- Actors: Merle Oberon, Franchot Tone, Thomas Mitchell, Fay Bainter, Elisha Cook Jr.
- Directors: André De Toth
- Writers: Arthur T. Horman, Francis M. Cockrell, Joan Harrison, John Huston, Marian B. Cockrell
- Producers: Benedict Bogeaus, James Nasser
- Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC
- Language: English
- Region: All Regions
- Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
- Number of discs: 1
- MPAA Rating:
- Studio: Vid Canada
- Release Date: Jun 1 1999
- Run Time: 90 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B00000ILEL
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#82,538 in DVD (See Top 100 in DVD)
- #29 in DVD > Mystery & Suspense > Crime > Con Artists
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
Love film noir? Here's an exotic variant--call it "bayou noir." Leslie Calvin (Merle Oberon), an oil heiress, is in shock several times over, having been run out of her East Indies home by Japanese troops and then losing her parents during a disaster at sea. Seeking safe haven, she looks up her only known relatives--whom she's never seen--an aunt (Fay Bainter) and uncle (John Qualen) who have just taken up residence at Rossignol, an unused sugar plantation in a remote Louisiana bayou. They seem harmless enough, albeit aggressively eccentric. But what to make of the eternally smiling, white-suited houseguest, Mr. Sydney (Thomas Mitchell), or the creepy Cleeve (Elisha Cook Jr.), a caretaker with nothing to take care of? Soon Leslie is hearing voices in the night, plus sinister stories from a former servant (Rex Ingram) who keeps popping out of the underbrush. Far from recuperating in peace, she fears she's sinking into madness, from which not even the kindly young local doctor (Franchot Tone) can rescue her....
Sounds like a backwater Gaslight, or a swampland Manderley without a Rebecca (and as a matter of fact, Rebecca veteran Joan Harrison worked on the script). Director André De Toth pumps up the atmosphere despite limited independent production resources, and he creates an unsettling mise en scène in which the heroine is either effaced by off-kilter camera angles or utterly isolated in vulnerable closeup. Unfortunately, Merle Oberon, notwithstanding her heartstopping Eurasian beauty, is about as expressive as a marble paperweight, and the screenplay doesn't so much advance as sink into the neighboring quicksand. Still, De Toth's inventiveness, Miklós Rósza's score, and some filigreed lighting by Bride of Frankenstein's John Mescall keep you watching. --Richard T. Jameson
Video Details
A fake aunt and uncle attempt to drive a nervous young heiress to suicide in order to collect her estate. Aided by the bayou, the would-be killers implement a series of terrifying ploys to suffocate the young girl in her own madness. Andre de Toth (House of Wax) directs Merle Oberon and Elisha Cook Jr. in this excellent melodrama set in the dank, forbidding Louisiana bayous, the perfect aid to the mystery and violence of the story.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dark Waters,
By Rix Roundtree "Rix" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dark Waters (DVD)
From the opening scenes you're engaged. Merle Oberon is the beautiful but mentally shaken oil heiress Leslie Calvin. Leslie's mental health is fragile because she and her family had to flee their East Indies home due to a Japanese invasion during the hell that is WWII. Then the ship that she sails away on is torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat. Virtually every passenger (including Leslie's parents) is killed in this incident except Leslie and 3 other survivors. Leslie Calvin has had an incredible run of bad luck and it's going to get worst.In a New York hospital Ms. Calvin's New York doctor (played by Batman's Alan Napier) feels that Leslie would probably recuperate a lot faster if she were to stay with family. Unfortunately the only family Leslie has now is an Aunt (played brilliantly by Fay Bainter) and Uncle whom she has never met who live down in the Louisiana bayou on a sugar plantation called Rossignol. Leslie follow her doctor's advise, which is a bad idea, as Leslie's Aunt and Uncle aren't exactly as they seem and embark on a deadly plan to get Leslie out of the way in order to claim her inheritance. Suddenly Leslie hears voices in the night, lights mysteriously flicker and her "relatives" can't stop talking about Leslie's personal tragedies, which her bayou doctor played by Franchot Tone had instructed them not to do. The cruelest scene is when her relatives take Leslie to the movies to see a war picture complete with U-boats sinking ships and death. One of the most moving scenes is where a depressed Leslie feels that she is losing her grip on her sanity. She feels that she does not deserve the love of her doctor (who had just proposed to her) because she feels that she is going mad. She feels that she should have died like her parents and be, "under the water with my mother and father." When Leslie begins to realize that something is amiss with her aunt and uncle she forgets her fears regarding her mental state
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the few truly original films produced by Hollywood.,
This review is from: Dark Waters (DVD)
'Dark Waters' is one of the great one-offs in Hollywood history, from a director used to throwing out great one-offs - the heroically idiosyncratic Andre de Toth. It features Merle Oberon as a woman who is attacked on all sides - by History, in the shape of the German U-boat that bombed the liner carrying her refugee family; by mental breakdown; by family; by a gang of criminals trying to exploit her fragility and make her even more mad; by supposedly benevolent male authority figures always telling her what's best for her; by a community where surveillance is the norm; by a film whose style is as fractured and stylised in its editing, narrative conceits and visual novelty as Oberon is emotionally; and by the very ground she walks on, the bayous of Louisiana. 'Dark Waters' is mixture of many currents in 40s Hollywood - the Freudian psychodrama; the woman's picture; the film noir; the Val Newton horror film - but has an exhilerating craziness all of its own.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dark Waters,
By A Customer
This review is from: Dark Waters (VHS Tape)
Gothic horror film. An English woman travels to a Russian island to discover why her father, who recently died, was making payments to a convent. At times the plot is hard to follow, but the ending brings it all together. Lots of blood. Very creepy. A little like Hellraiser as far as gore.
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