Forget you're watching Henry Aldrich being serious for a change. Jimmy Lydon gives a surprisingly convincing performance as a young man who discovers that his widowed mother (Sally Eilers) is involved with someone he instantly doesn't trust. That possible no-good man is played by the playboy of the '30's (Warren William) who is as suave and smooth as ever, and here, it is obvious that even if he isn't the nefarious fortune hunter Lydon believes him to be, he is up to something. At first, practically everybody around him believes this to be some adolescent attempt to keep his mother from forgetting her late, older husband, all except doctor friend Regis Toomey. The film opens with Lydon having a nightmare where the detailed clues come together as some type of pending doom. When details of this dream really begin to happen, Lydon pretends to have a breakdown so he can end up in the institution where he believes psychiatric professor Charles Arnt and William have cooked up a scheme against him and his mother.
Like a later classic film noir, "The Window" (1949), this is the story of youth not being believed because they tend to over-exaggerate, or in Bobby Driscoll's case of the later film, actually did "cry wolf". Lydon is an intelligent youth with typical teenaged problems, and some of the mature figures around him believe he has a serious mother complex which needs to be cured in order to accept her re-marrying. To see him playing a role other than Henry Aldrich (Paramount's somewhat obscure version of the Andy Hardy series) is jarring at first as he proves himself to be a fine young dramatic actor. Eilers, a forgotten leading lady of the 1930's, is properly regal as his mom, and Toomey is less wooden than normal as the only father figure Lydon seems to be willing to accept. William is appropriately snake-like as he keeps tabs on his stepson to be, and while the audience is already in the know from the start that he is an opportunist, that doesn't prepare them for what the truth ends up becoming.
During this era, the poverty row studios were giving the A studios a run for their money when it came to the film noir/thriller game with some interesting gems like "When Strangers Marry" (Monogram) and PRC's "Detour" and "Decoy", among others. "Strange Illusion" takes away the world-weary detective and scheming femme fatale for this unique film noir and gives us a hero in youth itself, determined to prove that sometimes, youth must be taken seriously and that sinister minds are sometimes hidden behind smiling faces. This makes another gem directed by the wonderful Edgar G. Ulmer, who took us on that wonderfully dangerous "Detour" the very same year.
Like a later classic film noir, "The Window" (1949), this is the story of youth not being believed because they tend to over-exaggerate, or in Bobby Driscoll's case of the later film, actually did "cry wolf". Lydon is an intelligent youth with typical teenaged problems, and some of the mature figures around him believe he has a serious mother complex which needs to be cured in order to accept her re-marrying. To see him playing a role other than Henry Aldrich (Paramount's somewhat obscure version of the Andy Hardy series) is jarring at first as he proves himself to be a fine young dramatic actor. Eilers, a forgotten leading lady of the 1930's, is properly regal as his mom, and Toomey is less wooden than normal as the only father figure Lydon seems to be willing to accept. William is appropriately snake-like as he keeps tabs on his stepson to be, and while the audience is already in the know from the start that he is an opportunist, that doesn't prepare them for what the truth ends up becoming.
During this era, the poverty row studios were giving the A studios a run for their money when it came to the film noir/thriller game with some interesting gems like "When Strangers Marry" (Monogram) and PRC's "Detour" and "Decoy", among others. "Strange Illusion" takes away the world-weary detective and scheming femme fatale for this unique film noir and gives us a hero in youth itself, determined to prove that sometimes, youth must be taken seriously and that sinister minds are sometimes hidden behind smiling faces. This makes another gem directed by the wonderful Edgar G. Ulmer, who took us on that wonderfully dangerous "Detour" the very same year.