What a delightful discovery! I never would have imagined that William Castle, the master of gimmicks and ridiculous horror films, could have directed such a moody, tense, and wonderfully atmospheric thriller as When Strangers Marry. The film, which centers on a young wife who begins to suspect that her husband might be a murderer, incredibly outshines Suspicion (1941), an earlier film with a similar plot directed by none other than Alfred Hitchcock. There are a handful of magnificent sequences that I can only imagine would have made the Master of Suspense green with envy: the suspected husband flummoxing a sideshow carny who boasts that he can guess anyone's profession with only three guesses; a couple on the run being forced to share a cramped cab with a screaming infant; a hallucinogenic scene where the wife is plagued with visions of people calling her husband a murderer while traveling down a darkened tunnel at night. It reminds me of another early noir with a run-time that barely exceeded 60 minutes: Boris Ingster's Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). Both made up for their low-budget production short-comings with excellent performances, hyper-stylized sequences reflecting their characters' inner paranoia, and a crackerjack script. Where When Strangers Marry falters is that it gives away its major twist with an unfortunate bit of casting. The moment this character appears you know that he's up to no good. They should have invested in a more milquetoast actor. I bet Elisha Cook, Jr. would have been perfect.
8/10
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