Forget-Me-Plot

They cut all the "crime" from his brain
plus where he hid ill-gotten gain
His gang, in pursuit
of stashed stolen loot,
then chased him down memory lane

Edmund O'Brien and Audrey Totter star in Man in the Dark (Lew Landers, 1953), the second 3-D feature of the early fifties. In this remake of the 1936 film The Man Who Lived Twice, O'Brien plays a con who has brain surgery to remove his criminal tendencies, but suffers a side-effect of amnesia. The black-and-white crime drama started life with the standard two dimensions, but after the huge success of Bwana Devil, shooting was halted, and the script was quickly rewritten to include gimmicky 3-D effects. It was then rushed back into production and release--beating the premiere of the much larger-budgeted "depthie" House of Wax by a mere two days. Unfortunately, the climactic sequence at a carnival was shot using two-dimensional rear projection, which flattened any 3-D effect.