Funny, it almost doesn't seem quite as bad as I remember it -- except for the ending and Stanwyck's usual overwroughtness in the wrong places.
Who made the creepy -- and downright good -- ghostly avant-garde prologue montage, narrated by Paul Frees? It's the best thing about the movie and it's pretty obvious that William Castle, no auteur he, was not responsible for it.
The eerie 1964 Cold War black-and-white photography with an equally eerie Vic "Addams Family" Mizzy score. And yet, after the first 16 or 17 minutes, it slips into TV sitcom crap. Only it's funny unintentionally.
I still say the whole thing would have been granted a little extra dignity if they had ended on Stanwyck awakening one more time, hearing men's voices down the hall, and her going to find her husband and the lawyer in the study, reliving completely the first scene in the study from the beginning of the movie, Stanwyck in the doorway of the study in terror, camera zooms up to her left eye. Movie ends.
She's still locked in the dream. She still can't wake up.
That would give the literal crime story wrap-up of the film the chance to be disavowed for its stupidness.
Who made the creepy -- and downright good -- ghostly avant-garde prologue montage, narrated by Paul Frees? It's the best thing about the movie and it's pretty obvious that William Castle, no auteur he, was not responsible for it.
The eerie 1964 Cold War black-and-white photography with an equally eerie Vic "Addams Family" Mizzy score. And yet, after the first 16 or 17 minutes, it slips into TV sitcom crap. Only it's funny unintentionally.
I still say the whole thing would have been granted a little extra dignity if they had ended on Stanwyck awakening one more time, hearing men's voices down the hall, and her going to find her husband and the lawyer in the study, reliving completely the first scene in the study from the beginning of the movie, Stanwyck in the doorway of the study in terror, camera zooms up to her left eye. Movie ends.
She's still locked in the dream. She still can't wake up.
That would give the literal crime story wrap-up of the film the chance to be disavowed for its stupidness.