UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Sanjeev Waters A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

udar55 Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw) arrives in San Francisco to meet her recently freed POW husband Paul (Frank Latimore). With his arrival delayed, Janet spends the night alone in the hotel and is woken up around 1am by a dream. In the apartment adjacent to hers she hears arguing between Dr. Richard Cross (Vincent Price) and his wife. She watches as he murders her and it puts her in a state of shock, so she is unresponsive when her husband finally arrives. The doc examining her recommends a preeminent psychiatrist who just happens to be...Dr. Cross! With Janet housed at his institute, Dr. Cross conspires with his lover/nurse Elaine (Lynn Bari) on how to be get rid of this witness.A excursion into video roulette led me to this fun little horror- thriller that might be one of the first REAR WINDOW-type stories for the screen. Director Alfred L. Werker does a good job of moving things along quickly (the film only runs 70 minutes) and scores best in terms of atmosphere on a rainy night at the sanitarium. The cast is fine all around. Price is very good in his role as the doctor who is very conflicted on what he has done/is doing and seems to be helpless against the will of femme fatal Elaine. It is funny to me to see a time where a doc will suggest all sorts of crazy things to try on a patient and the husband is full blown "whatever you need to do, doc!" The story was completely ripped off for an entry titled "Mute Witness to Murder" in William Gaines' "The Crypt of Terror" in 1950; it was later adapted for HBO's TALES FROM THE CRYPT with Patricia Clarkson in the lead female role and Richard Thomas as the crazed doc. John Boy, how could you!

arfdawg-1 A very young Vincent Price before he turned to over the top horror movies.It's a silly little movie with very late 40s / early 50s psychological tripe.Some of it is reminiscent of Hitchcock in the direction. None of the acting is especially good. Price really wasn't a great actor. The other characters are horrible. Not really a good movie.The plot Dr. Cross, a psychiatrist, is treating a young woman, Janet Stewart, who is in a coma-state, brought on when she heard loud arguing, went to her window and saw a man strike his wife with a candlestick and kill her. As she comes out of her shock, she recognizes Dr. Cross as the killer. He takes her to his sanitarium and urged by his nurse/lover, Elaine Jordan, gives Janet an overdose of insulin. But he can't bring himself to murder her in cold blood and asks Elaine to get the medicine to save her. She refuses, they argue, and he strangles her. He saves Janet's life, but now faces two murder charges.

classicsoncall And of course, he WAS punished but it was all so anti-climactic. Vincent Price strolled amiably off screen with District Attorney O'Neill (Reed Hadley) when it was all over, and the lack of a final explosive confrontation took a lot of the steam out of the finale. Up till then, Dr. Richard Cross's (Price) crime served as a back drop in a tense psychological game in which he and conniving mistress (Lynn Bari) sought to convince Mrs. Janet Stewart (Anabel Shaw) that she was slowly losing her mind. The theme was well established in the early Forties with a couple of treatments of "Gaslight", and the soft spoken, genteel manner of an actor like Price was quite suitable for his role here. Ultimately though, the picture misses the mark somewhat as Price's character goes bonkers a second time and chokes out his paramour. At that point, both the viewer and the good doctor realize that it's close to curtain call. With a little better writing, he might have gotten patient Edwards to take the fall and gotten away scot-free.

dougdoepke The movie had all the makings of an expert thriller, but somehow peters out near the end. Psychiatrist Cross (Price) kills his wife in a fit of violence. The trouble is Janet Stewart (Shaw) sees him and goes into shock. And guess who they send her to for treatment. Will she survive, especially since the Doc has a nurse (Bari) more calculating than he. Great suspenseful premise, putting the mouse under protection of the cat. Director Werker adds a number of effective noirish touches, including a can't-quite-get-there dream sequence. It's also Price at his most restrained, years before his stock and trade as a leading Hollywood ham. The relatively unknown Shaw is also excellent during her non-comatose moments. Doc Cross is an interesting character. He's quite rational except for moments of violence that appear more impulsive than calculated. He's really rather weak, unable at times to control his emotions, an oddity for a head doctor. The real force is nurse Jordan, cold, calculating, with an obvious sexual hold over Cross. In short, she's a spider woman, seeking to replace Cross's murdered wife. I think the movie would have more impact if she were given more screen time. As things stand, she remains something of an unrealized background figure. The ending seems pretty bland and abrupt, without the imagination of earlier parts. It's almost like the script, cast, and film stock, were suddenly in short supply. Nonetheless, if the movie doesn't quite fulfill its premise, it does manage a number of imaginative moments, at a time when Hollywood seemed fascinated with mental illness and the emerging science of psychiatry.