Posted on 08/08/2026 12:52:28 PM PDT by simpson96
Marsha Peters (Ella Raines) plays an amateur sleuth trying to save the man she loves from the electric chair in Arthur Lubin’s Impact. The owner of a car mechanic shop, Marsha takes a liking to drifter Walter Williams (Brian Donlevy), offers him a job and takes him home to meet her mother. What she doesn’t know is that Walter is a “murder victim.” Days earlier, his wife Irene had plotted for her lover to beat Walter to death when stopped to repair a flat tire; the plan went awry and it’s the lover’s unrecognizable corpse that the police (and Irene) have mistaken for Walter.
A scene from Impact.
My mother's stepfather was a doppelganger for Charles Coburn.
I saw this back in the ‘90s and it was very good. Bryan Dunlevy is a really underrated actor.
Great film noir. Always felt Brian Donlevy should have got to do more of them, he was very down to earth in this one. Ella Raines!
Impact, Detour and Dark Passage: three outstanding films noir.
Thanks a ton! Going to watch this tonight.
Thanks! Watching it now. I LOVE noir and Brian Donleavy. He was wonderful in “The Great McGinty.”
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