George Stroud (Ray Milland), editor of Crimeways, America’s most popular true-crime magazine, finds himself the prime suspect in the murder of his publisher’s mistress, with whom he’s just shared a day-drinking dalliance. There’s an undeniable thrill in watching Stroud talk his way out of the noose, only to have it reapplied to his neck and tightened in the very next scene. Milland is in top form here, toeing the line between sophistication and desperation. John Farrow’s manic direction never lets up, nor does the screenplay by Jonathan Latimer, which manages to pull out one shocking development after another. Earl Janoth, the tyrannical Murdoch-like publisher, is played with sinister relish by Charles Laughton, whose real-life wife, Elsa Lanchester, provides comic support as a kooky Greenwich Village artist.