Synopsis
What horrible fascination did this monster have for women?
A mentally unstable man, who has been kept in isolation for years, escapes and causes trouble for his identical twin brother.
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Among the Living
Cast
Albert Dekker Susan Hayward Harry Carey Frances Farmer Gordon Jones Jean Phillips Ernest Whitman Maude Eburne Frank M. Thomas Harlan Briggs Archie Twitchell Dorothy Sebastian William Stack Jane Allen Rod Cameron Eddy Chandler Lane Chandler Catherine Craig Jack Curtis Abe Dinovitch Mimi Doyle Jim Farley Christian J. Frank Kit Guard Frank Hagney Chuck Hamilton Len Hendry Ray Hirsch John Kellogg Show All…
Director
Producers
Writers
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Cinematography
Art Direction
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Studio
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Alternative Titles
活在其中, Herança de Ódio, Среди живущих
Releases by Date
Theatrical limited
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USANR
Theatrical
19 Dec 1941
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USANR
Releases by Country
USA
12 Dec 1941
- Theatrical limitedNR New York City, New York
19 Dec 1941
- TheatricalNR
Popular reviews
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Spoilers ahead, but none of them are actually surprising.
The story of Among the Living is completely ridiculous — no one among us is going to buy a scenario in which a wealthy industrialist's dead twin brother turns up alive, mad, and murderous, causing nearly catastrophic disruption in his brother's life. But Albert Dekker is so good as Paul, the sheltered, damaged brother, that it's impossible not to be engaged in the ridiculous story, and the way the film shines a light on the public's thirst for violence is both striking and memorable.
Whereas we hardly know John, the married, upper class, well-adjusted brother (also Dekker, except clean shaven) at all, apart from to notice his strange passivity, we come…
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Proto-noir, I guess you could call this, but more accurate to call it a southern gothic B thriller, wherein Albert Dekker plays both a successful businessman (or lawyer? anyways something like that), John Raden, and his mad twin Paul, believed dead for 25 years. Except that for some convoluted reasons involving the father, a local doctor and a shady deal between them, Paul is alive and has been kept hidden away all that time.
All good things must come to end, of course, and that end is sparked by the death of the father. There follows a series of high-jinks that are sometimes hard to believe, sometimes hard to follow, and which lead fairly quickly (this runs barely over an…
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Stuart Heisler’s film-noir in which an unstable man causes concern for his duplicate twin brother when he escapes from prison. Starring Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward and Frances Farmer.
The story concerns a mentally unstable man who, having been kept in isolation for an incredibly long time, who gets away and causes trouble for his lookalike twin brother.
Albert Dekker gives a good performance in his double role as John and Paul Raden, the twin brothers involved, with John having to be careful with himself and Paul not being a likeable character because of his actions.
Elsewhere, Susan Hayward as Millie Pickens, Harry Carey as Dr. Ben Saunders and Frances Farmer as Elaine Raden are all fine in their respective roles,…
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-”You're not afraid . . . at all?”
-”For five thousand dollars, I'm not afraid of anything, not even death!”What can I say? I saw Susan Hayward and Frances Farmer in the cast and Stuart Heisler behind the camera (a year before he helmed The Glass Key) and just jumped in blind. So what did I find? A Southern Gothic lunatic-on-the-loose saga (where almost no one sounds remotely Southern) that culminates with mob frenzy and a “trial” of the large marsupial varietal.
I blame myself.
John Raden (Albert Dekker #1) returns to the hometown that bears his name for his mill owner father’s funeral only to learn from the family doctor (Harry Carey) that his identical twin brother, Paul…
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Hello Letterboxd people. Chad here. Been busy working the seasonal optional overtime of a 59 hour work week. And then had 17 beers early the next day. Coors because it's relatively cheap. I counted the crushed empties. Would I work that many next week? Maybe I'll just do the regular 36 hours and just chilllllll haha.
But I still have many goodies to log in here. One such is this rare noir called Among the Living.
AMONG THE LIVINGI love this freedom. Free to go anywhere that I please. All these happy people having a good time. I like people. This drink makes me feel strange. I can't believe that girl left me. Just because I told her that…
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If you have a hidden, evil twin brother, they will commit a heinous crime. That’s sorta the law.
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Odd, almost horror story where locked-up maniac twin goes loose and experiences the world for the first time in decades, with family and family friends getting in trouble for what they've done. Absolutely a curio, but a bit dreary to really to be anything essential.
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a superb horror noir; stranglings, back alley chases, rowdy bars, mob justice, exhumed graves, an evil twin & a haunted house; also, a film starring Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward AND Frances Farmer?! this is truly a cursed cast (each of their individual lives were truly fascinating & macabre towards the end); available on YouTube, highly recommend seeking out, full write-up here
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There's plenty going on in this movie that barely qualifies as a film noir (it was released in 1941, at the beginning of the cycle). The plot is too complicated to recount here, but it involves the faked death of a child, a serial murderer, and twins (played by Albert Dekker). Susan Hayward stars as a woman who constantly needles one of the twins about his masculinity. A mob forms to find the killer after a reward of $5,000 is offered, leading to some bizarre cultural commentary. Bonus: for Nirvana fans, the actress Frances Farmer has a small role. For Anthrax fans, well, you know what I'm talking about.
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AMONG THE LIVING (1941)
"A mentally unstable man, who has been kept in isolation for years, escapes and causes trouble for his identical twin brother."
Casting shadows of Southern Gothic overtones and sending shivers of noir through the body, Among The Living is a mix of subgenres including social drama, suspense thriller, and even a bout of horror. It's a short 67 minute black and white picture that offers a simplistic story- mentally unstable twin brother of an affluent man breaks out of his mansion room prison, kills a couple of people on the outside, and becomes manipulated by an attractive dame. It's an enjoyable looking film that kept me entertained for the most part, but it doesn't really have… -
Further proof that B-movies could be visually polished when made at a major studio like Paramount. Cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl, a German emigrant who shot a bunch of Lubitsch’s early silents and Renoir’s La Chienne, gives this a sophisticated look that would today be called a noir aesthetic. The story, compressed at 67 minutes, lurches along illogically, but that’s part of the B-movie charm. Eventually it rushes into a version of Lang’s Fury impossibly fast, like in a nightmare.
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Very interesting gothic proto-noir that modulates through gothic horror and crime/ noir tropes, something Heisler seems to had a flair for as you can see some of these same gothic modes in little flashes in The Glass Key from the following year. The Kino Blu Ray has an excellent commentary by Jason A. Ney that provides a lot of interesting context and background.