William Asher's The Shadow on the Window 1957

 One of the many pleasures of Turner Classic Movies is discovering overlooked and forgotten B films.  The Shadow on the Window is a surprise from director Asher, who went on to direct 131 episodes of "Bewitched" before his later films with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, including Beach Blanket Bingo in 1965.  Asher was in tune with the zeitgeist  and The Shadow of the Window is one of many films of its time that emphasize what was called "juvenile delinquency" and though it does deal with crime and is dark in details it does not qualify as a film noir in the traditional sense, if only because of its lack of fatalism.  A stenographer (Betty Garrett) has been hired by a wealthy rancher and since she is separated from her husband she brings her seven-year-old son (Jerry Mathers) with her.  While her son is playing outside three young thugs attack the rancher and kill him and when Mathers hears the noise he looks through the window and runs off, traumatized to the extent he can't even talk.  He runs to the highway where some truckers pick him up and take him to the police, where his father (Philip Carey) is a detective.  Since Mathers can't talk the search begins for Garret, taking Carey and associates on a trek thought broken homes (as they were called then) and dive bars to find anyone who would know anything.  Eventually they reach the truckers who picked up Mathers and storm the house where Garrett is being held hostage.  Two of the thugs are dead by then and the last one is shot by Carey, as mother and son are reunited.

I have left out much detail, in what is a B film of only 76 minutes, as the police confront unfaithful husbands and abusive fathers in their search.  Garrett and Mathers, mother and son, had planned to go to Disneyland after her job with the rancher but were interrupted by the young terrorists.  Garrett had been in a number of musicals, including On the Town (1949), before she and her husband had been confronted by HUAC, after which it was hard for her to find work in movies, though later she did a considerabl amount of television, as did the rest of the cast; Jerry Mathers was the Beaver in "Leave It to Beaver" (1957-1963).  The delinquents (John Drew Barrymore, Corey Allen, Gerald Sarraciai) are effective characters and Asher directs vividly the many character actors in the film (Jeanne Ferguson, Diane Delaire, Mort Mills are particularly vivid in small roles). Cinematographer Frank Carson and screenwriters Leo Townsend and David Harmon spent their careers mostly in televison, sharing credit with Asher for the crisp and uncluttered quality of this black-and-white film of terror, policework and family difficulties.