Hulkeasexo it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

blanche-2 If something is really good, I will forgive plot holes or situations that stretch the imagination. I won't do it here."Lightning Strikes Twice" stars Ruth Roman, Richard Todd, Mercedes McCambridge, and Zachary Scott. Roman plays an actress, Shelley Carnes, who has been sent out west for her health and is going to a dude ranch. The talk on the train is about Richard Trevelyan who was convicted of murdering his wife and received a death sentence. He was given a stay of execution pending a new trial and freed because the jury had one holdout who thought he was not guilty.When her car gets stuck in the mud, Shelley is helped by a man in a house nearby, who turns out to be Trevelyan. She leaves the next day. The dude ranch, it turns out, is closed. She is invited by the caretakers Liza and String (McCambridge and Darryl Hickman) to stay for a few days anyway. She has already met their neighbors, who were friends of Trevelyan. Everyone seems to be looking for him. She learns that Liza was the one holdout on the jury. Because he wasn't convicted, the people in town are nasty to her (reminds me of the Casey Anthony trial where the local restaurants wouldn't serve jurors). Liza believes in his innocence.Shelley meets Richard again, and the two of them fall in love. Shelley wants to prove him not guilty. But was he? This noirish film was a nice diversion thanks to the acting, but it had a few problems. The first is, what the heck was Liza doing on the jury if she knew this guy? Doesn't that suggest a certain prejudice? Second, things happen too fast. Roman and Todd are madly in love after one kiss and a couple of days. Third, why was Zachary Scott in this film? Talk about being superfluous, and he was hardly in it anyway.Richard Todd is miscast as Trevelyan. He and Roman make a beautiful couple, and Todd was a good actor, but he is out of place in the west, given his accent and bearing. As someone on the board suggested, Scott may have been a better choice for the role, or Jim Davis.The rest of the acting is very good, with a strong performance by Mercedes McCambridge and a solid one by Roman. In the end, though, this film is pretty routine, though atmospheric.

bkoganbing After getting an Oscar nomination for The Hasty Heart, British actor Richard Todd did a few more American films before returning to the United Kingdom. Some like A Man Called Peter were top rate and some like Lightning Strikes Twice fall right apart at the beginning. There is no way that Mercedes McCambridge would ever have gotten on a jury where Todd was the defendant. In this case he was being tried for murder. She was the holdout on the jury that swung the case to acquittal by reasonable doubt. As someone who knew the defendant that is impossible.McCambridge is the reason to see this film, her intense style of acting carries it over a lot of rough patches, but not enough. Ruth Roman on vacation for her health gets involved in the local controversies where Todd's arrest and trials for murdering his tramp of a wife are the number one subject of local gossip. Roman stays at a dude ranch run by Mercedes and her brother Darryl Hickman. And she falls for Todd, but soon the doubts appear.Zachary Scott is on hand as well in a surprisingly small role as a rather sleazy playboy. Scott is always good, we should have seen more of him.Lightning Strikes Twice has not worn well over the years.

Neil Doyle You know something's wrong with a film when you keep asking yourself, in the middle of plot complications, where is Zachary Scott? He's given fourth billing in the screen credits but doesn't appear until the first hour is over. And after watching the film, it's clear that he would have been a better choice than Richard Todd to play the man suspected of killing his wife, rather than the playboy cad he always played.Richard Todd almost sleepwalks his way through his miscast role as a newly released jailbird exonerated of being guilty, except when staring intensely at Ruth Roman. Poor Ruth Roman has a heck of a time trying to decide which side to take in the stories she's heard about a man suspected of killing his wife. She meets that man (Richard Todd) on a dark and stormy night and from that moment on it's anyone's guess as to whom the real culprit is.Is he going to tell her what really happened to his murdered wife or is he staying mum to hide the truth or shield someone else? All of it is pretty contrived, asking us to believe that people behave in ways that defy common sense. Roman's character accepts Todd's innocence long before she has any right to do so, and the Mercedes McCambridge character is never given enough depth to suddenly change and revert to someone else for the final showdown.Everyone acts with their face toward the camera rather than facing each other whenever there's a moment of confrontation or even an intimate chat taking place. It's a cinema device encouraging the viewer to notice the subtle changes of expression on the faces, to better illustrate what their feelings and inner thoughts are. Unfortunately, it comes across as making the acting seem ludicrously over-the-top--no subtlety at all.Ruth Roman and Mercedes McCambridge, more than anyone else in the cast, uses this emoting device throughout. This seems to be a trademark of '50s acting--or at least it is under King Vidor's direction.Despite its faults, LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE remains watchable and taut as it winds its way toward a twisted resolution. Just don't expect too much, but it will keep you intrigued.

dbdumonteil King Vidor's movie are at their best when they depict greed,passion,mad love ,hate: so are "Duel in the sun" "fountainhead" "beyond the forest " and "Ruby Gentry" .Jennifer Jones was par excellence the romantic actress ,Bette Davis ("Beyond the forest") was at her bitchiest .Ruth Roman is too cold and too emotionally remote to convey such feelings.I'm much more interested in Mercedes McCambridge's Liza but sadly her part is underwritten and except in her final scenes she is not given a single chance to shine.Ditto for Richard Todd as Richard: we want more of Zachary Scott ,whose character is much less bland than the hero.Todd/Roman are an unexciting pairing.That said,it is a well-told story even if there are plot holes .But the film lacks focus ,intensity,madness,Vidor's trademark.