As other commentators have noted, once you've seen this film it haunts you. The creepy carnival milieu has rarely been better done (well, Tod Browning's "Freaks" of course) but seems more wholesome than the upscale world of nightclub mentalists and corrupt psychiatrists to which Tyrone Power ascends. Joan Blondell is carnally blowzy but she's almost upstaged by the ill-starred actress Helen Walker (the duplicitous wife in Impact) as that double-crossing shrink. No one soon forgets Power's slippery climb to the top followed by his horrifying fall. This film is a true, dark classic.
Review of Nightmare Alley
