Download or watch at archive.org
Director: Arthur Ripley
Writer: Philip Yordan (Screenplay), Cornell Woolrich (novel The Black Path of Fear)
Cinematography: Frank F. Planer
Plot: The Chase is a story of Chuck Scott, a World War II vet, who proudly wears a medal he earned for his duties in the Navy on his lapel. He finds a wallet belonging to Eddie Roman, a gangster living in a mansion in Miami. Roman's right-hand man, Gino, is played very colorfully by Peter Lorre. When Scott returns the wallet, this act of honesty so impressed Roman that he offers him a job on the spot. Not knowing of Roman's shady reputation, and being virtually penniless, Scott accepts. Roman's desperately unhappy wife Lorna often asks Scott to drive her to the beach at night, where she just stares at the waves and dreams of escaping to Cuba. When she returns home, her husband locks her in her bedroom, so she will not leave him. One night, she confides her dream to Scott, and he agrees to buy her two tickets on a steam-ship, and safely escort her to Cuba.
In the next several scenes, they escape to Cuba, fall in love there, and Lorna is mysteriously stabbed to death in a bar. The police think Scott is the only possible suspect. As he is about to be arrested, Scott uses some quick thinking and escapes.
In the next scene, Scott wakes up dazed and confused. He calls a close friend from his days in the Navy, Cmdr Davidson, on the phone. He says "It's happened again." Davidson knows exactly what he means and tells him to report to his office as soon as possible. It turns out that Scott is subject to panic attacks, possibly brought on by the stress of battle, where he will forget everything, confuse reality with his dreams, and sometimes awaken in a strange location. Davidson and Scott pieces together through fragments of memories, that the earlier scenes in Cuba were just a vivid dream. Davidson says to Scott: "You haven't been to Cuba in over 3 years." However, they agree that the woman he remembers meeting in Miami is real. Scott has a distinct feeling that there was something important he had to do for that woman. Concerned, Scott spends every waking hour trying to patch together enough details to remember her name. Then he notices two tickets on a ship to Cuba in a pocket in his jacket. Finally, everything falls into place, and he remembers her and where she lives. After a fight and a chase (presumably where the film's name comes from), during which time Roman and Gino both die, Scott and Lorna both escape to Cuba. They live happily ever after.
No comments:
Post a Comment