Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Alex da Silva Jenny (Heddy Lamarr) marries the local wealthy businessman Isaiah (Gene Lockhart) purely for money and a position of power. She plots his downfall, his son Ephraim's (Louis Hayward) downfall and that of her friend Meg (Hillary Brooke) by stealing her boyfriend John (George Sanders). She is bad news. No-one wins in this story.The cast do a good job in this film which starts well. However, the pace slows down before picking up again with the introduction of John just over half-way through. Geeorge Sanders just about gets away with portraying a tough lumberjack type despite his accent, and Hedy Lamarr's accent strikes an occasional odd chord. However, she is good in the lead role and is both funny and convincing as a wicked woman, eg, the scene where she arrives at Isaiah's house after getting a beating from her father which she seems to have enjoyed. Watch how she pulls down the back of her dress to reveal her bruising to the housekeeper whilst looking seductively over her bare shoulder at Isaiah in order to gain his interest sexually.The film has some stand-out funny moments that centre around Jenny's behaviour but I felt let-down by the ending. It's too convenient. Still, the film is worth keeping on to despite the occasional slow sections.

christopher-underwood Clearly hampered to some extent by the Hays Code, this is still a pretty eventful melodrama starring Hedy Lamarr as a scheming little vixen, ever, it seems on the look out for a more handsome or more wealthy gentleman. Gene Lockhart is excellent as her older first husband but George sanders seems all wrong just doing his thing as her final beau. Much twisting and turning here as Hedy's character breaks all the local rules yet still manages to acquire power and influence. Begins as if it is set to be a simple tragic tale as the daughter of a drunk seeks some rich guy to see her safe and then becomes more of a trail of vengeance on polite society before buckling under the code restrictions and pulling itself back from what might have been a delirious ending.

classicsoncall In one of those strangely odd coincidences that manage to surprise me somewhat frequently, the last movie I watched and reviewed happened to be "Blazing Saddles". Harvey Korman portrays a character in that film named Hedley Lamarr, and spends a good portion of his time correcting virtually everyone who calls him Hedy. This morning, as I'm about to select a film to watch from my Mill Creek Entertainment Mystery box set, the very first disc I pull at random offers this entry featuring the real Hedy Lamarr. Decision made.This was actually my first time seeing Lamarr in a picture, and though she wasn't that impressively good looking following that rippled water effect, her beauty continued to emerge and intensify throughout the story. Ironically, her character was the kind of person you could love to hate, but at the same time, had a vulnerable quality that made you feel sorry for her at the same time. In that regard, her performance was undeniably effective as a conflicted and troubled woman who immediately set her sights on a new conquest no sooner than she had secured her latest victim. And yet she always manages to make it seem so innocently believable. Her explanation to Meg Saladine (Hillary Brooke) for stealing her fiancée is classic - "The storm, and the excitement, and then lightning struck"! Lightning indeed.I'm really not willing to buy Jenny's first marriage to old Isaiah Poster (Gene Lockhart), even if it set up a convenient path to wealth and security. Isaiah seemed to have that Ebenezer Scrooge thing going for him, which got it's comeuppance in that strange church scene where the minister managed to embarrass the citizenry into funding his church expansion. It seemed to me that Jenny could have been a little more patient and waited things out until she met some attractive young lawyer fresh from Boston, but then we wouldn't have had this story.By 1946, the idea of a film's leading lady dying at the finale wasn't entirely novel. Bette Davis had theater goers in tears at the end of 1939's "Dark Victory", but hers was a much more sympathetic character. A clue to Jenny's inevitable demise is offered earlier in the story by the traveling Bible thumper Lincoln Pittridge - "Your beauty has made you evil, and evil destroys itself".

GManfred Imagine my shock when I popped this into the DVD player. The beautiful Hedy LaMarr acting instead of standing still,etc. It is a period piece and it requires Hedy to play a part reminiscent of Scarlett O'Hara, complete with the multiple husbands and moral expedience.This must be arguably her best performance. There is lots of storyline here and she is ably supported by veterans George Sanders and the underrated Louis Hayward,who play it straight minus their signature smirks.Dennis Hoey (Insp. LeStrade from the Holmes series) plays her father but for most of his time on screen he is in a drunken stupor. Well worth seeing, this is a very good film. I don't know if it was an A or a B in its time but it qualifies as an A.It is a shame it is in Black in White - Miss LaMarr should only be seen in Color.