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To me, this movie is perfection.

Instant Favorite.

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.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Ruth Roman is stuck starring in a rather dopey movie. The acting is generally good and the atmosphere also quite good...but the plot is just stupid.The film begins with a man being re-tried in court for murdering his wife. A holdout of the jury results in a mistrial* and he is let free. In the next scene, a New Yorker, Shelly (Roman), travels to the desert on a vacation to a dude ranch. She arrives and is told the place is closed...but they'll let her stay. The lady in charge was apparently a friend of the accused murderer and was also on the jury at his trial*. She stays for a few days and soon meets the accused killer. Some other stuff happens and soon she's in love with this man for no apparent reason...and then they get married! None of this makes any sense--- nor does what follows. In fact, the ending and the perfect way everything worked out was utterly ridiculous. My problem is that no matter whether or not the acting and direction are any good or not, the story is so full of dumb holes that I found myself just wanting the film to end.*Someone who is a friend of an accused killer would NEVER be allowed on a jury...never. This made even less sense than the other woman almost instantly falling for Richard and marrying him.

You know something's wrong with a film when you keep asking yourself, in the middle of plot complications, where is Zachary Scott? He's given fourth billing in the screen credits but doesn't appear until the first hour is over. And after watching the film, it's clear that he would have been a better choice than Richard Todd to play the man suspected of killing his wife, rather than the playboy cad he always played.Richard Todd almost sleepwalks his way through his miscast role as a newly released jailbird exonerated of being guilty, except when staring intensely at Ruth Roman. Poor Ruth Roman has a heck of a time trying to decide which side to take in the stories she's heard about a man suspected of killing his wife. She meets that man (Richard Todd) on a dark and stormy night and from that moment on it's anyone's guess as to whom the real culprit is.Is he going to tell her what really happened to his murdered wife or is he staying mum to hide the truth or shield someone else? All of it is pretty contrived, asking us to believe that people behave in ways that defy common sense. Roman's character accepts Todd's innocence long before she has any right to do so, and the Mercedes McCambridge character is never given enough depth to suddenly change and revert to someone else for the final showdown.Everyone acts with their face toward the camera rather than facing each other whenever there's a moment of confrontation or even an intimate chat taking place. It's a cinema device encouraging the viewer to notice the subtle changes of expression on the faces, to better illustrate what their feelings and inner thoughts are. Unfortunately, it comes across as making the acting seem ludicrously over-the-top--no subtlety at all.Ruth Roman and Mercedes McCambridge, more than anyone else in the cast, uses this emoting device throughout. This seems to be a trademark of '50s acting--or at least it is under King Vidor's direction.Despite its faults, LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE remains watchable and taut as it winds its way toward a twisted resolution. Just don't expect too much, but it will keep you intrigued.

This is a bit of a rum do and no mistake. For a start we have the solid mahogany Richard Todd leaving a trail of sawdust in his wake whilst Zachary Scott who can and does act Todd off the screen doesn't even appear until about reel #6 and is woefully under extended. Ruth Roman might have done really well as the femme lead - if she wasn't in the same movie as Mercedes McCambridge - things are tough all over, it would seem. Plot-wise it's as hokey as they come; we open with Todd on Death Row on account of a little matter of murdering his wife then, with no groundwork/back-story to help us he is awarded first a stay of execution and then a re-trial which leaves him a free man. Enter Ruth Roman, actress on vacation/convalescence who falls instantly into fascination with Todd. This leads nicely to the 'doubting' scene, did he REALLY do it, will he do the same to Me, until all is resolved neatly with the real killer not only being unmasked but also paying the ultimate price. This is noir-lite with two excellent performances from Scott and McCambridge, a solid one from Roman and Todd having a laugh.

Richard Todd sits on death row, waiting execution for his wife's murder. At the eleventh hour, a reprieve and new trial come through; he's acquitted, thanks to one holdout juror (Mercedes McCambridge). Released, he disappears into the west Texas desert. Enter Ruth Roman, a touring actress in search of the desert's restorative climate. An innkeeper and his wife become solicitous of her when she stops in a small town, and lend her a car to get to the dude ranch where she hopes to recuperate. En route (in a scene prescient of Janet Leigh's flight from Phoenix in Psycho), she gets lost in thunderstorms and takes refuge in an abandoned house -- where Todd is holed up. They size one another up and, next morning, she continues on to the dude ranch. Run by McCambridge and her emotionally disturbed young brother (Darryl Hickman), it has closed down, but they agree to put Roman up for a few days. But she seeks out Todd again, despite conflicting stories about his guilt or innocence. Director King Vidor and scriptwriter Lenore Coffee, having goaded Bette Davis to pull out all the stops in Beyond The Forest two years earlier, here take on another overloaded melodrama, with mixed results. We see too little of key events and rely instead on hearsay about other characters, who sometimes haven't yet been sufficiently established (and the one brief flashback is a mistake -- we need either more or none). And of eight major characters, two or even three (including Zachary Scott) prove superfluous. But the movie's biggest stumble lies in the casting of Richard Todd. Remembered if at all as the title character in that echt-1950s biopic of pious patriotism A Man Called Peter, here his stiff British accent and acting falsify the whole Southwestern milieu (Lightning Strikes Twice, like Desert Fury of five years earlier, evokes the new Sunbelt of money and leisure). Happily, the female characters fall on the plus side. Kathryn Givney shows spunk and intelligence as the strangely solicitous Mrs. Nolan. Ruth Roman, on evidence of this movie and Tomorrow Is Another Day, had more range and subtlety than she was let display in her best known role as Farley Granger's mannikin-like fiancee in Strangers on a Train. But the acting honors, inevitably, fall to McCambridge. Looking especially tomboyish, her face registers every thought and feeling that passes through her head; she's hyper-alert in her moods and responses. And so, as was her custom during her disappointingly thin screen career, she delivers the most memorable performance of the film.