IMDb meta-data is runtime a brisk 1 hour and 18 minutes, rated at 6.5 by 1155 cinemitizens.
Genre: Noir, Mystery
Verdict: Noir at its best.
Babe is a two-year widow who starts hearing his dead husband’s voice in the air without a BlueTooth headset. Oh Oh. This irritates Richard Carlson, her new suitor. She has an Ingenue sister who lives with her in a mansion on a cliff top. Where else?
Walking on the beach below one night, she encounters Mr X, who tells her about herself for he is a medium and sensitive to her vibrations. [There were snickers from the fraternity bothers at his point.] The Viennese Mr X oils his way into her life.
He is an utter cynic, having planted an accomplice as a maid in the mansion to glean information. His aim is to separate this widow from a lot of moolah. Ingenue falls in love with him and his oily ways. Widow is perplexed by it all.
A séance is arranged in Oily’s wired up studio. The party is crashed by Carlson and the private dick he has employed. The crashers insist that the show go on; Oily tries to grease his way out of it to no avail. His hand is forced and the lights go down. Then….
The dead husband appears to all. No one is more amazed than the amazing Mr X in a star turn.
Seems husband has had several widows pining for him and he has plans to reduce the number. The plot twists even more, and Oily discovers, to his own surprise, that there are some things he will not do for money. Ingenue figures it all out and ….
It is a master class in creating an atmosphere heavy with mystery and peopling it with rounded characters yet including all the clichés, to wit, a crystal ball, a turban, and a raven. All in just over one hour of runtime.
The dead husband is menacing and ruthless. The private dick has a sense of humour. Carlson is so earnest that he made the fraternity brothers feel guilty. Ingenue is so enthusiastic it is hard to take. Babe is so perplexed that she must have been reading some of Martin Heidegger hieroglyphs.
But the real star of the show is the camera, and the lighting that emphasises the air of mystery and confusion. Harvard graduate Bernard Vorhaus directed. He is another victim whose career was blighted by the HUAC, the monster that roamed Hollywood off camera for far too long. He gave David Lean his first job in movies. After being black listed Vorhaus went to England with his Welsh wife and changed careers, working on home renovations. Our loss.
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