A Cry in the Night is a 1956 American thriller film noir starring Edmond O'Brien,[2] Brian Donlevy,[3] Natalie Wood[4] and Raymond Burr.

[10] Eighteen-year-old Elizabeth “Liz” Taggart and her boyfriend Owen Clark visit a lovers' lane where childlike voyeur Harold Loftus secretly watches them.

Director Frank Tuttle had worked with Ladd on a number of occasions, most recently on Hell on Frisco Bay, a film starring Edward G. Robinson, who was initially discussed for the lead in A Covenant with Death.

David Dortort took the book's outline and reconfigured its details to make the characters more compelling: the sex fiend was now a repressed mamma's boy.

The boyfriend would no longer be relegated to the margins of the story, but would join the father in the hunt, where the two would have plenty of dramatic tension and mutual disrespect crackling between them.

[19] In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Richard W. Nason called A Cry in the Night a "rather tasteless and makeshift melodrama.

"[1] Margery Adams of The Boston Globe wrote: "The film moves surprisingly slowly, considering the content of the plot ... Miss Wood appears unusually stupid in dealing with her captor—as a policeman's daughter it would seem that she should know a little more about using psychology on a mentally retarded misfit.

"[20] Wanda Hale of the New York Daily News wrote: "It's good advice the film gives but the story doesn't match it in sincerity.