This is a nifty little suspense film...never mind that it is somewhat improbably (all the more so since there are holes in the plot)...it's still entertaining.
It was a rather cheap B-picture, but that didn't keep one actress from shining through -- Dame May Witty as the mother who is protecting her adult son from being discovered as the murderer of his wife. To do so, they kidnap a young lady looking for a job (Nina Foch), and publicly treat her as having had a nervous breakdown, with the intent of murdering her and making it look like suicide so they can identify her body as the long-dead wife. Witty was always pretty interesting in films, and no less so here. Foch is a little less interesting, but does okay...sometimes it seems as if she is sleepwalking...but I don't mean that in terms of the plot. The son is played nastily by George Macready.
It's a rather short film, just over and hour, so it moves along at a good pace, and it makes you want to forgive the the unevenness of the script. At least until the ending, which is about as bad as any I've ever seen in a film. Still, it's an interesting suspense film which could have done extremely well with a better director. I'll give it a "7" barely, although the ending made we want to drop it to a "6".
It was a rather cheap B-picture, but that didn't keep one actress from shining through -- Dame May Witty as the mother who is protecting her adult son from being discovered as the murderer of his wife. To do so, they kidnap a young lady looking for a job (Nina Foch), and publicly treat her as having had a nervous breakdown, with the intent of murdering her and making it look like suicide so they can identify her body as the long-dead wife. Witty was always pretty interesting in films, and no less so here. Foch is a little less interesting, but does okay...sometimes it seems as if she is sleepwalking...but I don't mean that in terms of the plot. The son is played nastily by George Macready.
It's a rather short film, just over and hour, so it moves along at a good pace, and it makes you want to forgive the the unevenness of the script. At least until the ending, which is about as bad as any I've ever seen in a film. Still, it's an interesting suspense film which could have done extremely well with a better director. I'll give it a "7" barely, although the ending made we want to drop it to a "6".