Experiment Perilous by Margaret Carpenter

When Hunt exhibits an interest in the Bedereaux family, Clag sends his friend to the museum to view Maitland's portrait of Allida and invites him to tea at the family mansion. At the restaurant, he overhears artist John Maitland describing the sudden death of Cissie Bedereaux.

In New York that evening, Hunt joins his friends, Clag Claghorn and Elaine, for dinner. After confiding that she is writing a manuscript about her volatile brother and his beautiful young wife Allida, Cissie announces that she has decided to live on her own and asks Hunt to take her suitcases to his hotel and reserve a room for her. At lunch, Cissie tells Hunt that she is returning home to see her brother Nick after spending five years in a sanitarium for her heart condition. When Hunt calms the frightened Cissie, she invites him to join her for lunch the following day. The winner in that category was “Blood on the Moon,” in a race that included Fox’s “The Keys of the Kingdom,” Paramount’s “Love Letters,” and MGM’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”įor better works by the director Jacques Tourneur (1904-1977), see “Cat People” (1942), “I Walked with a Zombie” (1943), and, of course the classic noir, “Out of the Past.Psychiatrist Huntington 'Hunt' Brailey recalls a chance meeting that began the strangest days of his life: In the early spring of 1903, Hunt meets Clarissa 'Cissie' Bedereaux when the eastbound train on which they are traveling is assailed by a violent storm. D’Agostino and Jack Okey, art direction Darrell Silvera and Claude Carpenter, set decoration The house burns to the ground because of Nick’s actions (killing him), but Allida, her son and Hunt end up living happily in the country. Nick (Paul Lukas) keeps Allida (Hedy Lamarr), whom he is trying to pass off as crazy, a virtual prisoner in their town house, cutting off all contact with the outside world.īailey then decides to attempt to free Allida from the control of the insanely jealous Nick.Ī frenzied gun battle and fist fight in their home, featuring the destruction of several large aquariums, replete with shattered glass, gushing water and floundering fish, is the film’s most memorable scene.

Shortly afterwards, he meets the strange couple and becomes suspicious of Nick’s treatment of his wife.

Once in New York, Bailey hears that his train companion suddenly died while visiting her brother for tea. She tells him that she is going to visit her brother Nick and his lovely young wife Allida, both of whom she had raised. Huntington Bailey (George Brent) meets a friendly older lady (Olive Blakeney), when she turns to him for reassurance during a torrential downpour. Made in the wake of the successful thriller “Gaslight,” directed by George Cukor in 1944 and winning Ingrid Bergman her first Best Actress Oscar, Jacques Tourneur’s “Experiment Perilous” is a well directed suspense-thriller.

Experiment Perilous by Margaret Carpenter