clanciai Edward Arnold is always a warrant for a film worth seeing more than once and with increasing interest. Here for once he plays the lead as a blind detective, and the question is whether he is the lead or his dog Friday. They work together and are indispensable to each other, but still also make it well on their own, even when trapped or locked up in a basement.As an experienced blind detective Arnold has many bags full of tricks, and some of them he gets the opportunity to use to turn a grim drama into a hilarious comedy. Getting drunk and playing the organ in the middle of the night to disturb all criminality going on, he brilliantly turns into the highlight entertainment of this film.The clever intrigue involves a theatre company as a cover up for serious counter spionage activity to endanger the nation, which Donna Reed as a young easily seduced girl is innocently unaware of and duped by, while her mother Ann Sheridan immediately senses the alarm. The interplay between these two characters is another interesting angle to the tale, while the dog ultimately steals the show. I saw it some ten years ago but enjoyed even more to see it again. This was in the beginning of Fred Zinnemann's long run as an outstanding director, but already here his excellence is impressing.

Spikeopath Eyes in the Night is directed by Fred Zinnemann and adapted to screenplay by Guy Trosper and Howard Emett Rogers from Baynard Kendrick's novel The Odor of Violets. It stars Edward Arnold, Ann Harding, Donna Reed, Stephen McNally, Katherine Emery, Allen Jenkins, Stanley Ridges and Friday the dog. Photography is shared between Robert Planck and Charles Lawton and the music is scored by Lennie Hayton. Plot finds Arnold as blind detective Duncan Maclain, also a judo expert, he is always accompanied by his intelligent seeing-eye dog, Friday. Maclain is called on to a murder case for his friend, Norma Lawry (Harding), but the body is missing and there appears to be something very sinister going on at the Lawry family home.A cracking little thriller boosted by a top cast (Donna Reed playing a bitch step-daughter!) and moody photography. What it lacks in simplicity of plot it more than makes up for in terms of execution and tone, with the added "gimmick" of the detective being blind further enhancing the effectiveness of the picture. In fact, that Arnold is so good, and his dog so brilliant (seriously, this is one great dog), it marks this out as ingenious considering the limits of the Wartime story. Zinnemann knits it together skillfully, never letting the pace sag or the tension drop, while there's some great scenes dotted throughout: such as one filmed in total darkness, lit up intermittently by the flash of pistol fire. With the film 99% set at night of in darkened rooms, this lets Planck (The Canterville Ghost/Moonfleet) & Lawton (3:10 To Yuma/The Tall T) dally in atmospheric shadows and murky low lights.Clocking in at a slim 80 minutes with never a dull moment, Eyes in the Night is one of the more enjoyable film's of its type. Deserves a bigger audience. 7.5/10

Robert J. Maxwell Edward Arnold is a blind detective with a guide dog named Friday. Investigating a murder for a friend, he visits a house filled with Nazi spies and their unwitting hosts who include a 21-year-old Donna Reed. The spies are after some secrets hidden in a safe. Arnold foils their plan. In one physical conflict, he smashes the light so that he and his opponent are on an equal footing -- "In the dark. My kingdom." Friday the dog is cute and provides some moments of comedy, as do the two African-American servants, one of them Mantan Moreland. This dog is really something. He's smarter than some students I've had and far more physically adroit than I ever was.And yet it's a B picture from beginning to end. There were dozens of these inexpensive and mechanical films ground out by the studios in the war years. That Arnold is blind is no more than an attempt to introduce an element of novelty. Oh, and the dog. "Eyes in the Night" was supposed to be the beginning of a series, of which there were a number at the time -- "The Falcon," "Dick Tracy," "Joe Palooka." I think there may have been one more entry in the series before it mercifully expired.Ho hum.

Michael_Elliott Eyes in the Night (1942) *** (out of 4) A woman (Ann Harding) fears that her stepdaughter (Donna Reed) is involved with an evil man so she goes to his apartment to ask him to leave her alone. Once at the apartment she finds the man dead and the step daughter catches her there and believes that she did the killing. The mother goes to her blind detective friend (Edward Arnold) who starts to investigate and learns that German spies were behind it. This was the first of a two part series for MGM and I'm really not sure why more weren't made as both proved to be good films. This film features a very attractive cast, a nice story and some very good direction by Zinnemann, which makes this a must see for fans of detective movies. Arnold is very good in his role making it very believable that his character is actually blind. The actor plays the part very well and has good chemistry with everyone in the cast. Harding comes off quite strong as well even though her character isn't the best written in the film. Stephen McNally, Katherine Emery, Allen Jenkins and Reginald Denny all add nice supporting performances as well. Reed actually steals the show as the 17-year-old step daughter with an attitude. Her attitude is so dead pan perfect that you'll have no problem hating the young lady who thinks she knows everything. Mantan Moreland is wasted in his few scenes though. The German subplot just works itself into the story and there's never a spotlight shined on it due to WW2, which is a nice twist for this type of film. Most movies from this era beat the war stuff to death but this film stays away from that.