A serious and gifted artist is married to a neurotic alcoholic wife, whom he saved from the rat pack stress of New York, but she isn't happy about her life in a small village in the country, and every now and then falls back down into drinking bouts again with neurotic outbursts, so he decides she should go to a psychiatrist. She agrees, he goes to New York to meet him, but he is unavailable, so Alan Ladd goes back home and finds his house all smashed up with all his paintings, and his wife gone without a trace. There is a note, though, without a signature, printed on a typewriter, in which she tells him to find another wife to torture. This would have broken down any artist but not Alan Ladd. He finds traces to indicate she has been murdered, the whole village eagerly believes he is the murderer, so they all go for a lynching spree, but Alan Ladd escapes and begins to add two and two together. It's a great thriller worthy of Michael Curtiz' expert direction with 40 years of experience, and here he has a particularly good hand with children. But Carolyn Jones as the wife is the one who makes the deepest impression.
Review of The Man in the Net
