WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS REVIEWED
“While The City Sleeps” has a weird history on home video in America. The last major VHS release was in 1990 and then it went missing for a long time. It’s kinda funny, as the film was one of the first strong crime tales involving excessive media coverage. John Drew Barrymore plays The Lipstick Killer and Dana Andrews plays the media-heavy executive that knows how to solve the case. Well, that’s the thing. The film hinges upon a media company offering its top executives a promotion for bringing a serial killer to justice.
What follows is a series of adulterous affairs, corporate backstabbing and more people using the media to get rid of the competition. At times, the Lipstick killer feels like an afterthought. Fritz Lang assembles an amazing cast to tackle a story that seems to grow beyond his reach at every turn. Yet, he remains afraid to keep poking holes in the rising power of media in the 1950s. Honestly, this feels like the kind of movie that could’ve blown up had it been released a decade later.
But, such is history. Pick this one up ASAP.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Nothing
A/V STATS
- 2.00:1 1080p transfer
- DTS-HD 2.0 MONO
