I love this brilliant home invasion film. I watched it in the cinema in 2002 and was completely blown away by it. It’s a slick thriller that any writers would do well to study if they want to learn about plot, and the plotting of a good, tight story. The film-makers take a simple enough premise as the basis for a story, then just keep ramping up the tension till the whole thing explodes in a massive crisis.
Jodie Foster is excellent as Meg Altman, a recently divorced woman who moves into a fantastic four-storey brownstone in New York City’s Upper West Side. Her millionaire ex-husband is in pharmaceuticals, so he can afford the rent, and he now lives with a supermodel, the prick, after breaking up his marriage.
With Meg is her pre-teen daughter, Sarah, played by a boyish-looking but unmistakable Kristen Stewart from TWILIGHT. The house is miles too big for them, of course. What the hell do a woman and a child want with all that space? The house lends itself perfectly to the plot, however.
On their first night in the huge, largely empty old house, it’s dark, windy, rainy and altogether spooky. Three men break into the house. When Meg spots them purely by accident on the security cameras in the panic room next to her bedroom, she grabs up a sleepy Sarah from the floor above and the pair of them flee for safety to the panic room.
Irony of ironies, the reason the three men have broken in is in the panic room, i.e., a stash of cash or bonds hidden there by the house’s previous occupant, a millionaire. This means that the terrified mother and daughter can’t just sit out the robbery in peace and comfort in their panic room. Those three guys are hellbent on actually coming in…
Forest Whitaker plays Burnham, who installs panic rooms for a living and works for the security company who services this particular house. Jared Leto plays the millionaire’s spoiled, bratty grandson, who’d prefer to steal his Grandpa’s bonds and keep them all for himself rather than wait for everything to be doled out legitimately in the will.
The third guy, Raoul, is a real loose cannon, a thug brought along by Junior. Raoul doesn’t care if he kills or maims anyone on this job, and that’s the difference between him and Burnham. Burnham doesn’t want anyone hurt and is deeply unhappy with the fact that the mother and daughter have moved in to the house a few days earlier than they were expected to.
Burnham is the only thing standing between Meg and Sarah and the nasty ugliness of Raoul’s foul nature and Junior’s greed and impulsivity. Will he come through for them? Add to all of this the fact that Meg gets claustrophobic when in small spaces and Sarah is prone to diabetic comas and needs her glucose injections. From a special bag. Which is not in the panic room. Oh, and Meg hasn’t connected the panic room phone yet…
The tension just keeps being ramped up and up, as I said earlier, until everything all spills over into a breath-taking climax. Jodie Foster, even though I believe she was pregnant at the time, is particularly athletic and throws herself all over the place in a really impressive manner for the duration.I just love the film, anyway, and I have good memories of seeing it in the cinema. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it too. It does exactly what it says on the tin.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books: https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64 The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1781994234
JOAN CRAWFORD: THE ULTIMATE MOVIE STAR- A FEATURE-LENGTH DOCUMENTARY. (2002) WRITTEN, PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY PETER FITZGERALD. NARRATED BY ANJELICA HUSTON.
What perfect viewing for a lockdown Saturday! I absolutely love Joan Crawford, she of the fur coats with the wide shoulders and the imposing eyebrows. She’s every bit as good an actress as Bette Davis, her one-time screen rival and her co-star in one of the best psychological horror films of all time, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962).
Maybe more people have a soft spot for Bette Davis than they do for Joan Crawford, though, and I suppose the book (1978) and the subsequent film (1981), MOMMIE DEAREST, about Joan’s alleged mistreatment of her children and especially her daughter Christina, didn’t do the lady any favours. I still love her work though. She really was an incredible actress, a true star in an era when that word truly meant something.
MILDRED PIERCE is the film for which Joan Crawford won the coveted Oscar. Along with another of Ms. Crawford’s wonderful old films, GRAND HOTEL, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library Of Congress as being ‘culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.’ That’s a great honour, by the way, as if you didn’t know…!
MILDRED PIERCE is the story of a downtrodden, unhappily married housewife who makes a conscious decision to improve her lot for the sake of her daughter Veda, whom she thinks deserves only the best things in life.
Mildred leaves her deadbeat husband, Bert, who may or may not be seeing a certain blonde Mrs. Biederhof on the sly, and then works her fingers to the bone until she’s the proud owner of a chain of successful restaurants. Now that’s how you do it, ladies.
The heartbreaking thing about this film, of course, is this: the more riches, treats and goodies Mildred bestows on her spoilt, selfish ungrateful daughter, the more Veda throws the whole lot back in her face. Nothing is good enough for the snobby Veda.
Except, maybe, for her mother’s second husband, the caddish and weak Monte Beragon… That little bitch. She gets one good backhanded wallop from Joanie in the film for her despicable rudeness and ingratitude, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough by a long shot. That kid is poison, pure poison.
Joan Crawford gives a powerhouse of a performance as the mother whose efforts to improve and enrich her daughter’s life have not yielded the results for which she would have hoped. On the contrary, they’ve ended in disaster. It’s a lesson for the parents of today who lavish too much of everything on their kids. As a result, the kids don’t value or appreciate things the way they should.
Poor Mildred, busting her hump for a child who will never repay her with the love and gratitude she thinks she deserves. Veda is an extremely unlikeable character and it’s hard not to root for Joan to cut her off without a cent. She’s possibly one of the most easy-to-dislike characters in a film from that era. The actress who plays her is still alive, actually, an amazing feat of longevity.
I much prefer the character of Wally Fay, Joan’s dynamic business partner and would-be lover. He sure does dig a dame with a pair of gams that don’t quit…! Mildred’s first husband Bert is weak and doesn’t put his foot down about Veda to Mildred. A pity. A few good spankings from her father might have turned Veda into a nicer person. Monte Beragon is that most despicable of swines, the gadabout cad-about-town who sponges off women and cheats on them to boot.
Prissy from GONE WITH THE WIND (aka Butterfly McQueen) does a nice job of playing Mildred’s maid. Remember in GWTW when Prissy told Scarlett she was an expert at ‘birthin’ babies,‘ and then when Scarlett found out she was lying she gave poor old Prissy a backhander that you could probably hear all the way out to Tara? Happy days.
I also love Ida, Mildred’s manageress, beautifully played by Eve Arden. She’s a game broad who’s been there, done that and hand-stitched the bloody T-shirt. She’s wise to men and their tricks, in other words. She’s a good friend to Mildred, probably more of a friend than any of Mildred’s husbands, lovers or suitors have ever been.
Also, check out the scene with the typically American policeman from the ‘Forties who doesn’t feel like ‘taking a swim.’ That’s one way of putting it. American movie cops and health workers, eg, sanatarium olderlies, are always being portrayed as horribly unsympathetic, cold and short on understanding in the films of the period. Can you imagine having been a female rape victim in these times and bringing your story to the police? It doesn’t really bear thinking about, does it? I suppose it was the same in all countries back then.
My own copy of MILDRED PIERCE comes complete with some rather spiffing extra features, the best of which is undoubtedly the feature-length documentary from 2002: JOAN CRAWFORD: THE ULTIMATE MOVIE STAR. My kids and I watched this over the Saturday night takeaway and we were so glued to it our chips went cold.
It literally tells the story of Joan Crawford, from her birth as Lucille Le Sueur in the early 1900’s to her death in 1977, by which time she’d cemented her position as one of the greatest stars of the Golden Era of Hollywood. Her oeuvresare mostly truly marvellous films.
Women will certainly love the films and guys will too, if they love classic movies from the days of the big studios when a film was called a ‘picture’ and a real star made some of the so-called ‘celebrities’ of today look like total nobodies. Miaow…! Sorry about that.
Joan started her career as a dancer and a chorus girl. She was apparently a brilliant dancer and she loved to dance. In the ‘Twenties, she was seen as the perfect embodiment of the flapper: the gay girl-about-town who danced till all hours and was never seen without a fancy martini in her hand.
‘Early Joan,’ as I call her, does indeed make the ideal ‘Twenties girl. She’s stunningly attractive and doesn’t even look like the Joan Crawford she eventually grows into, the Joan with the strongly-defined lips and eyebrows and the glamorous fur coats and massive shoulder-pads.
A whole host of people who knew Joan, including her former husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and her adopted daughter Christina Crawford, talk on-screen about their memories of Joan. Some of these memories are very moving, while others are humorous or just plain fascinating.
We know that Christina wrote her infamous book, MOMMIE DEAREST, after the reading of her mother’s will at which it was revealed that Joan hadn’t left so much as a penny to Christina or her brother, ‘for reasons which are well known to them.’
I’ve read the book myself and it does make for uncomfortable reading. If it’s all true, then Christina deserves our sympathy. I still love Joan’s movies, though. Am I allowed to say that? Well, I’ve said it anyway.
One of the interviewees in the documentary comments that it’s a shame that the book kind of overshadows some of the accomplishments that Joan actually achieved, such as making her way all alone in a man’s world, first as a movie star and then as the ‘First Lady of Pepsi-Cola’ after she married Alfred Steele, its managing director.
We hear about Joan’s rivalry with fellow stars Norma Shearer and Bette Davis, and how she outlasted all the big female MGM stars of her day except for Davis herself. We hear about how Joan’s unhappy and maybe even abusive childhood caused her to constantly seek approval, admiration and adulation from the people around her. In fairness to her, she treated her fans really well and was never too tired to sign autographs or reply to fan letters.
We’re told of her obsession with cleanliness that probably has its roots in her childhood and the alcoholism that seems to have gone largely undetected by the public until Joan was quite old.
We hear about her many husbands and about the way in which she was a consummate professional in her work. Not only could she cry on demand but if she was asked to produce a tear, she’d even say: ‘Which eye…?’ I’m a woman too, but even I can’t cry on demand, never mind out of a specifiedflippin’ eyeball. I need to work up to it, lol.
As a big horror fan, I was thrilled to see Betsy Palmer, otherwise known as Mrs. Pamela Voorhees from the FRIDAY 13TH films, sharing her memories of Joan for the camera. Joan apparently treated actress Mercedes McCambridge as a rival. The name Mercedes McCambridge will of course also be familiar to horror fans, as this lady went on to do some rather famous voice work in the most iconic horror film ever made, THE EXORCIST.
‘Your mother sucks cocks in hell, Karras…!’
We hear about how Joan slept with her directors in order to bind them to her and how she was once upstaged at a grand event by Marilyn Monroe in a tight, low-cut dress with her legendary tits locked, loaded and ready to fire. Now that was kinda funny…!
Christina Crawford talks about the notorious ‘night raids’ which resulted in the infamous ‘NO WIRE HANGERS!’ scene in the movie MOMMIE DEAREST, in which Joan was wonderfully played by Faye Dunaway who looked uncannily like her subject.
We hear about the horror films that were the only films that Joan could find work in towards the end of her career. There is no shame in working in a horror film. Bette Davis, who incidentally turned down the leading role in MILDRED PIERCE when it was offered to her, starred in BURNT OFFERINGS, one of the best horror flicks ever made, when she was in her sixties. Starring in horror is nothing, I repeat, nothing to be ashamed of. Some of Joan’s horror films, like STRAIT-JACKET and SUDDEN FEAR, are films I’m now dying to get my mitts on.
The documentary is every bit as good as the film itself, MILDRED PIERCE. It’s a fascinating insight into a Hollywood that doesn’t exist any more, and an absolute must-have for fans of Joan Crawford’s.
She always felt like it was her fans who made her a star. Wherever she is right now, I’m sure she’s ticking off names on a list and writing her famous thank-you notes, about which she was most assiduous, to the folks who still watch her movies. If you want to be sure of getting yours, then watch the film. Happy Monday.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
This lady has a few domestic thrillers to her name by now (THE GIFT, THE SISTER, THE DATE, THE SURROGATE), and all with the most gorgeous, eye-catching covers you’ve ever seen.
THE SURROGATE, as you can probably guess, involves a woman having a baby for another woman, one who can’t have her own for whatever reason. Katherine White, known as Kat, seems to have it all, but only on the surface.
Sure, she’s got her handsome hubby Nick, her lovely house and her fulfilling job at her husband’s best friend’s charity, but her hubby is being distant towards her and Kat suspects he may be having an affair, may even have fathered another woman’s child, and she’s convinced that someone is watching her lovely house, might even have broken into it at one point, but for what reason?
Kat is a woman with a lot of secrets from her past life. Tied up inextricably with this past life is her best friend from her childhood and teenage years, Lisa. Lisa has turned up again in Kat’s life, just when Kat is trying to cope with the crushing disappointment of her and Nick’s second attempted foreign adoption having fallen through.
‘Why don’t I have a baby for you and Nick?’ Lisa eagerly offers. Kat is shocked. After everything she and Lisa have been through together in their past, stuff which we as readers are not yet privy to, why would Lisa offer to do such a monumental, selfless thing for her? But Kat’s longing to one day hold her own baby in her arms over-rides her doubts and she finds herself agreeing to Lisa’s bizarre proposal.
Lisa gets pregnant with Nick’s sperm (enter Mr. Turkey Baster!) almost immediately. Kat is in the seventh heaven of delight. But little things keep niggling at her. For example, who is the man with the salt-and-pepper beard who is watching their house from the road and, sometimes, from even closer than that?
Why has Nick left his blue scarf in Clare’s house, and why does Clare’s daughter Ada look so much like Nick? Who is the man from Kat’s past whom she loved, and maybe still loves, even more than she loves Nick, and what does he have to do with Lisa?
And, speaking of Lisa, why does she seem reluctant to let Kat accompany her to her baby scan? After all, Kat and Nick have shelled out thousands of pounds to Lisa so far, for agreeing to have their child for them. They’re out of pocket because of it at this stage. Is there a chance that Lisa could be scamming them, perhaps with the help of another man from Lisa and Kat’s joint past…?
The twists come thick and fast in this one. In fact, it’s so twisty-turny that I had trouble keeping up with it, and I found one or two of the twists a trifle hard to believe as well.
Still, fair play to Louise Jensen; she’s worked out a good,complicated little plot that gradually (or for the most part, anyway) knits together and presents the reader with a neat little parcel tied up in a bow.
There was one red herring, as it turns out to be, that I thought could have been gifted to the reader as yet another startling plot twist but, alas, it wasn’t to be. The writer also has an obsession with her characters’ physical skin, I mean their actual epidermis, that I found made me feel a bit squeamish, especially when she was putting it on nearly every page: ‘My skin prickles; my skin is tingling; my skin is slick with sweat.’ Hmmm. Methinks someone has an itty-bitty little fetish…!
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline.You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
For a long time there, way back in the mid-Noughties, I read nothing but thrillers. I devoured the writings of Patricia Cornwell with her heroine Kay Scarpetta, and also the works of Karin Slaughter, Lisa Gardner, Nicci French and Sophie Hannah, all women because man thrillers are booooooring, lol. I stopped reading them then for a while, going back to my beloved chick-lit and historical biographies. Everything comes in cycles, phases.
Now, FRIEND REQUEST by Laura Marshall, her debut novel as it happens, has persuaded me to dip my dainty hoof back in the thriller-pool once more. The title drew me first and foremost. FRIEND REQUEST? Like the movie UNFRIENDED, it was clearly a novel about Facebook. I bloody love Facebook, even if I don’t get to spend as much time on it as I’d like, ie, twenty-four-seven.
It’s one of those ‘I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER’-type scenarios, where an adult female is plagued by the memory of what she and another friend did to a girl in school a quarter of a century before, and then the memory becomes so much more than just a memory when it appears like she’s being stalked by the actual girl they bullied.
Which would be bad enough, I suppose, to have your past come back and bite you in the ass like that, but when the girl you tormented is supposed to have died all those years ago, well then, it’s suddenly a much more frightening situation. Here’s the deal.
Louise is a single mum in her early forties. Living in London, divorced from Sam whom she’s known from her school days and slaving away at her own interior decorating business, her main aim in life is to be a good mum to her and Sam’s four-year-old son, Henry. But Louise is not exactly happy in herself even though, to an outsider, she might appear to be.
Something that happened at her school-leaving party twenty-five years ago has positively haunted Louise ever since. It involves another girl, a girl called Maria Weston, who died that night and has, presumably, been as dead as a doornail ever since. As is usually the case with death, as I’m sure you’ll agree. However, Maria may not be as dead as she’s appeared to be for all these years…
One day Louise, a Facebook addict because Facebook is understandably an important social outlet for women with children and/or busy careers, receives a friend request from a Maria Weston. The Maria Weston? How can it be? Maria’s been dead since the night of the Leavers’ party. Hasn’t she?
Then an invitation arrives on Facebook for Louise, an invitation to a school reunion for the Class of ’89. That’s the year Louise left school and Maria left this life, supposedly.
Terribly nervous but unwilling to stay away, either from the reunion or from her murky past (a bit like probing incessantly with your tongue at a loose tooth), Louise makes contact through Facebook with the glamorous, flirtatious Sophie, her bitchy ‘best friend’ from those long-ago school days.
Sophie knows what Louise did to Maria, because Sophie did it too. They’re both to blame, both in it up to their tonsils. Both women are going to attend the reunion. And so is someone else. Someone else who knows that what happened to Maria Weston couldn’t have been ‘just an accident’ and who is determined to make the guilty parties suffer as Maria must surely have suffered before she died.
Louise and Sophie haven’t a clue how close they’re sailing to the wind. Will either of them survive the ‘reunion’ of the Class of ’89 and- just a thought- who exactly organised this reunion, anyway? How come it’s a woman that Louise has never heard of, a woman she knows for a fact was never in school with the rest of them…?
I just loved this book, although Louise was such a frustrating character. She tells so many lies to disguise her part in what happened at the Leavers’ party that she’d need a full-time secretary to keep track of ’em.
If she just once told the bloody truth, the awful guilt and misery of the last twenty-five years could have been alleviated somewhat but oh no, why tell the truth when you can complicate things with a series of lies, each more convoluted and baffling than the last? Well, you know what they say. ‘O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive…’
I loved the character of Esther, the girl who was a social outcast at school but who now has surpassed all of her school bullies and left ’em far behind with her handsome hubby, brilliant legal career and presumably better-looking, smarter nicer children, heh-heh-heh.
She can quite justifiably raise the middle finger of her right hand at her school bullies now and say, whatcha think of me now, bitches, am I hot or what? I hated Polly because she reminds me of a woman I know whom I can’t stand.
The book really captures the supreme bitchiness and sheer nastiness of teenage girls in school. It’s no wonder some girls are driven to contemplate suicide. The way the plainer or dumpier or swottier girls are treated by the so-called ‘popular’ girls is so cruelly insidious that it can make a girl feel like she’s not fit to live. Anyone who’s in any way different can come in for ostracising, exclusion, teasing, little- or not so little- jibes, body-shaming or fashion-shaming, name-calling, the whole works.
It’s so wrong, especially as half the time all that ‘popular’ means is quite simply skank, anyway. Will drop knickers in exchange for the class ring of the captain of the football team and so forth. Giant sluts, in other words. Screw ’em. They totally aren’t worth your time and effort.
This is the only kind of thriller I will read from now on. Written by a woman about women, plenty of human interest and just the right amount of technology in the form of social media, not technology-heavy like the boring man-thrillers I mentioned earlier. I’m glad I took a chance on FRIEND REQUEST.
If Laura Marshall in the future writes a series of detective novels featuring a detective with a ridiculous name (Cormoran Strike, what’s that about, JK Rowling?) who has to solve ever more bizarrely convoluted crimes, I shall bow out gracefully, but FRIEND REQUEST hits exactly the right spot. I can read thrillers again, now that they’ve been made accessible by this kind lady scribe.
Laura Marshall is a very good writer, by the way. The plot is paced just right with all the twists and turns coming at pretty much exactly the right time. I’m guessing that she’s a big Alfred Hitchcock fan, as I am myself, and the only thing I was disappointed by in the book was the fact that more wasn’t made of the upstairs neighbour, Marnie.
At one point, after she went mysteriously quiet, I was convinced that Marnie had been killed or otherwise removed and that someone else- a very menacing someone else- had taken her place as the occupant of the upstairs flat. Ah well. You can’t win ’em all.
Laura Marshall’s writing is easy to read and effortlessly faultless in grammar and sentence structure. She even uses the words ‘nascent’ and ‘opprobrium’ in their correct context, which annoyed me no end, lol. Huh. Uppity writer.
Who does she think she is, anyway, with her big words and her fancy plot-lines and her keen insight into the bitching that goes on between teenage girls and the strict hierarchical structure that sees the rich pretty girls, the skanks and the whores all jostling for position at the top of the ladder while the fatties, the swots and the goths occupy the lowest rung? You know what? I think I’ll send Miss High-and-Mighty Laura Marshall a friend request…
THREE LITTLE LIES by Laura Marshall is out now.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens’ fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
This fog-wreathed silent movie has the distinction of being the first real thriller ever directed by a certain Alfred Hitchcock, and the distinction also of being a bloody good film as well.
It already bears some of the future hallmarks of the great man’s directing and, in fact, it’s a jolly polished product for a first-timer. Not many thriller directors could have achieved such perfection on a first try.
Thirty-eight years have elapsed since Jack The Ripper held the city of London to ransom in the infamous ‘Autumn of Terror’ in 1888, and here now we have Alfred Hitchcock presenting us with this spooky tale in which a serial killer of women murders an attractive blonde female every Tuesday, regular as clockwork. Well, it’s good to be regular, lol. There’s a whole branch of the pharmaceutical industry devoted to that very end, after all. (Excuse the pun…!)
This is probably one of the first ever films to make reference to Jack The Ripper or be based on him. The man who savagely slaughtered Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly in the Autumn of Terror in 1888 gave rise to an absolute plethora of books, films, magazine articles and word-of-mouth stories all detailing his horrific crimes for the reading public who, seemingly, couldn’t get enough of him. We could be looking here at one of the first few films based on his infamous career of butchery and hate.
Funny too, that Alfred Hitchcock should begin his illustrious career almost mythologising blondes, when we all know now that he had a big thing for them in his later works. Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren, Eva Marie Saint, Grace Kelly, even Doris Day, all gorgeous glamorous ice-cool blondes to set the pulses racing and the temperatures soaring. Someone had a definite fetish, heh-heh-heh.
Anyway, off we pop now back to London in the ‘Twenties, as fog-wreathed, dark and mysterious a city as it was in Saucy Jack’s time. A bevy of beautiful blondes are being done to death every week by a madman calling himself ‘The Avenger,’ leading blondes to wear dark wigs as a means of protecting themselves from the marauding murdering maniac.
We go now to the Buntings’ house. Ma and Pa Bunting, a traditional middle-aged English couple, have rooms to let. Pa Bunting sits at the kitchen table reading the newspaper in his shirt-sleeves while Ma Bunting cooks up the vittles.
Now meet Daisy Bunting, their ravishing blonde (yes, blonde!) daughter who works as a model or mannequin for a nearby fashion-house. She’s a thoroughly modern Millie, is Daisy, with her ‘golden curls’ cut short in the style of the time and her legs, shown off to perfection, encased in the hose and high-heeled shoes that were all the rage amongst the young women of the day. Long skirts and dresses were out. Showing off yer shapely pins was in, in in…!
She’s a proper little flapper, this one, with her smart little cloche hats hugging her neat little head, and of course she has a suitor. The Boyfriend is a tall strapping capable fellow, a police detective no less, and one who’s investigating the ‘Avenger’ murders to boot.
Daisy and The Boyfriend rub along together just fine, and no doubt the Buntings are thrilled skinny that a chap with such a good pensionable job is taking an interest in their Daisy, an interest which might very easily lead to matrimony. After all, doesn’t The Boyfriend himself remark to the Buntings:
‘As soon as I’ve put a rope around the Avenger’s neck, I’ll put a ring on Daisy’s finger!’
However, along comes the titular ‘Lodger’ to set the cat royally among the pigeons. One dark foggy night, Mrs. Bunting opens the door to a tall dark-haired young gentleman with a scarf wound round his face. He’s come about the room to let. As he’s willing to pay a month in advance, Mrs. Bunting is more than happy at first to accommodate the handsome stranger.
He’s a queer duck though, is this one. For a kick-off, he asks Mrs. Bunting to take away the pictures in his room, which are all of golden-haired young women. Hmmm. Very odd indeed, wouldn’t you say?
He’s certainly a bit of a rum cove and no mistake. When he meets the golden-haired Daisy, however, he demonstrates no such aversion to blonde females. The pair are instantly attracted to each other.
The Lodger, with his air of mystery and his chalk-white face painted to resemble a chorus girl’s, complete with Clara Bow lippie, is utterly enchanted by Daisy, much to The Boyfriend’s disgust.
How dare this poncy fly-by-night swoop down and take Daisy away from him? How dare he buy her an expensive dress from the fashion-house where she models? Such a gesture smacks rudely of an intimacy which disturbs The Boyfriend no end.
The Buntings are none too pleased either, especially when The Lodger’s mysterious nightly comings and goings seem to coincide with the movements of The Avenger, who’s continued to commit his ghastly murders even while we’ve all been caught up in the super-exciting love triangle between Daisy, The Boyfriend and The Lodger.
The Buntings and The Boyfriend all come to the same dreadful conclusion. If The Lodger is The Avenger, who signs his killings with his chosen moniker so we know whodunnit, then isn’t Daisy’s life in the most appalling danger? And hasn’t she this very night gone off into the fog with The Lodger without so much as a by-your-leave to the Buntings or The Boyfriend…?
The scenes near the end, that are not quite the end, resemble the grim finale of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA from 1925. I’ll say no more than that. The foggy gaslit streets of London deserve a credit all their own, and Alfred Hitchcock an even bigger credit for managing to make his debut thriller so marvellously, gothically atmospheric.
There’s a twist in the film- you know Uncle Alfred’s a big fan of a twist in the tale/tail- and to think that he made this film nearly a hundred years ago boggles the mind. I love that something so completely perfect and perfectly complete was made so long ago. It’s a must-see for Hitchcock fans. I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens’ fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
‘I killed him for the money. And for a woman. I didn’t get the money, and I didn’t get the woman.’
Walter Neff, insurance agent.
You can tell from the writing credits (Wilder, Chandler, Cain) just why DOUBLE INDEMNITY is one of the best and darkest film noir thrillers ever made. And the performances don’t exactly suck either.
On the contrary, they shimmer and steam with tension and desire all the way through. Not just with sexual desire, although there’s plenty of that, but with the desire to enrich oneself financially while simultaneously ridding oneself of the millstone around one’s neck, a husband who’s outlived his usefulness. It’s the old, old story, isn’t it?
Fred MacMurray, a fine handsome slice of ‘Forties beefcake, plays Walter Neff, an insurance agent who finds himself one afternoon in the lavish home of bored housewife Phyllis Dietrichson, portrayed here by Barbara Stanwyck. Walter doesn’t mind that her husband, the wealthy breadwinner to whom he would have pitched his sales spiel, is out. He couldn’t care less about the husband once he claps eyes on the wife.
Phyllis, the second wife of this Dietrichson fella, is stunningly beautiful, and don’t she just know it? Her glossy blonde hair falls in artlessly silky rolls and waves, her make-up is flawless and she dresses to seduce, with bling and cling wherever you choose to look.
Walter is immediately smitten with her. The sight of the slim, slinky gold chain winking expensively around one elegantly crossed ankle is his undoing. Bam! He’s in love, head-over-heels in love, and the attraction is mutual.
The conversation turns to murder surprisingly quickly. Walter initially walks out on Phyllis when he susses out that she wants to take out a whopping insurance policy on her cruel, abusive husband, then arrange a little ‘accident’ for the unfortunate man shortly afterwards.
But it doesn’t take long for the spider to lure the fly back into her parlour, which smells heavily of honeysuckle. ‘Murder smells like honeysuckle,’ I betcha ya didn’t know that. The fly takes the bait.
The stage is set for the demise of Mister Dietrichson. The two conspirators concoct a plan that has always seemed to me to be needlessly complex and dangerous. Too much could go wrong. Too much does…
Why does Walter do it? He loves her, of course, and he desires her more than he’s ever desired any woman in his life before. The money is not to be sniffed at either. But there’s another reason. It’s almost a matter of pride with him.
He’s an insurance agent, right? Day after day, he sits in his office reading fraudulent claims put in by people who think that they can fiddle their insurance. Walter and his boss Keyes, played by Edward G. Robinson in magnificent form, know every single trick in the book. Hell, they wrote the goddamned book.
Walter quite fancies the idea of being able to use his eleven years of inside knowledge to pull off the ultimate fool-proof insurance scam. But there’s no such thing as the perfect murder. And Walter always knew that Keyes would worry and worry at this case from the moment he got the bit between his teeth. Keyes can smell a fraud a mile off.
What Walter doesn’t know is that Dietrichson’s daughter Lola, between whom and Phyllis there is no love lost, has some rather disturbing information on Phyllis. It might just shed some light on the character of the woman whom, after all, Walter barely knows. It concerns Dietrichson’s first wife and the manner in which she died…
The sexual tension between the two leads is palpable. The swift, snappy quickfire dialogue they utter in their first few scenes together is a sheer delight to watch. It positively crackles with electricity. It was written by men who knew their stuff, goddammit.
When Walter and Phyllis first sleep together in Walter’s apartment on a gorgeously rainy night, you’ll see no more than the aftermath of Phyllis adjusting her blouse and Walter smoking on the couch with his shoes off, but it’s as suggestively sultry as if you’d seen them actually engage in sexual intercourse.
Of course, they knew how to do things back then. These old ‘Forties thrillers were masterful at showing without telling, if you know what I mean. A fierce embrace and the music rising to a powerful crescendo was all they needed back then to imply mind-blowing, life-changing sex, the kind of sex you’ll remember for the rest of your days.
Those were the good old days, huh? And DOUBLE INDEMNITY is one of the best examples of its genre, one of the finest of all the film noir thrillers. If you haven’t already seen it, go and find it and watch it. It’ll weave its magic on you too. I say let it.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens’ fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
DOUBLE INDEMNITY. (1944) DIRECTED BY BILLY WILDER. SCREENPLAY BY BILLY WILDER AND RAYMOND CHANDLER. FROM THE NOVEL BY JAMES M. CAIN. 
sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris 