Nightmare Alley Review

This carnival-set noir is the kind of cult movie once found only on late-night TV or in rundown fleapits — environments best suited to its sleazy charms — but now available to a wider audience via the rather less romantic format of DVD. Tyrone Power excels as an amoral grifter, and the carny atmosphere is brilliantly evoked as the camera prowls the shadows while dialogue crackles to gloomily poetic effect. A suitably eccentric detour involving a spiritualist con only adds to the strange and heady brew.