User reviews

Monogram threw some money at this one and produced a nifty noir starring Belita, Barry Sullivan, Bonita Granville, Albert Dekker, and Eugene Palette called "Suspense," a 1946 film directed by Frank Tuttle.

Figure skater Belita plays Roberta, whose skating show is produced by her husband Frank (Dekker). Frank hires down and out Joe Morgan (Sullivan) to sell peanuts, and Joe starts working his way up to more important things, such as falling for Roberta. Frank catches on and, while he and Roberta are relaxing at their lodge, Joe drops in with papers to sign. Frank has him stay the night. The next day, Frank takes a hunting gun and intends to kill Joe, but the gun report starts an avalanche, and Frank is presumed dead. Presumed...but is he? Joe keeps Roberta's shows going after a fashion, all the while rejecting an old girlfriend (Granville) who has the hots for him. She doesn't like his attitude, and wants to know why he left New York in such a rush.

A few minutes shaved off of this film might have helped the pace, which is stopped cold every once in a while by a big skating number, several of which (particularly the first) are really wonderful. Belita of course never had the popularity of Sonia Henie - at the age of 12, she placed 16th at the 1936 Olympics, one of Henie's gold medal years. Belita didn't stay an amateur long and eventually entered films as poverty row's answer to Sonia. Strangely, Belita, with her background in Russian ballet, comes off as more modern and frankly a more exciting skater than Henie. Her lines are gorgeous and she enters her spins faster.

There are some interesting shots in this film, particularly the technique of the overhead light swinging back and forth, taking Sullivan and Belita in and out of the light as they are talking.

Highly entertaining with a good performances by the always solid Sullivan and the imposing Dekker. This was Eugene Palette's final film, as he retired after this. It's a fitting ending - he does a great job as Frank's and then Joe's assistant. It's really a good cast, very un-Monogram like, as were the production values.

Great entertainment. If you like film noir and figure skating, this is the film for you.

Suspense doesn't promise to live up to its generic title until its last half-hour, when director Frank Tuttle (This Gun for Hire his only other noir) turns up the voltage and generates some, yes, real suspense. A Monogram release with a big budget (for Monogram), the movie casts the unlikely Belita – an ice-skating 'novelty' star like Sonja Henie – against Barry Sullivan; they would reunite the next year in The Gangster. Albert Dekker and Bonita Granville fill out the other principal roles.

Dekker's the impresario of The Ice Parade, a revue in which his wife Belita stars. A peanut vendor (Sullivan) offers a suggestion for sprucing up the act (a ring of swords through which Belita will jump) and gets offered in turn a management job. Dekker can't help but notice the sparks between his wife and his new hire, especially when Sullivan turns up uninvited at their mountain lodge. When they're off frolicking in the winterscape, he takes at shot a Sullivan but triggers an avalanche, which buries him.

Or does it? Back in her Los Angeles penthouse, Belita senses his presence. Sullivan, meanwhile, copes with another specter from his past – Bonita Granville, whom he ditched in Chicago (he has an unsavory background which she threatens to divulge – though never to us).

What with all this baggage, the romance sours, and Belita begins to suspect Sullivan of having killed Dekker, if in fact he's still among the living....

With Suspense, you have to take the bad with the good. The skating numbers, while eye-popping (a left-handed compliment), bring the action to a halt every quarter-hour or so. On the other hand, Tuttle anticipates by a year Anthony Mann's basement light in Desperate, swinging like a pendulum from glare to shadow. Still, he plays fast and loose with a key plot point – Dekker's reemergence. The dance of the seven veils he performs adds a supernatural touch to the spooky atmosphere, but it falls short of success: there's information missing that by every right ought to be included.

One last note: Suspense marks the last movie, out of well over two hundred, for portly, bassoon-voiced Eugene Palette, a welcome – and all but unavoidable – presence through the 1930s and early 1940s. In this, his swan song, he shows himself once more to be every pound the pro.

1946's "Suspense" was another step toward respectability for Poverty Row's Monogram Pictures, soon upgrading its higher budgeted films with the new Allied Artists emblem. Moving up the Hollywood ladder (his eighth feature), Barry Sullivan is well suited for the part of sleazeball Joe Morgan, who lucks into a managerial position for an ice show run by Frank Leonard (Albert Dekker), starring Leonard's beautiful wife Roberta (top billed Belita). Morgan immediately takes an interest in Mrs. Leonard, and when her husband finds out, tries to shoot his rival in the snow covered mountains of the High Sierras, resulting in an avalanche that seemingly buries Mr. Leonard. Although seemingly widowed, Roberta is reluctant to continue the ice show, convinced that Frank may not have died after all (only his cap and gun were found in the snow). Belita, whose career was unfortunately brief, proves herself a capable actress, and would again co-star opposite Barry Sullivan in a similar title, "The Gangster." Eugene Palette completed a Western for Republic ("In Old Sacramento") before retiring from Hollywood, while former Nancy Drew Bonita Granville threw in the towel after six more films, confining herself to television thereafter, going on to produce the popular LASSIE series ('Bonita' is Spanish for 'beautiful'). Other familiar faces abound- George E. Stone, Leon Belasco, Nestor Paiva, George Chandler, Byron Foulger, and 7 year old Billy Gray ("The Day the Earth Stood Still," FATHER KNOWS BEST), in one of his earliest roles. Definitely a noir, occasionally slowed by its numerous (if well done) skating scenes and romantic entanglements, a curious non horror title to appear four times on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater: Mar 14 1970 (followed by 1969's "It's Alive!"), May 8 1971 (followed by 1967's "Those Fantastic Flying Fools"), Apr 22 1972 (preceded by 1965's "The Eye Creatures"), and May 18 1974 (followed by 1965's "Night Caller from Outer Space").

Super-aggressive Joe Morgan tries to take over impresario Frank Leonard's ice show and his girl, for good measure, resulting in some strange consequences.

With all the interest in 40's noir, I'm not sure why this genuinely exotic little number is too often overlooked. Maybe it's because its pedigree is not the best, (cheap-jack Monogram), or because its cast is non-movie star, (Sullivan, Belita, Dekker), or the fact that it doesn't turn up on cable (to my knowledge). Nonetheless, in my book it's one of the best examples around of the lost art of b&w cinematography.

Consider, for example, what Belita's surreal, death-defying skating number would look like in color, or that distance shot of the noirish mountain bowl where Frank stalks his prey, or the big neon panel blinking through the fog. In fact, consider the values that would be lost if the entire film were in color. I think one reason many of us return to 40's noir is because of those dream-like shadings,(among other values), that simply can't be duplicated in reds and greens, etc. Then too, these b&w shadings are a perfect complement to the ambiguities pervading the best noir.

But it's not only the photography in this movie, it's also the art direction (Paul Sylos) and the set decoration (George Hopkins). Thanks to them, the spooky ice rink plus the cavernous apartment and lodge interiors achieve real visual distinction with their attention to artistic detail. And even after multiple viewings, I haven't figured out how they did that eerie mountain bowl with its rink at the bottom. That tableau remains unlike anything I've seen in film. All in all, these elements add up, in my book, to a superior slice of visual exotica from noir's golden age.

To me, the most notable part of the story itself is how basically unsympathetic Joe (Sullivan) is with his overweening aggressiveness as he cuts in on everything Frank (Dekker) owns or values. At the same time, I don't buy the climax that looks like some version of the Hollywood Code in action, even if only in diluted form. Nonetheless, it's a great cast from the gimlet-eyed Sullivan (he doesn't look like anyone else in movies) to the commanding Dekker to the froggishly likable Palette. And must not forget Belita's eye-catching wardrobe or the deglamorized Granville getting jilted every five-minutes. And please tell me when ace screen-writer Yordan ever drew a breath away from the typewriter since his name pops up on just about everything from this period.

Anyhow, in my book, the movie remains a real sleeper and visual treat, and TMC would do well to slip it somewhere into their evening schedule.

... but then things began to gel.

A down and out guy from out of town, Joe Morgan (Barry Sullivan), asks for a job at Frank Leonard's (Albert Dekker's) Ice Palace. Frank gives him a job for $25 a week selling peanuts. Meanwhile Joe lays eyes on the star attraction and the boss' wife, Roberta (Belita) and likes what he sees.

The boss notices the attraction between the two from the start, but oddly offers Joe a job assisting Harry (Eugene Palette) after Joe comes up with a great gimmick for Roberta's act. Then Frank leaves town and leaves Joe in charge of the operation. What WAS he thinking? Why didn't he get rid of this obvious social climber (and wife climber too if he could manage it) when he was just selling peanuts? When Frank returns, he decides to separate Joe and his wife for awhile and he asks Roberta if she would like a few weeks in the mountains at their cabin, and she is enthusiastic.

So what does Joe do? He goes to the cabin on a silly business pretext so he can see the wife that looks exactly like a silly business pretext so he can see the wife...in an isolated cabin...full of hunting rifles...with a husband whose jealousy is slowly turning to rage. I will tell you no more specific plot points. Watch and find out what happens.

What comes next are a bunch of occurrences that are, on their own, pretty good noir plot points and touches, but put together don't make much sense. In particular I was expecting more from the ending. You wonder how much is real and how much is imagined, by all parties. Was Eugene Palette's character just OK with having a peanut salesman replace him as boss? Was Joe's old girlfriend - who shows up completely unwanted and rejected by Joe and vowing revenge - having anything to do with what was going on? What was the talented character actor George E. Stone even doing here since he had so little to do?

Some touch ups on the hanging ends of the plot points and this could have been a classic noir - maybe an 8 or even a 9. But add what I just told you to what I thought were excessive musical numbers by mediocre talent as part of the Ice Show and I have to settle for a 7. Not bad considering its poverty row roots.

A cut-rate Gilda starring a cut-rate Sonja Henie and featuring a cut- rate Desi Arnaz made by a third-rate studio. How could it not fail?

Well, actually, it doesn't. To be fair, Gilda was released in April of 1946 and this picture in June of that year. Normally, this would have been more than enough time for the "Old Monogram" to script, green- light, shoot, edit, and release two Gilda knockoffs. However, this was an offering from the emerging "New Monogram", and it is unlikely that this level of production value could be achieved in so short a time.

I am always suspicious of single-name actors (including Cher), but Belita is more than competent in her femme-fatale role--one of two in the picture. In fact, this film does Gilda one better in that regard. There are two intertwined sexual triangles here: an mmf triangle in the first half and an ffm triangle in the latter stages.

Barry Sullivan is easily the equal of the wooden Glen Ford and could probably have substituted for him in Gilda, perhaps relegating the latter to the TV guest-star career by robbing Ford of his big break. Fascist bigot, Eugene Palette, is always a pleasure to watch. (Sadly, it's true. He's always terrific.) Fortunately for the director, Suspense has an all-white cast and Palette was not asked to share screen time with a black actor.

All in all, it is an OK noir...about average and eminently watchable. (It gets an seventh star for just being noirish.)

P.S. Did anybody else notice that the incidental ice music is suspiciously close to the tune of Monte Python's "Galaxy Song" in Meaning of Life? I'm not suggesting plagiarism, but c'mon!

Poverty Row "Monogram" Made a Fortune with the "Sleeper" Hit "Dillinger" (1945) making a Star of Lawrence Tierney and a Bank-Roll for the Ever Frugal Studio.

The Result was this their 1st Million Dollar Picture.

The Money is Evident On-Screen with the Dali-Esque Nightmarish Sets Framing the Fantastic Athleticism of Skater "Belita".

A Child Star in the 1936 Olympics. Her Talent as a Skater/Dancer is World-Class.

In This Film-Noir Her Show-Stopping Skating Sequences do Just That.

They Stop the Show and Anything that Follows seems Dull and 2nd Rate.

Barry Sullivan is OK, if One-Note and Albert Dekker's Dark Screen Persona seems Wasted.

Phillip Yordan's Script and Frank Tuttle's Direction Does what it can, but the Film Comes-Off as Jagged, Contrived, and Ho-Hum.

For Example, the Roll-Top Desk Sequence is so Awkwardly Handled it is Jaw-Dropping.

Belita's Non-Skating Scenes are OK if Pedestrian and She is Easily Up-Staged by Bonita Granville as the Femme Fatale.

Overall, its Belita's Movie, No Doubt, and any Gripes from Film-Noir Fans can be Silenced by the Impeccable Staging and Performance in the Ice-Skating Scenes.

They Alone are Worth the Price of Admission.

It's hard living up to such a broad yet existential title as SUSPENSE; but the very beginning does it perfectly... albeit lasting only several seconds as an armed woman, flanked by two goons, aims her pistol at a ratty-looking fella, and then fires... hitting a target and winning the teddy bear prize, handed over by her "victim" working the stand...

Who then gives homeless-looking loser Barry Sullivan's Joe Morgan directions to an ice skating rink/auditorium... and what follows are the best sequences as Sullivan talks his way from being a popcorn vendor to security guard to practically running the show by making it more dangerous and thus... suspenseful...

Of course being a Noir he soon falls head-over-heels for a taken woman, and that's where real life ice skating champ Belita, married to the always-menacing Albert Dekker, comes in... she's the showcase star and he's the wealthy, enigmatic owner... and we eventually learn that Sullivan's quick climb was for reasons other than his fast-talking charm...

A shame since his character needed more spontaneous con artistry since, once he and Belita realize they're both equally smitten with each other... despite her husband's deadly intentions and a shady dame from the past (Bonita Gransville)... SUSPENSE, directed by THIS GUN FOR HIRE Frank Tuttle, in becoming a full-blown sport-propaganda/romantic melodrama, leaves those initial crime-genre origins on ice.

Just the title alone should tell you that you won't see anything like a Sonja Henie movie. Great Britain's answer to Henie, Belita stars in this noir thriller about the star skater caught between two men.

Peanut vendor Barry Sullivan has some ideas that catch the attention of ice show owner Albert Dekker and he promotes him to the show management. Sullivan also gets ideas about Belita as he rises the ladder of success.

For a Monogram Picture this one looks like a few bucks were spent on it. The ice sequences match anything in a Sonja Henie movie.

Bonita Granville has a real adult role and acts real adult. The juvenile tattletale in These Three and the screen's Nancy Drew, Granville plays the scorned other woman in Sullivan's life and does well.

Suspense was Eugene Pallette's farewell performance. Mr. Pallette retired after this film and went to live in the wild country in Oregon's more rural area. He was a man of strong rightwing convictions and was sure that we could expect atomic war from the Russians. I wonder if when he died in 1954 he was disappointed.

For a Monogram film this noir is not a bad one with an unusual setting.

The was the biggest budget film ever for Monogram Pictures and it is evident in this very well produced nightclub noir from 1946. British skating star known as BELITA was the queen of Monogram for a few years and the money spent on her 40s musicals LADY LET'S DANCE and SILVER SKATES proved what an asset she truly was. The reviews for LADY famously declared: "Mega budget time on poverty row" - with half a dozen extravagant big band music sequences with herself zipping about in all sorts of incredible costumes. SUSPENSE made in '46 is almost the same story as GILDA made the same year at Columbia. However Rita couldn't skate and Belita wasn't Rita. but, in it's own way SUSPENSE is an excellent thriller with some of the most bizarre and creepy scenes I have seen in a 40s noir drama. The best of which actually occurs in a dance-skate number which I can only describe as: set imagery from Salvador Dali mixed with a quite obvious S&M costume design (spangly scimitars on Belita's bosom, black hot-pants, cape and stockings (!) and a horror stunt involving a doorway of jagged wiggly iron swords (yes the jaws of death) that our gorgeous lead actress must skate towards and jump through..... backwards! All to a pulsating kettledrum gonging away. Imagine being in the front row for that! Producers, King Bros were rewarded at Monogram by massive ($4m+) USA rentals from DILLINGER in 1945 and the head office put up a handsome budget for this film. It cost $1.1m, a record spend for Monogram and put the studio in the A league for a while. Following a stream of noir successes like THE GANGSTER Monogram stepped up a few rungs on the Hollywood ladder and changed their name to ALLIED ARTISTS. They used these strong profits to make IT HAPPENED ON 5TH AVENUE, FRIENDLY PERSUASION in '56 and in the 70s, went on to produce CABARET and THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING. The skating dance shows in SUSPENSE are very spectacular and it is a quite a surprise how big and crowded the nightclub sets are. the penthouse scenes are 10 years ahead of Forbidden Planet in their snazzy moderne style. This is a good film, unjustly neglected. And Belita deserves to be rediscovered before she skates off into the sunset: apart from being a genuine astonishing beauty, she can act, skate and give lip service in that most attractive slovenly way that saw Bacall snare Bogey. Belita can do that and skate too. What a doll! For fans of all things kitsch, the nightclub is the same one seen in 1980 in XANADU ooooooo-h-oooo.

A 1946 film noir starring Barry Sullivan & Belita. Essentially a retread of The Postman Always Rings Twice, this film finds Sullivan, a hapless loser arriving in California from the East Coast where an unnamed episode caused him to move on. He name checks a buddy back east to get a job at a carnival but when no berth is forthcoming, he's steered to a ski arena where a nightly ice revue w/Belita (an Olympics skater in real life) is the featured attraction & her husband is the producer of the show. Sullivan starts from peddling peanuts & quickly rises to a managing position (when the current show starts to lull, Sullivan comes up w/a gimmick where Belita leaps through a knife encrusted circular structure in a death defying stunt) gaining notoriety & some winning box office but he gets ahead of himself when he blatantly puts the moves on Belita (the husband isn't dumb & suspects) even following the hubby & wife to a snowbound cottage retreat. When during one of Belita's workouts on a frozen pond w/Sullivan happily looking on, the husband w/a scoped rifle takes a shot at him causing an avalanche (!) where he presumably dies. From there Sullivan & Belita are home-free to be w/each other but then it appears the husband is still around since they both feel someone is watching them. Instead of following the same structure of Postman, we get some unnecessary side plots (an old flame of Sullivan's turns up in town to give him grief, the reveal of the husband being alive) which derails the linear plotting by adding nothing to the proceedings. Also starring Bonita Granville (she played Nancy Drew in a series of films) as the woman from the East Coast, Albert Dekker as the put upon hubby & Eugene Pallette (in his last performance) as Dekker's right hand man.

What a weird mash up of ice skating numbers and film noir. It has all the requisite pieces of both and manages to be something unique. But figure skating?

Despite looking like he's been dragged through a forest, rather than a hedge backwards, dishevelled, down at heel, Barry Sullivan has little trouble obtaining a job, selling peanuts for peanuts at an ice show.

With ideas every bit as sharp as his suits, Sullivan soon catches the eye of pipe smoking boss Albert Dekker and quickly gains greater responsibility, leap-frogging thick-set, multi chinned, guttural voiced Eugene Pallette along the way. In Dekker's absence he fulfills the dual role of running the show and lover to skating star, Belita, who just happens to be Dekker's wife.

With circumstances dramatically and unexpectedly changed, Sullivan finds himself officially in charge of both the show......and Belita's life, whilst the portly Pallette looks on disparagingly over a pile of crumpets.

However, figures from the past are soon serving to sour Sullivan's situation, including an old flame, who audaciously takes the room across the landing from him. Will the ice star freeze him out and reduce their romantic future to a pipe dream?

Intermittently, Suspense lives up to its title, but punctuated by skating sequences and musical interludes seems intrinsically disjointed and episodic. Arguably, the movie's greatest tension occurs in its opening scene.

Down-on-his-luck Barry Sullivan gets a job selling peanuts at Albert Dekker's ice rink. The star attraction is Dekker's wife Belita, and Sullivan soon has his eyes on both a better job and Belita. He gets the former by suggesting they spice up her act by having her jump through a ring of knives. Equipped with a new job, he starts his move on her.

The screen's B-tier ice skating star Belita made a move from musicals to noirs in the 1940's, and this film ... the most expensive film Monogram ever made ... catches her part way through the change. On the one hand, it's a very typical noir involving murder and infidelity. On the other hand, it has several musical numbers on ice, including a wild one involving volcanos and Cuban jazz.

If only it was a better film. The setup is decent, but the last act is dreadful. It's poorly paced and oddly confusing, with a lot of key events including a murder happening off screen, as if the plot is supposed to be a secret kept from the audience for no discernible reason. It's a shame because in addition to being a wild blend of genres, the cast do decent jobs whenever the weird plot isn't hamstringing them.

Eugene Pallette and Bonita Granville also have major roles.

When a young Olympic figure skater decides to take up acting, it had to be with some skating sequences. While these were somewhat entertaining, they make the film about ten minutes longer. Since the title is "Suspense," this detracts a bit. Still it has many noir qualities with the taciturn Barry Sullivan pretty much running things. it is a romantic triangle where the third is one too many. Actually, a fourth comes into playas well. Joe, Sullivan's character, has significant baggage. Would this have brought him down eventually? Anyway, it was some fun with reasonable good acting by most of the figures.

Belita was an amazing athlete and a beautiful woman. She shouldn't have been expected to act as well. Apparently, she and the director agreed. This was categorized as Film Noir. The thin plot is dull. They should have saved Belita's talent for musicals and spared the rest of the cast.

My God, Bosley Crowther's an idiot. The one thing in this good noir from scenarist Phil Yordan and director Frank Tuttle that the former New York Times critic liked, namely the ice skating stuff, is the one thing in the film that is truly ordinary. Everything else is either better than expected (i.e. Belita's acting) or fairly compelling (i.e. Barry Sullivan and Eugene Palette's performances). And while the film did not, ironically, contain much suspense it had plentiful supplies of darkness and disturbance courtesy of Yordan's terse dialogue and Tuttle's three AM of the soul direction. Indeed, the general Woolrichian look and feel of the film has caused me to want to view more of this unknown director's work (only film of his that I can recall viewing is "This Gun For Hire" with Ladd/Lake, which I also liked). Give it a B.

PS...Wonder why Barry Sullivan never made it (in movies, that is) while less talented contemporaries with the same look, like Stack, Mature and Wilde, did?

Roberta Elva (Belita) is the star figure skater of a popular show. Her husband is the show's owner Frank Leonard (Albert Dekker). He hires Joe Morgan (Barry Sullivan) to be the new manager but he spends too much time with Roberta for Frank's liking.

It's an Ice Capades of a movie with a good helping of melodrama. Belita's skating is worth some sort of ticket but it's unlikely to be a movie ticket. Don't get me wrong. She's a fine actress for a figure skater. She has a little sass and a functional amount of acting skills. Along with her ice skating showcases, she is the least of this movie's problems. The story plods along without much tension and I don't know who to root for if anyone. I don't like any of them. Mostly, it's a drag.

The story for this is actually pretty interesting and I was surprised at just how interesting of a plot it is, sadly I found this movie pretty boring. The ice skating element while showing a lot of talent and being pretty cool for a film, wasn't overly interesting to me and the plot moved incredibly slow throughout. The last 30 minutes are easily my favourite as the plot picks up its steam by a lot and the movie becomes genuinely intense and has a lot of interesting explorations of the arcs. I feel the ending was slightly rushed as a particular character has a change of heart that feels somewhat out of nowhere and the movie doesn't really give enough time to explore why. Overall there's a lot of interesting plot points brung up in this film (and I mean a lot) but sadly the film takes way too long to execute them that it makes a lot of this film boring to watch, I'm sure some people can find enjoyment from this however, I'm just sadly not one of them.