Strange Illusion

The Psychological Thriller

Director Edgar G. Ulmer had a rare gift for making good movies against almost impossible odds.Shoestring budgets, tight schedules, terrible scripts - he could rise above just about anything.It's miraculous that pictures like The Black Cat, Detour, Bluebeard or Strange Illusion got finished at all, much less that they're now considered classics.

Ulmer filmed Strange Illusion (1945) at PRC under the studio's usual conditions, six days and minimal sets, but they let him make whatever he felt like making.At the time, the director was fascinated with psychoanalysis, and he put together an eery mystery concerning a father-son relationship.Teenager Paul Cartwright (James Lydon) begins to have doubts about the circumstances of his father's tragic death, and about the new man in his mother's life.The picture contains as much Hamlet as it does Freud, along with some stunning camerawork.And remember, it was shot in six days!

Strange Illusion, according to Ulmer, was to be based on a play called Letters To Lucerne.But when the screenplay was finished, there was no trace of the original play, so the rights were sold back to the playwright.