Tough policemen do not spend all their time slapping the villains around
Sometimes they are ruthless and crooked too in more subtle ways
Such a cop is the character in "I Wake Up Screaming." The story is that of a detective who conceives a hopeless passion for a waitress hopeless because she, not even knowing he is a policeman, is terrified of him from the beginning He murders her, then uses his police force influence to shift the blame on to the hero
Laird Cregar played the detective a magnificently sinister performance, though how the New York police department allowed a detective as overweight as Cregar to remain on the strength, passes belief
The film was remade, in 1953, as "Vicki," and the detective was more believable because he was played by Richard Boone, that awkward, fleshy-nosed heavy who did not become an actor until after leaving the U. S. Navy at the end of World War II, but who has developed into one of the best menaces in the business
Such a cop is the character in "I Wake Up Screaming." The story is that of a detective who conceives a hopeless passion for a waitress hopeless because she, not even knowing he is a policeman, is terrified of him from the beginning He murders her, then uses his police force influence to shift the blame on to the hero
Laird Cregar played the detective a magnificently sinister performance, though how the New York police department allowed a detective as overweight as Cregar to remain on the strength, passes belief
The film was remade, in 1953, as "Vicki," and the detective was more believable because he was played by Richard Boone, that awkward, fleshy-nosed heavy who did not become an actor until after leaving the U. S. Navy at the end of World War II, but who has developed into one of the best menaces in the business