User Reviews

Dark Waters is directed by André De Toth and collectively written by Marian B. Cockrell, Joan Harrison, Arthur Horman, John Huston and Francis M. Cockrell. It stars Merle Oberon, Franchot Tone, Thomas Mitchell, Fay Bainter, Elisha Cook Jr., John Qualen and Rex Ingram. Music is by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography by John J. Mescall and Archie Stout.

After recovering from a traumatic boat incident that saw her parents killed, Leslie Calvin (Oberon) travels to the bayous of Louisiana to stay with her next of kin. But upon arrival it quickly becomes evident that nothing is as it seems...

In 1944 Merle Oberon made two horror movies that very much relied on atmosphere and film noir visuality over any great semblance of psychological evaluation. With the far superior The Lodger rightly moving into classic territory as it boasted Laird Cregar, John Brahm and Lucien Ballard operating out of the top draw, Dark Waters, with its modest production values and second tier work force, feels like a B movie appetiser to Brahm's movie. Yet in spite of some overkill in the screenplay, there is much to enjoy here for the Gothic horror fan.

Dark Waters is a fascinating thriller movie, it may play its hand far too early, and it really does, but the reverse plot device of having the lady protagonist be mentally troubled at the outset - only to have her grow in mental stability as the narrative unfolds - adds a non conformist kink to the picture. De Toth and his cinematographers fill the production with a feverish like dream state that picks away at the conscious, where although the woman in peril angle is slowly drawn out, the rewards are there to be had for those who like to see the visual surroundings mirror the mental health of the central character.

The resolution, as was so often the case in olde classic movies trying to make mental health a viable issue, is cheap in the context of medicinal recovery. To that end it's a little frustrating viewing it these days to know that all we needed was some handsome/pretty cohort to get us through trauma! Yet in 1944 film makers were still trying to get to grips with a horror that didn't involve some monstrous creature moving through the landscape. There are many things wrong with Dark Waters when viewing it now, but if you can accept it as a 1944 movie and embrace it for its visual touches (and the makers do not disappoint with shadowy and spooky atmospherics), then it's a movie well worth taking an interest in. Besides which! Elisha Cook is in there being a shifty weasel, what more do you want in some Louisiana swamp based Gothic noir picture... 7/10

Merle Oberon and her parents manage to escape by ship from the Dutch East Indies just before the islands are captured by the Japanese. They reach Madagascar but are denied visas. The ship is torpedoed and Oberon's parents are lost. She herself winds up in a lifeboat, all of whose passenger except four die of thirst. She's finally rescued and finds herself in Louisiana where she seeks refuge at a sugar plantation owned by an uncle and aunt she's never met. You can see she's been through a lot already.

She's pretty shaky and her family at the plantation welcome her but they don't help much with Oberon's torment. "How does it feel to almost die at sea?", they ask. And, "Tell us all about how horrified you were when your parents drowned." The overseer joins right in. Oberon hears strange sounds at night. Her bedroom lamp seems to go on and off by itself. Someone is calling her name in a strange voice.

Fortunately, she's met a doctor, Franchot Tone, from the town and he's a nice reliable sort who is attracted to Merle Oberson, as any normal man would be, what with her striking felinity and air of helplessness. After he visits her at the plantation a few times he asks her to marry him but she -- thinking she's going mad -- turns him down.

At that point, I thought I heard a strange voice calling my name. My lights seemed to flicker on and off. A handsome young doctor proposes to a woman and she tells him to bugger off with no explanation. Yes, I must be going mad.

But, no! Sane after all. The doctor returns, discovers the reason for his having been turned away, comes to believe that she's in jeopardy, and manages to save those startling and frightened cat eyes from a watery grave.

Merle Oberon is pulchritudinous, no doubt about it. She's not a powerful actress, though, and neither is Franchot Tone, whose most engaging feature is his slightly theatrical but reassuring baritone, grown a little deeper with age.

If you haven't guessed, that welcoming family at the plantation isn't the real family at all. The originals have been murdered and a phony aunt and uncle, Fay Bainter and John Qualen, have taken their places. The idea is to pose as the owners, sell the plantation, and abscond with the loot. Oberon's arrival mixes everything up.

The mastermind behind this treachery is Thomas Mitchell, pretending to be a friend of Oberon's family. You can tell at once that something is up with Mitchell because when he greets Oberon at the plantation, he's TOO receptive. In fact, the guy overacts the slimy villain throughout. It's not Mitchell's kind of role. Mitchell is the friendly adviser or the unflappable doctor. This is a role for Sidney Greenstreet or Peter Lorre or even Bela Lugosi. If Mitchell HAS to be a heavy, he's got to be somewhat seedy and make funny wisecracks as he did in "Secret of the Incas." He can't go parading around in immaculate white suits complaining that the servants have prepared fried chicken again for dinner.

The secondary villain is perennial schmuck Elisha Cook, Jr. He has things other than money on his mind. When not prompting Oberon to dredge up those horrible memories, he's following her around and making lewd proposals in that phony hollow voice of his. "You and me could have a good time if you just let yourself go." He deserves to die in a pool of quicksand.

The direction is by studio pro Andre De Toth and he does a good job. One very neat shot from a high angle shows Oberon in a pure white dress on the balcony, hesitating before trying to escape, and in another room on the ground floor sits Mitchell, wreathed in smoke, blocking her escape. The photography is by John Mescall and Archie Stout and effectively evokes the swamps and bayous, even in the absence of any location shooting.

It's a rather heavy melodramatic mystery, resembling "Gaslight" before the Big Reveal, which comes about two-thirds of the way through. It's not without interest.

Dark Waters is an OK suspenser, helped quite a lot by its atmospheric bayou setting and the against-type casting of Thomas Mitchell. One can't help feeling that a director like Alfred Hitchcock would probably have made a better job of the suspense side of things, while a director like Jacques Tourneur would most likely have done more with the Gothic noir-ishness. However, in the event the film is directed by Andre De Toth who does a solid and workmanlike job without ever really lifting the film above its station.

Following a terrible shipping accident from which she emerges the sole survivor, Leslie Calvin (Merle Oberon) goes to recuperate at her aunt and uncle's plantation in the middle of Louisiana. Leslie never really knew her aunt and uncle that well, but in spite of this when she arrives she is troubled by their distant behaviour and the way that they constantly keep getting small details about the family history wrong. Also amiss is the way that Aunt Emily (Fay Bainter) and Uncle Norbert (John Qualen) seem strangely intimidated by the plantation manager Mr Sydney (Thomas Mitchell). At first, Leslie thinks that perhaps her mental state is not right because of the traumatic accident she was involved in. But later, she begins to suspect that something very serious is wrong at the plantation…. maybe even that her very life could be in jeopardy. With the help of her kind and caring doctor, George Grover (Franchot Tone), she attempts to unravel the mysterious happenings before her sanity is tipped over the edge.

The film has a reasonably absorbing storyline, courtesy of Frank and Marian Cockrell (plus an uncredited John Huston). A passable level of interest is created regarding Oberon's predicament. The question of whether she is in real danger, or merely imagining that she is, is kept hanging over the proceedings. Miklos Rozsa provides a characteristically melodramatic score that adds drama to the events on screen. It is also good to see Mitchell playing a more ruthless, shady type of character compared to the ones he portrayed in Stagecoach and Gone With The Wind. However, Dark Waters suffers a little from its dated air, with the two leads – Oberon and Tone – particularly guilty of the kind of bland, stiff performing that plagues so many minor films of the era. The shadowy lighting is over-used like some tiresome gimmick and generates only half-hearted excitements, while the photography of John Mescall and Archie Stout mistakes darkness for suspensefulness. But on the whole Dark Waters remains a passable suspense flick in the old-fashioned mould, worth catching on one of those rainy afternoons when there's nothing else to watch.

I've seen Dark Waters a couple of times and found it very creepy.

A young woman who was shipwrecked goes to stay with her aunt and uncle at their mansion deep in the Bayou to recover from her ordeal. The swamps near to the mansion are suppose to be haunted and it isn't long before strange things start happening including strange voices and lights going on and off on their own. She then discovers these people are not her relations but impostors who want her dead and her late family's money. With the help of her doctor, with whom she falls in love with, they try to stop these impostors.

Dark Waters is shot well in black and white, which makes it very atmospheric and creepy.

The cast includes Merle Oberon, Franchot Tone, Fay Bainter and Elisha Cook Jr. (The House On Haunted Hill).

This movie is worth watching if you get the chance. Very creepy at times.

Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5.

I'll just get right to the spoilers.

First off we know right from the beginning that the aunt and uncle at the bayou estate aren't her real relatives. This was too easy to figure out. De Toth didn't set it up well enough to make us believe any way else.

Second, you know if Elijah Cook Jr. is in the film, he's up to no good. Seein' that he knows all the people in the house and they vouch for him, it was safe to assume that they were all in whatever they were up to.

Third...Seeing that the first shot in the film you see is "oil man" and wife drown in submarine accident but the daughter survives. This wasn't to hard to figure out why the fake relatives were at the country estate. MONEY!!!! this is hardly a film-noir. A suspense/drama/thriller..yes. For me, this film wasn't anything to write home about, but at least I can say..." I saw it".

A young woman barely survives a war-related shipwreck. Still very ill, she reaches out to her maternal aunt, who - somewhat surprisingly - turns out to be living on an isolated plantation called "Rossignol". Her relatives promise her a restful recovery in a welcoming home, but "Rossignol" rather falls short, both in terms of rest and in terms of welcome...

"Dark waters" is a thriller about a frail young woman who gets preyed upon by cunning criminals. Cinema has produced hundreds, if not thousands of "damsel in distress" movies where the damsel involved behaves like a chicken without a head. Here, thankfully, the heroine is a reasonably competent and clever person. Her harrowing war experiences may have inflicted deep scars, but she is no simpleton.

The movie makes excellent use of all the atmospheric possibilities inherent in a plantation environment : an ornate mansion filled with gloomy portraits, maze-like paths leading through dense vegetation, trees dripping with moss, a sweltering bayou, voracious stretches of quicksand. The dark waters mentioned in the title do indeed put in a notable appearance, complete with a lush, flashlight-deceiving cover of water plants.

It's a pity that the viewer gets to suspect early on that the poor heroine has strayed into a nest of vipers : the initial façade of well-meaning hospitality crumbles very quickly. "Dark waters" might have indulged in a bit more ambiguity or misdirection here. Still, a well-made thriller, with a bunch of memorably vile criminals.

I suppose this isn't a terrible film. After all, it has a plausible story, convincing atmosphere and capable performances from a skilled cast. But something about it seems cheap, that this was probably a project they all did in between other more important pictures.

Merle Oberon is the damsel in distress, somewhat miscast as a troubled femme whose family hails from the south...form New Orleans to be exact. Her parents recently drowned in a ship wreck, she herself was on that tragic voyage and narrowly escaped with her life. Before the end of this movie, she will almost die again, though the circumstances will be different.

In order to finish her recovery, both physical and psychological, she travels back to the family plantation where an aunt and uncle (Fay Bainter & John Qualen) supposedly reside with a friend of theirs (Thomas Mitchell). On her way to the old homestead, Oberon meets a congenial country doctor, is there any other kind, in the form of Franchot Tone. He takes an immediate liking to her and an interest in her continued recovery.

While settling in at the manse, Oberon meets an assortment of colorful characters. These include Mitchell's companion (muted gay partner per the production code), played by creepy Elisha Cook. There are also a few African American servants, as well as an ex-caretaker (Rex Ingram) who tries to reclaim his job, but is murdered. As I said, plenty of atmosphere and mystery.

The sets are cheaply constructed and one can't help but feel how much grander the drama would have come across if this hadn't been an indy production but a bigger budgeted studio effort. Despite the obvious financial limitations, director Andre de Toth makes expert use of the cast who all do their valiant best, especially Bainter. Even Tone seems to care more about the type of characterization he's providing than he usually does in his other Hollywood roles.

There are some nice countryside scenes where Tone is courting Oberon, in between her frequent displays of hysteria and paranoia. One particular sequence has him take her to a lively outdoor dance, populated by the locals. We believe she might truly be happy, if those imposters at home weren't so hellbent on trying to kill her for her money.

The final climactic sequence involves a hostage crisis out on a boat in the bayou. It is there that Mitchell and the extremely deranged Cook attempt to off Tone and Oberon, who both know too much about Mitchell's plan to seize control of family property. Cook perishes in quicksand, while the others must fend for themselves in the dark murky waters.