Review of Don't Bother to Knock (1961) by William W — 20 Sep 2016

I really enjoyed this Roy Ward Baker film noir with Richard Widmark and early appearances by Anne Bancroft (singing, even!), Jim Backus and Marilyn Monroe. It's short and sweet, neither overstating its point nor overstaying its welcome. Monroe plays a suicidal fish-out-of-water, who has just moved to New York City from Oregon to overcome a troubled past and start again, falling quickly in love with a pilot who's clearly on the rebound, and the trials and tribulations that follow. Very rewarding both for fans of Monroe and the genre.

Just a couple of years back, I picked up this mammoth 17-film DVD collection of Marilyn Monroe's films for a really good price, only to find that the ridiculous way the discs were placed in the digipack basically ruined them, and after watching the movies the best that I could, I reluctantly had to part with it, hoping the set would soon be released at a decent price on the more resilient blu (as you can tell, I'm old-school and low-fi, but I'm hoping to quickly remedy this problem!).

As you can tell by any of my prior reviews of Richard Widmark's films, I'm a huge fan of his, and he's easily one of my favourite and most entertaining and watchable actors of the period. As well, Roy Ward Baker is one of the most underrated directors of the period--his entry in The Criterion Collection, 'A Night to Remember', is easily the best telling of the 'Titanic' tragedy. Thus simply on the basis of those three alone, I heartily recommend the film to any adventurous cinephiles of this era.