Experiment Perilous

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Experiment Perilous
Experiment Perilous DVD cover (France)
Directed by	Jacques Tourneur
Produced by	Warren Duff
Written by	Warren Duff (screenplay) Margaret Carpenter (novel)
Starring	Hedy Lamarr George Brent Paul Lukas Albert Dekker Carl Esmond
Music by	Roy Webb
Distributed by	RKO Radio Pictures Inc.
Release date(s)	December 18 1944 (U.S. release)
Running time	91 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Experiment Perilous is a 1944 melodrama/film noir set at the turn of the century. The film is based on a novel by Margaret Carpenter and directed by Jacques Tourneur. The film is reminiscent of many movie melodramas, in particular Gaslight, made in England in 1939 and remade in the U.S. in 1944. The film was nominated for one Academy Award for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White. Hedy Lamarr's singing voice was dubbed by Paula Raymond.

[edit] Plot

In 1903, Doctor Huntington Bailey (Brent) meets a friendly older lady in train. She tells him that she is going to visit her brother Nick and his lovely young wife Allida. In New York Bailey hears that his train companion suddenly died. Shortly afterward, he meets the strange couple and gets suspicious of Nick's treatment of his wife. Nick keeps Allida, who he is trying to pass off as crazy, a virtual prisoner in their London town house, cutting off all contact with the outside world. The kindly psychiatrist Baily takes it upon himself to attempt to free his new love Allida from the control of the insanely jealous Nick.

A frenzied gun battle in an aquarium, replete with shattered glass, gushing water and floundering fish may be the most memorable (and often imitated) scene in the film.