Strange Illusion

(1945)

85 minutes

Film / Drama / Suspense / Film Noir

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

Cast:

Jimmy Lydon as Paul Cartwright
Warren William as Brett Curtis
Sally Eilers as Virginia Cartwright
Regis Toomey as Dr. Martin Vincent
Charles Arnt as Professor Muhlbach
George Reed as Benjamin
Jayne Hazard as Dorothy Cartwright
Jimmy Clark as George Hanover
Mary McLeod as Lydia
Pierre Watkin as District Attorney Wallace Armstrong
John Hamilton as Bill Allen 
Sonia Sorel as Charlotte Farber
Victor Potel as Mac, Game Warden
George Sherwood as Langdon
Gene Roth as Detective Sparks

Paul Cartwright, a sensitive young man still shaken by his father's death a couple years previous, has a dream in which he witnesses the violent car crash that took his father's life, not as an accident, but as a murder. In the dream he also sees his mother, Virginia, and sister Dorothy being seduced by a shadowy stranger, who Paul fears may be his father's murderer. After returning to school, Paul still cannot shake the awful dream, and when the peculiar Brett Curtis comes to court his mother, Paul realizes that the occurrences in his dream are beginning to come true. He enlists his friends and the family doctor to help him uncover the secrets hidden in his nightmares before his mother gets tangled in the web of deceit spun by the mysterious and dangerous Mr. Curtis.