Escape In The Fog
Directed by Budd Boetticher (as Oscar Boetticher Jr.)
Starring Nina Foch, Otto Kruger, William Wright, Konstantin Shayne
Columbia 1945
San Francisco, 1945. Army nurse Eileen Carr (Foch) is on extended leave due to nervous exhaustion. She has a nightmare in which she sees a man being murdered near the Golden Gate Bridge, but on awakening she sees the dream victim, federal agent Paul Devon (Kruger) standing before her.
The two subsequently strike up a budding relationship, but when Paul is given a special, dangerous assignment Eileen begins to fear that her dream is turning into a prophecy, and unfolding events do nothing to placate her fears...
Escape In The Fog kicks off the intriguing and welcome collection Columbia Noir #1 from Powerhouse Films and whilst it's debatable whether it quite qualifies as a Film Noir per se (it's mostly free of the cynicism one would associate with the form, and there's never any feeling that a downbeat ending might be on the cards), it's nonetheless a fascinating wartime B-thriller from the last days of World War II (indeed the war was over by the time Escape In The Fog reached the UK).
The film's noir credentials mainly come from the dream sequence and other fog-bound scenes set at the waterfront, which add an eerie dimension to proceedings and raise it a notch above most propaganda pieces from the period. Columbia contract player at-the-time Nina Foch (Return Of The Vampire (1943), Cry Of The Werewolf (1944)) does sterling work in the lead and, if it doesn't spring too much in the way of surprise plot twists Escape In The Fog still stands up nicely as a solid Sunday afternoon matinee selection.
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