Cause for Alarm (1951)

Usually the horrific happens at night and then is discovered in the light of day, but 1951’s Cause for Alarm gives us daytime horror, taking place over the course of a single sunny day in a suburban neighborhood. It sounds like a bad dream: Devoted housewife Ellen, played by Loretta Young, finds herself accused of poisoning her ailing husband by none other than her husband George himself. She delivers a letter to the postman on his behalf without realizing it is addressed to the district attorney and accuses both her and his physician of working together to kill him. Manic and paranoid, George pulls a gun on Ellen and reveals the contents of the letter, noting all the people who will be able to testify against her. He says he is going to kill her now in self-defense, but before he does, his heart gives out and he is lying dead in their bedroom. And so her mission to get back the letter before it is delivered begins.

This low budget noir is both a delight and totally stressful to watch. Every step Ellen takes seems to make matters worse—her frantic behavior serves to cast her in a suspicious light, building support for her husband’s allegations. While these missteps increase our anxiety, the horror lies in Ellen’s isolation, powerlessness, and delusion. In the opening of the film, she reminisces that “things weren’t always like this” between her and her husband and flashes back to when they met. She remembers it lovingly, but the memory shows a man who is obnoxious and domineering from the start. In another voiceover moment, Ellen looks helplessly out at her neighborhood and notes that she wasn’t allowed to have friends in the neighborhood because George didn’t like neighbors—not “the neighbors,” as in these specific neighbors due to specific reasons, but the entire idea of neighbors. And then there’s the terrible story George relays from his childhood when he brutally beat a boy and then destroyed a beloved object, a ship in a bottle, so that the other boy couldn’t have it—an analogy he is drawing now, saying he is going to “ruin” (kill) his wife, so no one else can have her. Further, Ellen is shown again and again that her husband is the one whose opinion matters and that she is not to be taken seriously. While this certainly feels like a product of its time, it doesn’t feel so disconnected from today when so many are working to strip women of their rights. 

Despite the terrible bedroom confrontation between Ellen and George and the stress of watching Ellen dig herself deeper, the film has light and humorous moments too, mostly coming from a neighbor kid, nicknamed “Hoppy,” the beleaguered postman, played by Irving Bacon, a character actor who appeared in nearly 500 films (thanks Wikipedia), and an overly nosy neighbor who watches Ellen come and go (suburbs, am I right?). And then there is the ending, but I’d hate to spoil a 73 year old film! Let’s just say it is a relief and not as cynical as one would expect today. 3.5 out of 5 sacs of blood.  

—Gina Myers