Night Has a Thousand Eyes 1948

Late one night in Los Angeles, oil geologist Elliott Carson, John Lund, stumbles into a shocking moment when his girlfriend Jean Courtland, Gail Russell, seems to leap toward an oncoming train and only Elliott’s quick intervention stops her from disappearing into the night. After this harrowing incident, the couple heads for a quiet dinner at a restaurant, where they encounter John Triton, Edward G. Robinson, a self-styled clairvoyant who swears he can glimpse the future. Elliott accuses John of trying to push Jean toward death so he can grab Jean’s fortune, and the confrontation sets the stage for a tale that blends romance, danger, and prophecy.

To prove his gift, John unfolds a long memory from twenty years prior. In that earlier time, John, his fiancée Jenny, Virginia Bruce, and Whitney Courtland, Whitney being Jean’s father, were touring with a magic act when John first discovers his ability to foresee events. Trusting in his powers, Whitney uses John to guide gambling and stock-market decisions, slowly amassing a fortune. During one performance, John foresees Jenny dying after she gives birth to their child. Hoping to spare her life, John leaves Jenny with Whitney and advises him to buy land in Oklahoma. Jenny and Whitney marry and conceive a daughter, Jean, but Jenny dies in childbirth, leaving Whitney to raise Jean as a widower.

John’s story then shifts to the present: three months earlier he reads a newspaper article about Whitney striking oil on his Oklahoma property and moving the family to Bunker Hill. A vision of Whitney dying in a plane crash prompts John to relocate in search of his old friend—and of Jean. He finally finds Jean and tries to warn her, but Whitney dies in a plane crash in New Mexico before they can speak. Though John’s premonition seems to have come true, he entrusts Jean to him, and, recognizing John’s friendship with her father, Jean asks if he can foresee her own fate as well. John warns her that she will die within one week on a clear night, beneath the stars.

Following the tale, Elliott visits the police to verify John’s background. They confirm that Whitney’s plane crash may not have been purely accidental, noting that the propeller shaft appears tampered with. Meanwhile, a frightened Jean remains at the Courtland estate, prayerful for a safe outcome as a group of oil workers—ones who oppose a merger with the Courtland holdings—converge on the property in search of paperwork that would jeopardize the deal. John, meanwhile, has a fresh premonition of his own death by gunshot, and of Jean’s death at the feet of a lion. During the night, an unseen assailant tries to smother Jean in her bed, but she survives the attack.

The next evening, John is questioned by the police about his visions and the surrounding danger. As eleven o’clock draws near, the Courtland grounds tense with fear: a man quietly twists the hands of the grandfather clock, causing it to chime prematurely. Jean believes she has escaped her fate, stepping out into the garden, but the killer strikes moments later. John lunges to intervene, yet is shot to death by responding officers who mistake him for the assailant. The killer is revealed to be one of the oil workers who opposed the Courtland merger. At the crime scene, Elliott discovers a letter in John’s pocket describing his own death, a grim forecast that came true as he sacrifices himself to save Jean.