Among the Living (1941)

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Albert Dekker stars in a dual role in "Among the Living" from 1941, which also stars Susan Hayward and Francis Farmer.Dekker plays John and Paul Raden, part of an important family - in fact, the town is called Radentown. Paul supposedly died when he was 10 years old. However, he was discovered to be mentally unstable and was locked in a secret room in the Raden Mansion.When John Raden and his wife (Farmer) return for the Raden patriarch's funeral, they learn that Paul is alive.Paul escapes after killing his caretaker and takes off into town, renting a room, where he meets the landlady's daughter (Hayward). Childlike and unschooled in social graces, Paul gives her money and tells her to buy a new dress. She's no idiot and takes him for a real ride.After a night in a club, a woman is found murdered, and the hunt for the killer is on.Decent film with noir touches and a dash of horror, and an excellent performance by Dekker who gives an individuality to both twins. Susan Hayward really pops - frankly, I prefer her earlier films, when she was fresh and sexy, as opposed to the harder characters she played later. Here she's a real scene-stealer.I have a quibble with what happened toward the end - I really didn't understand the lynch mob mentality. It seemed over the top.Albert Dekker was a prominent stage actor who died a strange death. During his career, he turned in some very good film, television, and Broadway performances. This was a good showcase for him.All in all, pretty good.

The plot to "Among the Living" is silly and impossible to believe. However, it does appear to be the inspiration for an episode of "The Simpsons"--the one where Bart discovers that he has an identical 'evil' twin who's been locked in the attic for many years! Homer and Marge feed Hugo fish heads and have kept his existence a secret for years! Who would have thought a film would have dared have such a bizarro plot?!When the film begins, the family patriarch dies and his son John (Albert Dekker) arrives for the funeral. Little does John know that his identical brother, Paul (also Dekker), is STILL alive and did not die as a small child. The family doctor (Harry Carey) divulges the family secret to John...Paul is still alive and insane and has been kept hidden in a secret room in the family mansion! Coincidentally, at this same time, Paul kills his keeper and escapes! Now two identical looking guys are running about town...and one is on occasion unpredictable and homicidal. So it's up to the Doctor and John to try to find Paul...however the heartless Doctor soon tries to stop John from contacting the police by threatening to destroy him! However, Paul is not intend with only killing his keeper...and the bodies start piling up in town. And, soon John is assumed to be the crazed killer by mistake!As I mentioned above, the plot for this one is just insane...so you really have to suspend disbelief in order to watch this one. Despite this, I did enjoy Dekker's performance as he played both characters, particularly Paul, quite well. Goofy and still very watchable.

Among the Living is directed by Stuart Heisler and written by Garrett Fort and Lester Cole. It stars Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward, Harry Carey and Frances Farmer. Music is by Gerard Carbonara and cinematography by Theodor Sparkuhl.Dekker plays identical twins, John and Paul Raden. Paul was believed to have died when he was just 10 years old, in reality he had been traumatised and went insane and was locked up in a secret room at the Raden Mansion. When John returns for his father's funeral, he learns of Paul's existence, more so when Paul escapes and is out and about in Radentown...1941 saw the release of Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, High Sierra and I Wake Up Screaming. Films that mark an important point in the progression of what would become known as film noir, both thematically and as a visual style. Elsewhere there were some horror movies which would stand the test of time as classic productions, films such as The Wolf Man and The Black Cat are still massively popular today. Down in the lesser known file is Among the Living, a picture that blends both horror and noir for considerable rewards.It's a slice of Southern Gothic which nods appreciatively to classic horror conventions from the previous decade (eg: the Frankenstein connection is hard to ignore but handled skillfully), and it even has social commentary bursting forth from its seams, but it's with the photographic style where it becomes a must see for film noir enthusiasts.Heisler (latterly The Glass Key/Storm Warning) and Sparkuhl (also The Glass Key) shoot the picture by way of German Expressionism, where certain scenes and photographic compositions anticipate the noir style before it became the norm. From the feverish and frantic exuberance of a club scene, to a chase scene through menacing shadowed streets that end with murder, there are classy slices of noir before we even get to the crushing finale where Radentown is gripped by its own greed and insanity problems.Dekker is terrific, managing to give each twin their own identity without relying on costuming for the viewers to tell the difference. His man child portrayal of Paul is heartfelt and perfectly troubling, yet always tasteful. Hayward is socko gorgeous as a vampish nymph who latches onto Paul to feather her own nest, while Farmer provides the sort of solid support she was capable of before her own personal problems would derail her potential career.The psychological aspects of the pic are simplistic, of course, while viewing it now it's impossible to not get a sense of it being cliché heavy as regards the "twins" axis of plotting, but this is well paced, very well acted and beautifully photographed. If you can track down a decent print of it, then it's a must see for anyone interested in the influences and subsequent trajectory of film noir. 8/10

When it came to sex and violence, Paramount Pictures always had a perverse streak that went back to their 30s Pre-Code and horror films (THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE, MURDER AT THE VANITIES, DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE, ISLAND OF LOST SOULDS, MURDERS IN THE ZOO, TERROR ABOARD, and MURDER BY THE CLOCK to name only a few) so it was only (un)natural that their groundbreaking adaptation of James M. Cain's DOUBLE INDEMNITY in 1944 would be instrumental in kicking off a cycle of dark films that would later come to be known as the Film Noir. But between the mid-30s and the mid-40s, the studio's unwholesome tendencies lay dormant for the most part with the exception of two 1941 films by Stuart Heisler that combined adult-themed scares with a "noir" sensibility. THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL (narrated by a prostitute coming out of the fog to tell her tale) mixed courtroom melodrama, murder, revenge, and the underworld with brain transplants and was the more outré of the two but the Southern Gothic AMONG THE LIVING's blend of murder and madness contained many visual elements that would soon appear in the burgeoning Film Noir. New Yorker John Raden (Albert Dekker) returns to the Southern mill town his father founded for the patriarch's funeral and long-buried family secrets soon threaten to rock his world. John learns from the family doctor (Harry Carey) that his twin, Paul (Albert Dekker), didn't die as a child but went insane (after their abusive father threw him against a wall for trying to protect his mother from another beating) and had been locked away in the cellar of the decaying family mansion for the past twenty-five years. Paul kills the old black servant that had been his keeper and, exhilarated by freedom, the child-like lunatic rents a room in town. He becomes involved with his landlady's gold-digging daughter (Susan Hayward) but another murder occurs and, with the townspeople in a grip of panic, mistaken identity erupts into vigilante violence...Character actor Albert Dekker got a rare chance to show his versatility in a dual role and he's given good support by veterans Harry Carey and Maude Eburne but it's Susan Hayward's dimestore vixen who walks away with the picture. Whether she's wheedling money out of Paul for a new dress or egging on a mob to rip a man apart, Susan's vivacious beauty and potent sex appeal is positively radiant and she steals every scene she's in. On the other hand, troubled Frances Farmer plays John's wife and has little to do other than to look beautiful and scream, both of which she does in a very sedated way. Albert Dekker effectively delineates the doppelgangers and there's no confusing the sane, urbane New Yorker with the scruffy lunatic who's method of murder is quite eerie. He strangles his victims and then places their hands over their ears because he can still hear his long-dead mother screaming. The atmospherics are appropriately dark for a social problem horror movie and there are many tableaux that predict the coming Film Noir. After Paul escapes from the dilapidated plantation house during a violent thunderstorm, he wanders through streets of tenements and cheap rooming houses amid newsboys and legless vagrants selling puppies until he stumbles into a nightmarish bistro where b-girls, brawny brawlers, and some furious jitterbugging bring on another bout of murderous madness in a vivid montage of sights and sounds. Besides the child abuse, there's also some social commentary going on in that the townspeople are clamoring for John to re-open the mill and desperate enough to do anything to get their hands on the $5,000 reward for the killer, turning ugly at the end in a way reminiscent of Fritz Lang's FURY five years before. A young and handsome Rod Cameron has an unbilled bit as a bar patron.