Brainstorm

After being seduced by the unstable wife of his millionaire boss, a brilliant young engineer concocts a crackpot plan for the two to be together: murder her husband and then convince a panel of psychiatrists that he is clinically insane (the rationale being, I assume, that incarceration in a mental asylum is much preferable to prison!). Warner Bros. potboiler with a television budget--another in a string of pulpy, somewhat-sleazy yarns to be directed by William Conrad--is engrossing and enjoyable, even as it fails to come to much. Conrad works well with his actors while concentrating firmly on his narrative, however his scene transitions are amateurish and his work is not helped by the TV drama-styled editing (not to mention the melodramatic music cues). Jeffrey Hunter (curiously billed as Jeff Hunter) begins the film behaving like a staunch, overgrown Boy Scout, but by the second-half really goes out on a limb with the tics, cold sweats, and stammers of a man driven half-mad by desire. Screenwriter Mann Rubin preys upon the viewer's fear of insanity by setting our hero up as a dupe, a willing 'Gaslight' victim who may not be one-hundred-percent in the head anyway. There are no surprise twists to the plot, nor do Conrad or Rubin mean this to be a cautionary tale for would-be illicit lovers. It's rather a squarely straightforward tale with incidental characters (such as Viveca Lindfors' sweetly smiling doctor) who are never fully explained and a finale that is meant to be highly shocking. **1/2 from ****