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• Uneven but worthy of attention for crime film fans

  • Pretty Sinister
  • 3/14/13

  I love the opening title sequence. A real attention grabber. Contrary to another review here I found Margaret Lockwood's performance to be the saving grace of the film. Her crass character is perfect and she's one wily woman, too. So easy to dimiss these types of characters if you fail to look beneath the surface. Lockwood does fascinating work here. To me the writing in her scenes was clever and ambiguous. I never knew if Freda (Lockwood) was scheming to do in Teddy (Bogarde). The entrance of Kay Walsh as Charlotte is probably a dead giveaway for devotees of this type of film. Still I enjoyed the film. The atmospheric photography by Jack Asher (Hammer Horror master of the camera) sets the mood. Screenplay by John Cresswell does an excellent job of opening up the one room set of this story originally written for the stage. The finale becomes a bit over-the-top and excessively melodramatic. It doesn't fit well with the cat-and-mouse tactics of the characters in the first three quarters of the movie. Overall, though I definitely recommend it. It's perfect for crime fiction fans. But if you don't like unpleasant characters, then stay away.

• Well made but hard to watch

  • Commenter77
  • 3/7/12

  Looked forward to Margaret Lockwood especially, but didn't like her switch in this. What a waste for a beautiful, elegant woman to do bourgeois vulgar, regardless of the talent it took to do it. I can't like this one. It compares unfavorably with similar others such as Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel, dark motive venues with many question marks and instability. Those were keepers in my view. This one just gets on the nerves for the wrong reasons. The Lockwood character is so tacky, she's difficult to endure. Bogard is too raw in his hungry greed. Both of these detract and distract from anything else. Definitely would not wish to view again.

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