kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** Escaping from the Japanese held island of Batavia Leslie Calvin's, Merle Oberon, passenger ship was torpedoed off the island of Madagascar with all on board, including her parents, lost under the waves of the Indian Ocean and her and only three other persons surviving the carnage. Now in a New Orleans hospital ward Leslie gets the word from the doctor, Alan Napier, the good news in that her relatives in the bayou swamps of Belleville Louisiana Aunt Emily and Uncle Norbert, Fay Bainter & John Qualen, want to welcome her home there to recover from her terrible ordeal. As it turned out both Aunt Emily and Uncle Norbert were not the masters of their own home. It was the creepy manager Mr. Sydney, Thomas Mitchell, who in fact was in control of the place and the two were only there for his both personal and financial interests. There was also Mr. Sidney's assistant Cleeve played by Elisha Cook Jr in a rare romantic, if you can call it that, role who developed the hots for the very demurer and sensitive Louise and made no bones in hiding his feelings about her.It's when the handsome kind and understanding country doctor George Grover,Franchot Tone, came on the scene to treat the emotionally wrecked, due to her experience at sea, Leslie that things started to get a bit wild in the bayou in that Mr. Sydney started to lose it in seeing that the good doctor was about to uncover his attempt to drive Leslie insane and even to the brink of suicide. With her thinking, due to Mr. Sydney's sleazy tactics, she's going insane Leslie is saved from a nervous breakdown by former handyman, who was fired from his job by Mr. Sydney, Person Jackson, Rex Ingram, who's been snooping around the premises ever since and sleeping in the swamps, as well as catching and eating crew-fish, since his involuntary departure from the place.It's Preston who filled Lousie in to what was really going on and in the end paid for it with his life.***SPOILERS*** Dr.Grover who had since fell in love with his patient Leslie Calvin then went out of his way to save her life from the evil Mr. Sydney and his henchman the hopped up, on testosterone, and sexually starved Cleeve but almost got himself killed in doing it. Using the divide and conquer technique Dr. Grover gets the two, Mr. Sydney & Cleeve, to turn against each other thus doing the work, dirty & deadly work, for him. With Louise now knowing that she in fact wasn't going insane she now was going to tie the knot with her handsome and knight in shining amour and stethoscope Dr. Grover who saved her from the terrible situation that she found herself in.

Spikeopath Dark Waters is directed by André De Toth and collectively written by Marian B. Cockrell, Joan Harrison, Arthur Horman, John Huston and Francis M. Cockrell. It stars Merle Oberon, Franchot Tone, Thomas Mitchell, Fay Bainter, Elisha Cook Jr., John Qualen and Rex Ingram. Music is by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography by John J. Mescall and Archie Stout.After recovering from a traumatic boat incident that saw her parents killed, Leslie Calvin (Oberon) travels to the bayous of Louisiana to stay with her next of kin. But upon arrival it quickly becomes evident that nothing is as it seems...In 1944 Merle Oberon made two horror movies that very much relied on atmosphere and film noir visuality over any great semblance of psychological evaluation. With the far superior The Lodger rightly moving into classic territory as it boasted Laird Cregar, John Brahm and Lucien Ballard operating out of the top draw, Dark Waters, with its modest production values and second tier work force, feels like a B movie appetiser to Brahm's movie. Yet in spite of some overkill in the screenplay, there is much to enjoy here for the Gothic horror fan.Dark Waters is a fascinating thriller movie, it may play its hand far too early, and it really does, but the reverse plot device of having the lady protagonist be mentally troubled at the outset - only to have her grow in mental stability as the narrative unfolds - adds a non conformist kink to the picture. De Toth and his cinematographers fill the production with a feverish like dream state that picks away at the conscious, where although the woman in peril angle is slowly drawn out, the rewards are there to be had for those who like to see the visual surroundings mirror the mental health of the central character.The resolution, as was so often the case in olde classic movies trying to make mental health a viable issue, is cheap in the context of medicinal recovery. To that end it's a little frustrating viewing it these days to know that all we needed was some handsome/pretty cohort to get us through trauma! Yet in 1944 film makers were still trying to get to grips with a horror that didn't involve some monstrous creature moving through the landscape. There are many things wrong with Dark Waters when viewing it now, but if you can accept it as a 1944 movie and embrace it for its visual touches (and the makers do not disappoint with shadowy and spooky atmospherics), then it's a movie well worth taking an interest in. Besides which! Elisha Cook is in there being a shifty weasel, what more do you want in some Louisiana swamp based Gothic noir picture... 7/10

Robert J. Maxwell Merle Oberon and her parents manage to escape by ship from the Dutch East Indies just before the islands are captured by the Japanese. They reach Madagascar but are denied visas. The ship is torpedoed and Oberon's parents are lost. She herself winds up in a lifeboat, all of whose passenger except four die of thirst. She's finally rescued and finds herself in Louisiana where she seeks refuge at a sugar plantation owned by an uncle and aunt she's never met. You can see she's been through a lot already.She's pretty shaky and her family at the plantation welcome her but they don't help much with Oberon's torment. "How does it feel to almost die at sea?", they ask. And, "Tell us all about how horrified you were when your parents drowned." The overseer joins right in. Oberon hears strange sounds at night. Her bedroom lamp seems to go on and off by itself. Someone is calling her name in a strange voice.Fortunately, she's met a doctor, Franchot Tone, from the town and he's a nice reliable sort who is attracted to Merle Oberson, as any normal man would be, what with her striking felinity and air of helplessness. After he visits her at the plantation a few times he asks her to marry him but she -- thinking she's going mad -- turns him down.At that point, I thought I heard a strange voice calling my name. My lights seemed to flicker on and off. A handsome young doctor proposes to a woman and she tells him to bugger off with no explanation. Yes, I must be going mad.But, no! Sane after all. The doctor returns, discovers the reason for his having been turned away, comes to believe that she's in jeopardy, and manages to save those startling and frightened cat eyes from a watery grave.Merle Oberon is pulchritudinous, no doubt about it. She's not a powerful actress, though, and neither is Franchot Tone, whose most engaging feature is his slightly theatrical but reassuring baritone, grown a little deeper with age.If you haven't guessed, that welcoming family at the plantation isn't the real family at all. The originals have been murdered and a phony aunt and uncle, Fay Bainter and John Qualen, have taken their places. The idea is to pose as the owners, sell the plantation, and abscond with the loot. Oberon's arrival mixes everything up.The mastermind behind this treachery is Thomas Mitchell, pretending to be a friend of Oberon's family. You can tell at once that something is up with Mitchell because when he greets Oberon at the plantation, he's TOO receptive. In fact, the guy overacts the slimy villain throughout. It's not Mitchell's kind of role. Mitchell is the friendly adviser or the unflappable doctor. This is a role for Sidney Greenstreet or Peter Lorre or even Bela Lugosi. If Mitchell HAS to be a heavy, he's got to be somewhat seedy and make funny wisecracks as he did in "Secret of the Incas." He can't go parading around in immaculate white suits complaining that the servants have prepared fried chicken again for dinner.The secondary villain is perennial schmuck Elisha Cook, Jr. He has things other than money on his mind. When not prompting Oberon to dredge up those horrible memories, he's following her around and making lewd proposals in that phony hollow voice of his. "You and me could have a good time if you just let yourself go." He deserves to die in a pool of quicksand.The direction is by studio pro Andre De Toth and he does a good job. One very neat shot from a high angle shows Oberon in a pure white dress on the balcony, hesitating before trying to escape, and in another room on the ground floor sits Mitchell, wreathed in smoke, blocking her escape. The photography is by John Mescall and Archie Stout and effectively evokes the swamps and bayous, even in the absence of any location shooting.It's a rather heavy melodramatic mystery, resembling "Gaslight" before the Big Reveal, which comes about two-thirds of the way through. It's not without interest.

Zapi Sisma It's Gothic triller horror rather than film noir. The horror is not supernatural, it's psychological torture. Swamp setting! The main chick Merle Oberton is obviously of some indoasiancaucasian descent and is really repulsive and antipathetic, and is pretty much the only problem of this movie, besides the mystery being resolved too soon. What I loved the best was the character actor Elisha Cook (The Killing, Maltese Faclon, Salem's Lot). Brilliant guy. The atmosphere is unnerving and unsettling, pretty scary somewhat. The usage of the house interior is sometimes pretty good while the usage of swamp exterior could've been better. A how should this movie not be good when it's directed by the guy wearing an eye patch?