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Great Film overall

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958) This dives quickly in-an heiress has come to Barcelona and a man who is apprently after her fortune shows up, at night, with cocky assurance. It's evil and it's odd. The woman is played with stern conviction by Anne Baxter, and she holds the whole movie together. The filming is vivid, and dark and shadowy from the get go, in moderately wide screen black and white. When it goes to daylight, the crips, tonal perfection of the image is quite noticeable. That might be an odd reason to like the movie, but it's quite visually beautiful. I suppose the East Coast of Spain gets some credit. Unfortunately, the plot at first comes off as improbable, with a couple of twists at the beginning that left me incredulous. But the acting is so earnest you can put up with it for awhile. When it becomes a kind of mind game between the two leads, it has some reasonable thread (some) and it is only the steely determination of Baxter's acting that keeps it interesting. The plot against this woman is elaborate, and therefore scary, held in check by the upper class politeness of all the characters. I'm sure people would compare this to Hitchcock for its personal suspense, its stylish attempts at mind games, or for echoes of "Gaslight" and "Rebecca." It's a British movie, released by Warner Bros., and it might suffer from a sense of imitating Hollywood rather than making its own mark (as Carol Reed might have a few years earlier). The British director here is Michael Anderson, who left no real imprint on film history, and the leading actor is also British, Richard Todd, and he's more handsome than compelling. So why see the film? The palette of grey tones of the deep focus photography? The torturous plot with too much talking? Anne Baxter, alone, rising above? Maybe, almost. There is enough in these elements to almost work, actually. Convolutions. And Julian Bream's wonderful guitar.

Going to town after New Years day,I found out that a new DVD shop had opened. Along with the usual US blockbusters,I was surprised to find a shelf dedicated to British DVD labels Network and Optimum Releasing,which led to me chasing after the shadow.The plot:After the suicide of her dad, (and also the death of her brother recently) diamond company heiress Kimberley Prescott goes to grieve on the family villa in Spain. Trying to make sense over the loss of two family members, Prescott is shaken from her grief by the arrival of a man,who claims to be her dead brother Ward McKenzie Prescott Jr. Running to police and family,Kimberley is horrified to find everyone disbelieve her that a stranger has stolen Ward's crooked shadow. View on the film:Unlike their spotless transfers for Ealing Studios and Jacques Becker's work, Optimum Releasing bring out a transfer which features some big lines of dirt,that become distracting when they appear during the close-ups. Following the slithering shadow of Hammer Horror's Psycho-Thriller era and the pre-black gloves psychological bloodless Giallo era, the screenplay by David D. Osborn & Charles Sinclair display a sharp taste for Film Noir fear,via the family villa being turned into a crypt,where Kimberly is left to crack from the ghostly "return" of Ward,who as a Noir loner brings with him unfinished family business.Along with the Psycho-Thriller edge,the writers drive into the jet-set sunset Neo-Noir genre,where Kimberly finds the glittering sun of Spain to brighten up the mind games and suspicions between her and Ward. Before he would count down time with Logan's Run, director Michael Anderson and cinematographer Erwin Hillier keep the timer running with psychological chills, as highly stylised Film Noir shadows surround the villa and hide the family secrets from light. Largely taking place in the Prescott villa, Anderson brings a noose of claustrophobic tension in restrained tracking shots capturing the limited space Kimberly has to uncover the motive behind Ward's "return." Coming in as an outsider with a great, stern Herbert Lom as local cop Vargas, Richard Todd layers on the unsettling, psychopathic, devilish charm as Ward,whilst Anne Baxter brilliantly follows Kimberley slowly cracking under pressure,as Kimberley digs her nails into the crooked shadow.

CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW is a low budget British crime thriller with a simple plot well brought to the screen. Anne Baxter plays a lonely woman living in a big villa who is visited by a stranger who claims to be her brother, previously thought dead. The man assimilates himself into her life, gradually sending her over the edge, while friends and associates refuse to believe that he's not who he claims to be. This very much plays out as a psycho-thriller like the many such films that Hammer Films made during the 1960s (A TASTE OF FEAR, for example). The writing is clever and literate, successfully building to a twist climax that you won't see coming despite all the guesswork you'll be putting in. Richard Todd and Herbert Lom make up the excellent little cast.

I consider this movie as one of the cleverest ever made. It keeps you perplexed till the end. Marvellous acting by all, with Herbert Lom always at his best. B&W very appropriate. Please, Amazon, make it available!