Nightmare Alley

A fascinating anomaly. Read full review

As much EC comic as noir, Nightmare Alley is strong on atmosphere (thanks to Lee Garmes’ shadowy cinematography) and performances (particularly Joan Blondell, as fellow mind reader Zeena), but doesn’t quite deliver on its lurid pulp premise. Read full review

Jules Furthman penned the uncompromising script; Edmund Goulding directed with a master hand. [05 Jun 2005, p.E12]

It's a one-of-a-kind experience -- dark, bleak, twisted carnival noir. Read full review

Edmund Goulding’s Nightmare Alley viscerally understands the lurid appeal of carnivals and acts of illusion. Read full review

It's an authentically bilious look at the world and its morals as Tyrone Power, taking decisive strides from the standard romantic hero roles he had been typecast in, rises from a travelling carnival mind-reading act to a high society shown to be even more corrupt. Read full review

Despite some fine and intense acting by Mr. Power and others, this film traverses distateful dramatic ground and only rarely does it achieve any substance as entertainment. Read full review

The film loses its imaginative energy once it moves out of the ripe, sleazy carny milieu, and from the start the technique of the director, Edmund Goulding, is conventional, even a little stodgy. Still, the material, adapted from William Gresham's novel by Jules Furthman, is unusual and the cast first-rate.

Tyrone Power is outstanding in the most demanding role of his career as a con man who emerges from the fairground world to exploit the credulous rich as a mind-reader and descends to depths he's never dreamed of as a pre-avian flu carnival 'geek', biting off the heads of live chickens in exchange for alcohol. [04 Dec 2005, p.14]

Scripter Jules Furthman and Director Edmund Goulding have steered a middle course, now & then crudely but on the whole with tact, skill and power. Read full review

Though perhaps it tries too hard to be 'respectable' and downplays its tawdry trash vulgarity a little too much (the film is tough, but William Lindsay Gresham's superb novel is even tougher), this is still a mean, moody, and well-nigh magnificent melodrama. Read full review

Carefully constructing Power's rise and fall, director Goulding is merciless in his inspection of a character who is rotten through and through Read full review

Nightmare Alley is a harsh, brutal story [based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham] told with the sharp clarity of an etching. Read full review