Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Majorthebys Charming and brutal

SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

clanciai This is a miniature but a very efficient one. Ida Lupino is one of those actors I never found lacking but on the contrary raising every film she was in to a top level. She excelled in acting parts where she could make something great out of a small character, and this is a typical example. She gets a job as a caretaker at a large but desolate mansion of a great past but with a very dark secret developing into a looming mystery of constantly more threatening proportions, as Ida finds herself persecuted by the same kind of ghost that evidently scared away Jennifer, the previous lodger. No one knows what became of her, she just vanished without a trace, and that's the mystery, which immediately starts to haunt the vulnerable Ida, who gets more and more possessed by it. Two male characters also haunt the place and act as some kind of aids but seem both very suspicious, and she definitely cannot trust them and even less the more helpful they are. What's really happening is that everyone is keeping a secret from her, and as she can get no clue to the threat of this fact she naturally feels more and more exposed to unknown dangers, and she has a right to be. It all ends up to a shocking climax, making the structure of this film very similar to many Hitchcocks, especially "Suspicion" with Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine 10 years earlier. The interest and quality of the film lies entirely with suggestions and innuendos, shadows speak more than words, the moods take over and dominate reality, and you get involved in Ida's increasing terror of the unknown. It's a marvellous small film and the greater and more interesting for its fascinating minimalism.

jarrodmcdonald-1 What I most love about this film is the way we are kept off-guard about who the title character is, and why she has this power over a meek caretaker named Agnes (played by Lupino). To say Jennifer is a ghost is only half-right. Maybe it is easer to say she is a living woman or a way of life that possesses the weak. But the story maintains its hold on the viewer as Lupino's character struggles to get to the bottom of things. It plays out in spots as an unhealthy obsession. And Howard Duff, Lupino's real-life husband, who appears as the love interest seems to have his own obsession where Agnes is concerned, wresting her away from Jennifer.If you get the chance to look at JENNIFER, and especially if you see JENNIFER twice or more, listen carefully as you hear the dialogue. The lines lead in multiple directions, and it is like the mystery only grows deeper about who and what is overtaking Lupino and Duff until they finally confront the truth about the life they live. Also, listen carefully to the music. There's a record that Lupino's character finds, that is replayed throughout the story. Plus during a nightclub scene, we are shown a man singing a tune called 'Angel Eyes,' while Duff holds Lupino close and looks into her eyes. It is clear to him, and to us the audience, that something has started unraveling.It's a profound film, infused with the type of atmospheric touches that can only come from smart cinematography that takes full advantage of on-location filming. And it is anchored with an extraordinary performance by its lead actress. Ida Lupino shined in so many classics over the years, but I think this one has to be her best.

BILLYBOY-10 Ida Lupino hasn't "been well". She's just bundle of paranoid nerves quite frankly and arrives at the old empty mansion as caretaker. She immediately becomes obsessed with the prior caretaker, cousin Jennifer, who has disappeared. Ida hears noises..sounds..things that go bump in the night and then Howard Duff appears. He runs the village store selling scotch. Soon Ida's obsession with Jennifer gets spooky and all the time the background music with the high-pitched, Yoko Ono "wooo-wooo" screechy warbling and the record playing "vortex" doesn't help matters, but Duff perseveres and manages a smooch from Ida. Toss in the ever so slightly loony local college boy, Orin who fuels Ida's out-of-hand obsession and you have one flaky Ida. After much running in and out of the mansion, slamming doors, a terror in the basement boiler room, Duff calling for Ida, more annoying wooo-wooo soundtrack and a now fully hysterical Ida accusing Duff of murdering Jennifer, all thing come to a fully calm and serene ending except for the schmaltzy lingering shadow. Could that shadow be trying to tell us that even tho all's well that end's well, it isn't? Is Ida just as slightly if not more wacko-o than when she first arrived? This is a cheapo and you can tell, but what the heck---with nothing better to do, why not give it a shot?

ptb-8 I wish I could have met Ida Lupino. When people ask who you if you could have 6 extraordinary 20th century persons over for dinner, well, for me one person would be her. I think she is now one of the great unsung and unprofiled personalities in the film industry. Her life story would make a great tele movie (Hey, Mr Bogdanovich........). Ida Lupino has been the driving force in many fascinating noir films of the 40s and 50s. I can remember being saddened at seeing her reduced to a horrible part in a ghastly AIP film is the late 70s. She was bitten by a big worm at the kitchen sink. Ugh. I should have contacted her then as she died not long after.. more from the part than the worm too. From High Sierra, Roadhouse and the extraordinary RKO thriller On Dangerous Ground, Ida Lupino was often the producer and the lead actress. Later, with her husband Howard Duff they produced many now timeless noir dramas that are still very engrossing today. One of them is JENNIFER which I think is the last film with a Monogram Pictures copyright. Monogram changed the company name formally to Allied Artists in 1953 and JENNIFER has both company names on the opening credits. This is a superior haunted house thriller equally as scary as both The Innocents and The Haunting made 8 years later. Really chilling and very creepy, this tiny film is exactly the sort of really good film Ida Lupino made and was responsible for. Try and find it...you will always remember it and as I feel, much admiration for this great and almost forgotten actress/producer.