This combination of searing melodrama and subversive social critique is one of the key American films of the 1950s, a high point in the careers of lead actor James Mason and director Nicholas Ray. Mason gives one of his best ever performances as Ed Avery, a happily married schoolteacher who agrees to take a new 'miracle drug' when diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease. It is not long before the medication begins producing malevolent and murderous side-effects that bring to the fore all of Ed's long-repressed frustrations with his life. Barbara Rush plays Ed's devoted wife, Christopher Olsen is his cruelly punished son and Walter Matthau appears as his faithful colleague.