught this minor production since the project bears certain key similarities to Psycho (1960). Consider, for example, the roadside motel, the disturbed personality, the brutal murder, along with the symbolic use of birds, in this case sea gulls. Nothing really hangs on the comparison, except maybe the notion that a widely acclaimed classic managed to grow out of an obscure seedbed. Anyway, this little oddity has its own peculiar virtues, so catch up with it if you can.