Product: Sudden Fear [VHS]
Rating: 4.0
Forget Crawford, watch Palance and Graham!
This is a tight little noir with a clever plot. Crawford almost literally chews up the furniture, flopping against doors and bannisters for most of the second half of the movie. She gives the movie a pleasant campy flavor, but I'm not a big fan of her histrionics. The real reason to watch this movie is to be thrilled by the spectacle of the white hot young Jack Palance. His onscreen "romance" with Gloria Graham is about as good of a depiction of unsavory lust as I have ever seen. An example: the couple meet and argue. Palance's character throws Graham onto her sofa and starts to stomp out of the room. Graham purrs after him something to the effect of 'I'm glad to know that you still love me', which stops Palance in his tracks. He turns and walks towards her, all akimbo on the sofa, and the scene fades. Yow!I give this four stars instead of five because the scene with Palance's character gone mad in the car at the end of the movie is kind of jarringly out of place, and because I can take only so much of Joan Crawford flopping on the doors.