(4 of 4)
Blind Alley (by James Warwick; James R. Ullman, producer) presents a singularly exciting conflict between a disciple of Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, and a disciple of John Taliaferro Thompson, father of the submachine gun. For three turgid acts a psychiatrist pits his power of suggestion against the guns of a gangster, whose mob has taken refuge in the doctor's home, brutally shot and beaten two of its inmates. The question is, will the doctor succeed in undermining the gangster's morale by conjuring up a base and hidden act in his past or will the gangster riddle the doctor in one of his fits which become increasingly violent as the analysis progresses? Consensus of critics was that if this workmanlike melodrama fails to raise a spectator's hair, he must either have no nerves or no hair.