"The Night Runner" is a confusing movie. It's not sure if it should be a nice film about mental health with a positive message or if it should be a story inspired by "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"! I personally think it should have taken one path or the other...but unfortunately it tried to be a little of both and the results are only okay at best.

Roy (Ray Danton) has been hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital for a couple years. After all, he is moody and has fits of anger that make him dangerous. However, the hospital is over capacity and needs the beds and Roy is discharged sooner than his therapist wishes.

What follows is Roy's moving to the Los Angeles area and his trying to adjust to life on the outside. He seems like he's trying hard to make it and you want to see him succeed. He has a lovely girlfriend and a job. However, about midway through the film, he goes berserk and murders someone with only moderate provocation...and here's where it seems that the film is no longer about mental illness and rehabilitation but is more a horror-suspense movie.

As I mentioned above, the film tries to work both sides and the overall story is sadly impacted. It could have worked either way, with him being a dangerous menace or him getting his life together...but not as it was. It forgets realism and just goes for thrills and frights...complete with 'looney' sound effects! As a result, the film is just okay when it could have been so much more.

Ray Danton is in a psychiatric asylum; under pressure, he had cracked and tried to kill some one. His psychiatrist thinks he is getting better, but not yet ready to be released. The supervisors point out the overcrowding, the fact he is carrying more than three times his recommended patient load, and asks how much good he can do Danton or his other patients. And so Danton is released. He tries to get a job as a draftsman, but when asked about the two-year gap since his last employment, he runs. At a bus stop near te ocean, he finds the people friendly, so he moves into a motel run by Willis Bouchey and his daughter, Colleen Miller. He starts to feel better, and falls in love with Miss Miller, and perhaps she with him. But how long can this return to normalcy last.

Abner Biberman's last movie as director -- he continued to work on episodic television until the early 1970s -- is a well-meaning study with a plea for better psychiatric funding. It's directed in a dry fashion, and Danton is pretty good in the lead role, aided by George Robinson's subtle lighting changes and a score that well reflects the moods of the lead.

First of all, I really cannot understand the title: the main character is never seen running, days or nights. Even the title with which the film was distributed in Italy (yes, I'm from Italy) - contrary to the usual - makes more sense: it translates as "the seagull's shriek".

Roy has been released from a mental institution, mainly because the hospital is overcrowded with patients. He meets young Susan, and they fall in love. Susan's dad, Loren, is fiercely against the liaison.

The film could have been a lot better were it not for the following unexplicable glitch: Roy murders Susan's dad, without anybody suspecting him. Then, a few seconds after confessing his crime to his sweetheart (who - as I said - had no idea), he literally says: "Now I have to kill you too, because you now know what I've done", and pushes her down the cliffs. Are we joking?