George (Laird Cregar) is a young composer who is working on a concerto. At the same time, he's had trouble with strange blackouts....and one lasted 24 hours! During this time, he had no idea what he did nor where he was and he's worried that he might have done something criminal during this latest blackout. This is because he found a knife in his pocket and a man had just been murdered. The police doctor (George Sanders) checks into it and insists that George wasn't responsible for the killing...or at least that there is no evidence he did it. However, the man sees that George is under extreme stress and he suggests George go out an have some fun and take a break from his work.

During this break, George goes into a cheap musical hall and soon is captivated by a lovely but black-hearted singer, Netta (Linda Darnell). She soon convinces him to write music for her and she pretends that she's in love with him. For some time, she strings him along with promises and lies until eventually he learns that she's been dating another man and is planning on marrying him! What's next? And, will there be further blackouts?

This is a very good but sad film to watch...sad because Cregar lost a lot of weight for this role...so much that it, combined with amphetamines, killed him at age 30. It's a real shame, as he's good in the film and it would have been his breakout role...moving from supporting villains to a leading man.

You can tell that this is a quality production for Twentieth Century-Fox. The music is lovely and extremely high quality, the street set is pretty amazing and the story is well directed and well written. I particularly like the Guy Fawkes Day bonfire scene as well as the fire at the end...so creepy. Well worth your time. My only complaint is that I think the film might have been even better had George's actions during the blackouts been more vague up until the end.

In 1903, in London, the prominent classical pianist George Harvey Bone (Laird Cregar) stabs a shop owner to death and set his store on fire. He returns home with amnesia, a dagger on his pocket and blood on his blazer and he meets his girlfriend Barbara Chapman (Faye Marlowe) and her father Sir Henry Chapman (Alan Napier) waiting for him. George is composing a piano concerto to make his debut in a symphony concert and is stressed with the situation. What he does not know is that when he hears dissonant sounds he turns into a killer. George confesses to Barbara that he cannot recall what he did along that day and when they read the crime of the shop owner in the newspaper, George decides to see Dr. Allan Middleton (George Sanders) from the Scotland Yard and discloses what happened. Dr. Middleton investigates the case and tranquilizes George. However he advises George to see other persons and have entertainment. One night, George goes to a pub and meet his acquaintance Mickey that introduces him to the ambitious untalented singer Netta Longdon (Linda Darnell). She seduces him and uses George to compose melodies to raise money with Mickey and spend his money in dinners in fancy places. When George proposes Netta to get married with him, he learns that he was used and she will marry Mickey. He returns home and accidentally drops his violins, producing a dissonance. What will happen next?

"Hangover Street" is a melodramatic crime film with a particularity since the killer is known in the first scene. Therefore there is no mystery but the screenplay keeps the attention of the viewer until the very last scene. The black and white cinematography and sets are top-notch, showing London in the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The music score by Bernard Herrmann is awesome and Laird Cregar convinces in the role of a pianist in his last work. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Concerto Macabro" ("Macabre Concert")

Hangover Square turned out to be the premature farewell performance of Laird Cregar who starred as the mad composer/pianist who both creates beautiful music, courtesy of composer Bernard Herrmann and strangles people who get on his wrong side.

The film if it had to be a farewell was a great one as it is dominated by Cregar's performance who like in The Lodger gets both the pity and revulsion emotions going with the viewer. Cregar is all the more frightening because he seems like an overgrown child.

Scotland Yard has put an early version of a forensic psychologist in the person of urbane George Sanders on the case. Oddly enough Cregar comes to him to try and find an explanation for the blackouts he's suffering which occur not coincidentally around the time of another strangulation.

His last victim is Linda Darnell who is a saucy vixen of an entertainer in need of new material. So Cregar the classical composer goes to work for her giving her music hall ballads for her act. She's stringing him along toying with some very unstable emotions. She comes to a most interesting end.

This is also the only film I know which worked the British holiday Guy Fawkes Day into the plot. As you know those across the pond celebrate it with bonfires and it's certainly an interesting way director John Brahm uses it.

The famous Hollywood legend about how Laird Cregar endangered his health by trying a crash diet and then going for surgery to shrink his stomach is supposedly because Cregar wanted to get leading man roles, but his big frame and girth worked against that. After Cregar died another actor who embraced his big frame and girth and played a variety of roles that Cregar might have been considered, came on the scene. That fellow's name was Raymond Burr.

Still Hangover Square is a wonderful if premature farewell for a great talent who left us at least an appreciable body of work to gauge his talent.