Product: Sudden Fear [VHS]
Rating: 4.0
Trio of Oscar winners star in a well-paced thriller
"Sudden Fear" is a suspense classic from 1952: an enjoyable, tightly written, well-paced thriller starring a trio of past, present, and future Oscar winners: the incomparable Joan Crawford (Best Actress, 1945, "Mildred Pierce"); a young Jack Palance (Best Supporting Actor, 1991, "City Slickers" - remember the push ups?) and Gloria Grahame, who won Best Supporting Actress for another 1952 film, "The Bad and the Beautiful."Crawford portrays a playwright who, in the movie's first scene, gets Palance fired from her play for not looking like a traditional leading man. Palance storms off in anger, but later meets up with Crawford on a train and - irony of ironies - manages to seduce her. They engage in a whirlwind romance, get married, and move into her San Francisco home. All seems to be going smashingly, until... well, I can't say more without giving too much away!Crawford is a natural fit for the role. She gets to suffer the way she did in "Mildred Pierce" (albeit a tad more histrionically), and earned her third and final Oscar nomination in the process. Palance demonstrates surprising dramatic range, and Grahame shows up in the tough-as-nails femme fatale role she would go on to perfect in the following year's "The Big Heat."The film is more noir in tone and style than in milieu. Director David Miller makes effective use of light and shadow, and the San Francisco locations add local flavor to the film. The late, great composer Elmer Bernstein contributes an evocative score.Many have rightly complained about the DVD transfer; it certainly is fuzzy in spots, though for the most part watchable. A lower price tag would be more appropriate for this edition."Sudden Fear" isn't the most original thriller of its era, but it's skillfully done. While somewhat manipulative and predictable, "Sudden Fear" generates enough authentic suspense to satisfy the classic movie buff.