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Lady at Midnight; a true dog
Topic Started: Jun 14 2011, 10:10 AM (195 Views)
panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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I was looking for Republic B's on Netflix, and found this 1948 Eagle-Lion slice of cheese, the oft-told tale of a lady who sneaks into the house of a family at the witching hour, sits on the 7-year-old girl's bed, cries, and tells the child she's adopted; minutes later, the lady gets herself slain, and for reasons I just refuse to go into, the couple who own the house have to prove they adopted the little girl legally. Easy to follow, but hard to swallow, with heaps of loose ends -- evidence of reckless trimming. When we finally meet the bad guy, everybody but the audience knows him already.

Richard Denning is the father (a radio news reader) and Frances Rafferty's the mother (who apparently works too since the little girl seems to do all the cooking). I won't name the child, because she may still be alive and surely doesn't want to be reminded of this, uh, angelic performance. The one and only fight scene is sped up a la James Horne. The script, by director-to-be Richard Sale, has its moments, especially a scene with the kid explaining machine guns to a tough private op.

So did I like it? Well, it's Godawful, but I sort of did. It's a primer on how not to direct and edit a feature film, and the acting is pure limburger, especially the tiny tot, but it rips right along and clocks in at 61 minutes. If you want to waste an hour, you could do worse. Nothing in my life has prepared me for assigning a star value to something this wretched. You may be interested to know that this movie is living proof that Larry Blamire channels Richard Denning.

There seems to be some disagreement on who directed the picture, and I think the kind thing would be to mention nobody.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Jun 16 2011, 09:39 AM.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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