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Undescribable Perfection

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

That extended opening scene is like a showcase for real-life marrieds Davis and Merrill. Looks like she may be introducing them as a couple to American audiences. It's an apparently low-budget British production with a small cast and a single rural location site. As the conniving Janet, murderer of her inconvenient husband, Bette gets to evil-eye and puff her way through 90-minutes of theatrics. And with a ton of unflattering close-ups. At the same time, George (Merrill) tries somberly to deal with Janet's schemes, as they cover up her husband's murder in a secluded British estate. Only pesky Dr. Henderson (Williams) gets in their way.I'm not surprised the film is rarely mentioned among Davis's triumphs. The plot shenanigans are convoluted, theatrics abound, and talk is only relieved by spectacular scenes of the Yorkshire moors. Moreover, calling the results noir, amounts to a stretch. I did, however, like the upshot scene, a neat bit of irony. Nonetheless, showcasing the two leads tends to over-shadow both story and character. Good thing directors Rapper and Guest do their best at pacing the difficult material. Anyway, whatever the drawbacks, the film should please fans of Bette; but for others, it's mainly a matter of taste.

Bette Davis, as usual, is compelling in this 1951 film. However, after she and Merrill were in the far superior "All About Eve," the year before, nothing could top that and this film certainly doesn't.Even with Davis pulling out all her murderous treachery, this doesn't save the film. The problem is that it is confined to one scenic view and rather becomes difficult as Davis, who has killed her husband, is visited by Merrill, who helped the dead man rob a bank. Merrill assumes the role of Davis's husband as no one supposedly has ever seen the latter.People just go in and out of the house providing no intrigue whatsoever. Davis even tries to make it with Anthony Steel, a much younger man who is the fiancé of her secretary.Emlyn Williams has his moments as the suspecting vet. By the way, just don't drink to anything the picture offers, both Merrill and Davis did and look how they wound up.

I awarded this film 6/10 and you can see how Bette Davis is gradually moving to her later horror style which she reached her apogee in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?".It is so obviously a filmed stage play with 95% of the action filmed in Betty's Yorkshire country house but there are a few token scenes of her and her co-male actors riding over the Yorkshire moors however.An irritating continuity problem is when actors open and come through the front door seemingly without keys and suddenly appear inside your living room this still happens in stupid "soaps" like "Eastenders" especially when the home-help has not started her duties!I only saw this film because someone uploaded it onto "Youtube.com".Gary Merrill plays a less sympathetic character than he played in "All About Eve".A slightly above average film.

(There are spoilers) Breaking into the mansion of famous mystery writer Janet Frobisher, Bette Davis,for a prearranged meeting with her husband Preston bank robber George Bates, Garry Merrill, is shocked to find out that his partner in crime had been murdered by his estranged wife. Janet who's been having an affair with her secretary Chris', Barbara Murry, boyfriend Larry, Anthony Steel, had been surprised to find her old man, Preston, getting into the mix by using her home as a safe house to later, when the heats off, take off on a steam ship out of the country with his fellow bank robber Bates. Janet gave the fugitive a drink laced with a strong sedative that was prescribed by local veterinarian Dr. Hnderson, Emlyn Williams, for her horse Fury that put Preston to sleep forever.With one of the bank guards shot and seriously wounded during the robbery by Preston Bates want's to save his neck from the hangman's rope, if the guard dies and he's caught by the police, to have Preston admit he was the one who shot him and even has Preston's gun and the fingerprints that go along with it to prove it. Bates efforts are now all moot since he's, Preston, no longer around to face justice.We now have this very complicated scenario in the film where Bates, after he and Janet deep six Preston's body in a nearby lake, impersonates Preston as his now wife Janet secretly connives to also murder him in order to keep Bates from implicating her in her husbands murder. It's never really explained why Janet murdered Preston in the first place all we know is that she did the guy in just because he may have gotten in the way of her affair with Larry but why kill the man since he was separated from Janet for some three years and couldn't care less if she was having a love affair with Larry or anyone else? All Preston wanted was to get away from the police and check out of the country. For all her smarts Janet is outsmarted by Bates, who's on to her back-stabbing tactics, at almost every turn with him surviving a near-fatal car crash, that she secretly arraigned for him, and then for some reason not at all fully explained, in fact as Bates' was about to tell her just before he suddenly fell ill from a poisoned drink that Janet gave him, why he killed her prized horse Fury. Bates claiming that the horse broke it's leg, a bald face lie on Bates' part, and that he was forced to shoot it gets Janet to lose her composure and almost spill the beans on herself to who really Bates' is and why he's impersonating her husband, because she murdered him and got rid of the body.While all this is going on both Larry and Chris drop in at the Frobisher Estate for a stay over the weekend which makes things even more confusing with Larry finding out that his secret love, Janet, is now back with her husband! At the same time Chris begins to realize that he's, Larry, dropping her for not only her boss, Janet, but for a much older, Janet is 43 and Chris is 22, woman to boot!The big break in the case comes from non other then the friendly and somewhat overbearing Dr. Hernderson who it later turns out knows a lot more about both Bates and Preston that he's been letting on, which is total ignorance, and is himself playing some kind of mind game, like a junior Sherlock Holmes, on his own to trap both Janet and Bates and bring the two scoundrels to justice. Dr. Henderson is beaten to the punch by both Janet & Bates at the end of the movie by the two playing an even bigger, and deadlier, game or trick on each other.Not one of Bette Davis' better films but her interaction with Garry Merrill, her husband at the time, is really worth watching as the two try to one-up each other in trying to pull off the perfect crime at the others expense with both ending up on the losing side.