The House on Carroll Street

When I checked this one out of the library, I thought it might be an early 50's film-noir about spy smuggling but it turns out to be a 1988 effort to reconstruct an era circa 1951 when World War II memories were fresh and looking for Reds was becoming a national pastime.

Unfortunately, the reconstruction of 50's scenes comes off a whole lot better than the picture. Jeff Daniels does a nice little job as the government agent with a heart but the story has more holes than McCarthy's logic.

Kelly McGinniss spends the movie being pursued--in libraries, on roof tops, in train stations, you name it, but there's something lacking--I think it's called a plot.

They would have been better off chucking the Nazi bad guy stuff and straying with the McCarthy smear of our heroine. Do it in black and white and build the picture of the sinister democracy it could have been.