Harold Daniels

Entertaining, if hugely verbose, thriller that sees Sheila (Cathy O'Donnell), an American who has been in a Swiss sanitarium, returning to Florida with her new husband, Phillip (Gerald Mohr). Phillip takes her back to the Tierney family home, but unfortunately it's a house that has been haunting Sheila's dreams since childhood and she begins to recover memories of bloody murder. Writer Robert C. Dennis delivers an intriguing story, that seeks to incorporate a number of twists, but unfortunately tends to lose itself in the non-stop exposition. Director Harold Daniels does his best to keep the blizzard of words and plotting visually interesting and delivers a film that is relatively nice to look at despite a very limited budget. The film dabbles in some sort of subliminal gimmicks that are more than a touch ridiculous.… (meer)

Two indebted men kidnap a loan shark's grandson. This is well done 1950s pulp fiction with a nice background of bars and low-rent apartments, and it includes a lot more characterization than typical. The two kidnapers are well-drawn and the events that led them to their current plight are presented in a compelling manner. Daniels' prose is clear, direct, and straightforward, effective but certainly not flashy. As the story proceeds, the contrast between the two kidnapers, one a lifelong criminal and pretty much a sociopath, and the other, a seemingly boring bank teller, lead to a series of conflicts over how to carry out the crime and what to do afterwards. Another character, of low intelligence, plays a role as well, and Daniels describes the inner thoughts of each man quite well. What holds this book back from being a near-classic is the several near brushes with implausibility and the multiple plot twists, which go on perhaps a bit too long. Nevertheless, I will definitely read this author again. Several of his books can be had for free on the extraordinary munseys.com site.

(This book is not to be confused with Lionel White's THE SNATCHERS, another, slightly superior 1950s kidnapping tale.)… (meer)