NIGHTMARE ALLEY (2021) – Review

Step right up, folks. Even though the temps are dipping (in most states), the fine folks in “Tinsel-Town’ want you to take in the wonders of a traveling carnival. Oh, you’ll also have to take a long trip back in the past, when these operations drew in the rubes…er..crowds. Say around 85 years or so ago. So besides the usual oddities of nature and games of chance, there’s plenty of duplicities, fraud, and even a murder or two. And just who’s running this group of startling attractions? Why it’s none other than an Oscar-winning director. He’ll be making sure you get your ticket for a stroll down NIGHTMARE ALLEY. If you dare….

But first, we’re introduced to the story’s protagonist (I almost said “hero”). Stanton “Stan” Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is “hoofing it” on the rural backroads of 1930’s Depression-era America. He stumbles upon a traveling carnival trying to pack up the tents before a big storm hits. The show’s ” big boss” Clem (Willam Dafoe) promises Stan a “hot meal’ if he’ll join the “rousters”. Later the duo teams up to track down and capture the escaped “geek”, an animal-like drunkard who bites the heads off of live chickens to earn a bottle of “hooch”. An impressed Clem decides to “take on” Stan. But he needs to get the “road grime” washed off. Luckily the next “set-up” is nearby the cabin of boozy Pete (David Strathairn) and his wife Zeena (Toni Collette) who offer their bathtub for a “dime a dip”. As Pete “sleeps one off”, Zeena makes sure that Stan is “thoroughly clean” (if ya get my drift). As he becomes a frequent houseguest, Stan learns that the couple once had a phony “psychic’ act, one that involves Zeena using “code words” to get the proper response from Pete. The ambitious Stan decides that he’ll help them “revive” the bit after ‘selling” it to Clem. But that’s not the end of Stan’s interests. He starts pursuing the lovely young Molly (Rooney Mara) who pretends to take on thousands of volts as the “Electric Girl”. Deciding the carnival’s not big enough, Stan swipes the prized psychic act “codebook” and takes the “grift” on the road with Molly as his aide. Eventually they’re the big deal at nightclubs, with Stan looking suave in spats and tails. So sharp that he attracts the attention of the psychiatrist to the “swells”, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett). She knows he’s a “phony”, but still enlists him to “con” several of her wealthy “patients”. After he hooks a grieving couple, the duo set out to “hook a whale”, ultra-rich Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins). But Lilith warns him that this fish “bites back”. Can the former “carny'” bamboozle him? Or, is it possible that Stan can actually contact ‘the great beyond”?

Whew, talk about an “all-star” cast, as they’d tout in Hollywood’s “heyday”. Ah, but first and foremost, driving the tale is Cooper as the man with a dark past whose morality careens towards utter blackness rather than the light. And all in pursuit of the almighty “buck”. We see him almost literally stumbling along until the carnival gives him purpose. He becomes more confident, as Cooper clears up his “Oakie” mumblings in order to sell his new “skills”. He has a shot at redemption with the somewhat innocent Molly, but she’s just another way to get to the top. No amount of fancy tuxedos can hide his devious ambitious nature. But he almost meets his match in Blanchett’s Lilith, a classic film femme fatale, wrapped up in a scholarly guise. Her silky seductive line delivery spins a tempting web of high-style heresy. And she knows she can make Stan jump for her “bait”. Mara, as Molly, seems to be the only character capable of escaping “the life”, as her misplaced love for the smooth-talking Stan pushes her into repugnant duplicity. Mara shows us how that light in Molly’s eye slowly dims as they go for the “brass ring”. Zeena, played by a sultry Collette, has given up on that ring until the hunky young Stan flashes his eager smile making her take down her “guard”. Jenkins gives the “mark” Ezra an interesting duality. Grief has him obsessively clinging to a chance to correct his past, but his seething cruelty overrides any empathetic feeling toward the lonely tycoon. Dafoe is full of energetic bluster as the blowhard barker, scoring with a terrific monologue on how to “groom a geek”. Strathairn makes Pete a sad confused sotted cuckold, while Ron Perlman is an intimidating physical menace as the over-protective (of Molly) sideshow strongman.

Oh, the Oscar winner “pulling the strings” behind the camera is the modern master of movie macabre, Guillermo del Toro, in a quite different follow-up to that “swoony” fantasy love story/monster fable THE SHAPE OF WATER. There’s little romance in this stylized “fever-dream” full of lust and avarice. Ah, but what style is to be savored. The story’s almost slashed in half, with the opening carnival sequence showing the “low”, sleazy squalor, while the second half bathes in rich colors and textures as the actions shift to “high” gear in plush offices (Lillth’s “den of debauchery”), the flashy nightclubs, and the fortress-like mansion of Ezra, all accented by the swirling soundtrack by Nathan Johnson. And if the story sounds a touch familiar, then you’ve been a fan of the old “late, late film shows”, or more recently TCM or the Fox Movie Channel. While there’s an excellent black and white film from 1947 (worth seeking), del Toro insists that this isn’t a “remake”, but rather a different take on the celebrated novel by William Lindsay Gresham. (this version ends more honestly than the censors then would allow) The screenplay shifts the actions from the 1920s to the still economically desperate mid-1930s (rumbling of unrest in Germany), and del Toro (who co-wrote it with Kim Morgan) really plunges into the twisted nature of the main characters. All the while, exploring the fascinations of “seedy show biz”, especially in the traveling carnival. The attractions lure in the “rubes’ with promises of sex and, oddly, death (the Electric Girl could be “fried to a crisp’, but. wow, she’s almost in her “undies”). Though the pace bogs down a bit in the third act, the expert art direction, incredible costumes, and the superb cast makes this a truly wild, and wonderful, walk on the “wild side” via a jaunt through NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Now, move along folks…the exit is right this way…

3 Out of 4

NIGHTMARE ALLEY is now playing everywhere including the Hi-Pointe Theatre in St. Louis, MO