Cause for Alarm! Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Cause for Alarm! Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 7, 2024

While the actual context of the situation has been the subject of considerable dispute, with some alleging a rape took place, Clark Gable and Loretta Young rather infamously had a child together when Gable was married to someone else and Young was still single, a child which Young went to rather elaborate lengths to make seem like the little girl had actually been adopted by Young. Despite having been born in my original hometown of Salt Lake City and bearing a rather famous Mormon surname, Young was actually a very devout Catholic whose sense of morality often underpinned both her characterizations and (seemingly at least) her private life. In that regard, this hilarious (and possibly NSFW) anecdote relayed by the inimitable Stephen Sondheim may be enough to indicate how prim and proper Young could be, all of which may either support or undercut a central premise of Cause for Alarm!, a film which posits Young as put upon housewife Ellen Jones, who fears she's going to be accused of having murdered her husband, George (Barry Sullivan). Would you ever suspect, let alone accuse, someone of Young's inherently "moral" demeanor of such a heinous crime? Cause for Alarm! wends its way through a certain amount of hysteria (no sexist intent implied) before becoming the very essence of a shaggy dog story, and one with an actually kind of comical denouement, considering the anxiety that has suffused the tale (or tail, as the case may be).

While there are manifest differences between them, there's a certain "post traumatic stress disorder" subtext to both this film and another release from ClassicFlix, Tomorrow Is Forever, albeit in this instance surrounding World War II rather than World War I. An early flashback in this film details Ellen working as a nurse during the conflict, where she's ostensibly involved with hunky Ranney Grahame (Bruce Cowling), but instead ends up marrying Ranney's buddy George. Years later, George is a bedridden invalid who might be perceived as the male counterpart to Barbara Stanwyck's neurotic hypochondriac in Sorry, Wrong Number, and in fact both films rely upon a conceit wherein the disabled spouse becomes convinced their partner is planning to murder them.

In this particular instance, it's kind of the "flip side" to Lucille Fletcher's legendary tale, in that George, increasingly delirious, becomes convinced that Ellen and Ranney, who is now George's doctor (of course), are having a torrid affair and are scheming would be murderers to boot. The film's actual lynchpin of "suspense", though, comes courtesy of a veritable J'accuse letter George writes to the district attorney laying out his thesis in detail, a letter which Ellen unwittingly gives to the postman. The melodrama only increases when George lets Ellen in on what he's done and then promptly drops dead. What's a beacon of morality to do?

There are some geniune moments of at least angst, if not outright nail biting suspense, scattered throughout the film, and Young is the vulnerable yet steely presence she is in so many other put upon housewife roles she essayed (The Stranger jumps instantly to mind). At just a bit over an hour long, the film could never properly be termed "slow", but it still kind of hilariously has a somewhat padded feeling.

Cause for Alarm! Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cause for Alarm! is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of ClassicFlix with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. ClassicFlix offers the following information on a text card before the feature presentation:

The main source for the ClassicFlix restoration of Cause for Alarm! is from a 35mm dupe negative accessed from The British Film Institute. While relatively sharp, the material suffered from severe warping and persistent scratches, which were mostly able to remove or mitigate.

Several minutes of 35mm dupe prints were also presesnt in FBI's master element, while four minutes of the film were completely missing. In order to fill in the gaps and present this Loretta Young thriller in complete form, ClassicFlix found, scanned and restored the missing sections from a 16mm print.

This is another heroic restoration of a vertiable cult item by ClassicFlix, but as the above verbiage probably indicates pretty well, there are undeniable signs of damage and also wide variations in clarity, the latter of which I'm attributing mostly to the 16mm inserts, but which probably also were affected by the 35mm dupe print material. At its best, this transfer shows nicely modulated gray scale and good contrast, but both of these aspects can vary. Detail levels are typically quite commendable in the material that I suspect was sourced from the dupe negative, but those can also suffer noticeable downturns at times (see screenshot 7 for one example). Some noticeable scratching has survived whatever restoration gauntlet was undertaken (see screenshot 1). My score is 3.25.

Cause for Alarm! Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cause for Alarm! features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono track that can show some very slight distortion in the highest amplitudes of then "newcomer" André Previn's score, one whose kind of overwrought emotional language I might compare to some quasi-melodrama scores by the likes of Frank Skinner and/or Hugo Friedhofer. Ellen offers a bit of narration, and that along with dialogue, is presented cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Cause for Alarm! Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Original Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:01)

Trailers for other releases from ClassicFlix are also included, and the keepcase insert contains an inner print featuring a photo of the three principals.

Cause for Alarm! Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Vis a vis the "swear jar" alluded to in the Sondheim comment linked to above, one of the interesting things about Cause for Alarm! is how it offers a heroine with a seemingly very secure moral compass who is nonetheless thrust into a situation where she just might have to compromise those qualities. It's probably enough to make even a stalwart religious type drop a curse word or two. Cause for Alarm! is ultimately kind of silly, and Bruce Cowling is pretty easily outmatched in the acting category by both Young and Sullivan, but the film has some geniune moments of passing anxiety. ClassicFlix offers a little remembered film with decently solid video that can't quite overcome some inherent hurdles, and with audio that has some occasional issues as well, but which offers a really interesting early Previn score. With caveats noted, Recommended.