Danger Signal is based on the 1939 novel of the same name by Phyllis Bottome. She lived in Nazi Germany prior to the war and was the first Hollywood writer to warn about the dangers of Nazism in her 1940 film, Mortal Storm, starring Jimmy Stewart. Bottome wasn't able to have her novel made into a film until six years later since the female protagonist in the original story was guilty of committing murder without punishment. The Hays Code prevented Danger Signal from reaching the silver screen until the producers agreed to sanitize the narrative. There was another reason why the script had to be sanitized-Faye Emerson who played the protagonist Hilda Fenchurch, was married to Elliot Roosevelt, the president's son. Emerson could hardly play the part of a woman guilty of murder who in real life was connected to the Roosevelt family.
Danger Signal was a box office success probably owing a great deal to the presence of Zachary Scott who became well known at the time for his role in the classic noir, Mildred Pierce. Scott plays Ronnie Mason aka Marsh. At the beginning of the film he manipulates a married woman with whom he's having an affair to write a suicide note on the pretext that he's suffering from writer's block while writing a short story about a woman who plans to kill herself. When he actually kills the woman he uses the fabricated note to throw the police off the trail in their investigation of her murder.
Ronnie skips town and ends up in Los Angeles where he pretends to be a wounded veteran, renting a room owned by a widow, Mrs. Fenchurch, and her two daughters, Hilda (Emerson), a public stenographer and younger sister, Anne. The long-winded act two starts out lugubriously with Hilda falling for the manipulative Ronnie, who charms all the women in the family. When Anne finally returns home after being away, she reveals to Ronnie that she'll be getting a $25,000 inheritance from an uncle-Ronnie immediately switches his allegiance to Anne and unceremoniously dumps Hilda, causing a great amount of friction between the sisters. Soon afterward, Ronnie plans on doing Hilda in, inducing her to compose a suicide note, just as he did with the woman he disposed of at the beginning of the story.
The plot only becomes mildly interesting when the conflict between the two sisters erupts-but it sure takes a great amount of time to reach that point. There's a subplot involving Hilda's boss, a research scientist, Dr. Lang, who has an unrequited crush on her. Also in the mix is Dr. Silla, a psychologist, who works with Lang at the university. Silla, who has a thick Germanic accent, is obviously based on Bottome herself. She gets involved by meeting Ronnie and analyzing him-concluding that he's a psychopath. She warns Hilda not to try and kill him after Hilda admits she's been thinking of doing so.
When Lang and Silla discover that Hilda has lured Ronnie to Silla's beach house (in which Hilda has the key after the psychologist urged her to get away for a weekend), they drive to the beach in an desperate effort to prevent Hilda from trying to poison Ronnie (this is after Hilda steals a test tube at Lang's lab containing botulinum bacilli). There's a lame chase scene as the two "doctors" elude the police after they've been spotted speeding (the film is so devoid of suspense, that the scenarists inserted the unnecessary car chase scene).
The ending might go down as one of the lamest in film noir history. True to Hays Code directives, Hilda tells Ronnie she's poisoned him with the bacilli in Lang's test tube. Suddenly Lang and Silla burst in and Hilda confesses she didn't have the nerve to go through with the murder. Practically in a split second, Ronnie leaves and is chased off a cliff by the husband of the woman he murdered at the beginning of the film. Then the two sisters, who both so easily fell for a scheming psychopath, see the error of their ways and go for the two remaining good guys (Hilda agrees to a date with Dr. Lang and Anne takes up with her old high school boyfriend, the goofy "Bunkie").
Danger Signal doesn't have enough suspense to hold one's interest throughout and relies on a most unsatisfying climax to tie up all the loose ends. It's an extremely dated piece of screenwriting compromised by the interference of the Hays Code censors.
Danger Signal was a box office success probably owing a great deal to the presence of Zachary Scott who became well known at the time for his role in the classic noir, Mildred Pierce. Scott plays Ronnie Mason aka Marsh. At the beginning of the film he manipulates a married woman with whom he's having an affair to write a suicide note on the pretext that he's suffering from writer's block while writing a short story about a woman who plans to kill herself. When he actually kills the woman he uses the fabricated note to throw the police off the trail in their investigation of her murder.
Ronnie skips town and ends up in Los Angeles where he pretends to be a wounded veteran, renting a room owned by a widow, Mrs. Fenchurch, and her two daughters, Hilda (Emerson), a public stenographer and younger sister, Anne. The long-winded act two starts out lugubriously with Hilda falling for the manipulative Ronnie, who charms all the women in the family. When Anne finally returns home after being away, she reveals to Ronnie that she'll be getting a $25,000 inheritance from an uncle-Ronnie immediately switches his allegiance to Anne and unceremoniously dumps Hilda, causing a great amount of friction between the sisters. Soon afterward, Ronnie plans on doing Hilda in, inducing her to compose a suicide note, just as he did with the woman he disposed of at the beginning of the story.
The plot only becomes mildly interesting when the conflict between the two sisters erupts-but it sure takes a great amount of time to reach that point. There's a subplot involving Hilda's boss, a research scientist, Dr. Lang, who has an unrequited crush on her. Also in the mix is Dr. Silla, a psychologist, who works with Lang at the university. Silla, who has a thick Germanic accent, is obviously based on Bottome herself. She gets involved by meeting Ronnie and analyzing him-concluding that he's a psychopath. She warns Hilda not to try and kill him after Hilda admits she's been thinking of doing so.
When Lang and Silla discover that Hilda has lured Ronnie to Silla's beach house (in which Hilda has the key after the psychologist urged her to get away for a weekend), they drive to the beach in an desperate effort to prevent Hilda from trying to poison Ronnie (this is after Hilda steals a test tube at Lang's lab containing botulinum bacilli). There's a lame chase scene as the two "doctors" elude the police after they've been spotted speeding (the film is so devoid of suspense, that the scenarists inserted the unnecessary car chase scene).
The ending might go down as one of the lamest in film noir history. True to Hays Code directives, Hilda tells Ronnie she's poisoned him with the bacilli in Lang's test tube. Suddenly Lang and Silla burst in and Hilda confesses she didn't have the nerve to go through with the murder. Practically in a split second, Ronnie leaves and is chased off a cliff by the husband of the woman he murdered at the beginning of the film. Then the two sisters, who both so easily fell for a scheming psychopath, see the error of their ways and go for the two remaining good guys (Hilda agrees to a date with Dr. Lang and Anne takes up with her old high school boyfriend, the goofy "Bunkie").
Danger Signal doesn't have enough suspense to hold one's interest throughout and relies on a most unsatisfying climax to tie up all the loose ends. It's an extremely dated piece of screenwriting compromised by the interference of the Hays Code censors.