Among the Living (1941) DVD-R

Starring Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward, Harry Carey, Frances Farmer,
Gordon Jones
Directed by Stuart Heisler

Print: black/white
Runtime: 67 min.
Genre: drama
Print Quality: B

Paul Raden (Albert Dekker), hopelessly insane son of Maxim Raden, hated
owner of the Radentown mills, is in a strait jacket in a secret room in the
family mansion, while the body of his father is lowered into a grave.
Twenty-five years earlier, the brutal father had hurled Paul against a wall
when the young boy had tried to defend his mother and, with his brain
injured forever, Paul's last memory, before descending into the shadows
on insanity, was his mother's agonized scream. At the graveside are Dr.
Ben Saunders (Harry Carey), Paul's twin brother John (Albert Dekker) and
John's wife Elaine (Frances Farmer.) Pompey (Ernest Whitman), the family
servant who has cared for and guarded Paul and kept the family secret
for a quarter of a century,watches from afar. That night Dr. Saunders tells
John that his twin, who he thought dead, is alive as the father, refusing to
commit him to an institution, had bribed the doctor to sign a false death
certificate and then bury another child's body as Paul. John and the
doctor visit Radenhouse and find Pompey strangled and Paul vanished.
While they search frantically for Paul, the latter revels in his freedom and
falls in love with the first girl he meets, Milly Pickens (Susan Hayward), an
unemployed mill worker. He wanders into a honky-tonk filled with dancing
jitterbugs (Patti Lacey, Roy Lester, Ray Hirsch and Jane Allen), where a
pretty blonde, Peggy Nolan (Jean Phillips), flirts with him. Her body is
found the next morning near the closed-down Raden Mills. Terrorized by
the second murder and the thought that a homicidal maniac is on the
loose, the town goes mad with fear and greed when Dr. Saunders tricks
John into offering a $5,000 reward for the killer. Milly purchases a
revolver and persuades Paul, whose demented mind has forgotten the
murders, to accompany her to Radenhouse on her hunch that the
murderer is hiding there.