Product: Sudden Fear [VHS]
Rating: 5.0
AUTHOR ! AUTHOR !
Not so many films noirs of the 40's and 50's are to be found in the DVD standard until now so the arrival of David Miller's SUDDEN FEAR is a pleasure we would be foolish to neglect. With an imperial Joan Crawford, a Jack Palance sweating hypocrisy and, last but not least, with Gloria Grahame ! YES ! THE Gloria Grahame with her voice, childish, slightly pathetic and undoubtedly sexy, SUDDEN FEAR is a superior movie of this peculiar genre.Joan Crawford is Myra Hudson, a woman of character, a playwriter who dares to refuse to Jack "Lester" Palance the first role of her new play. Who will control whom ? That's the theme treated by director David Miller in SUDDEN FEAR. In the movie's beginning, we are lead to think that Jack Palance is going to eat alive a Joan Crawford blinded by love. But Myra will quickly recover from this common illness and take her destiny in charge again.The last third of SUDDEN FEAR is one of the most impressive moments I've lived, cinematographically speaking, since weeks. Myra Hudson will direct "live" the characters she has described in her books for years, she will control, in a certain manner, the sound (with the micros hidden in her office) and the image (with the power of the mind) of the play she is going to be part of. But the ultimate minutes of SUDDEN FEAR will prove that Myra Hudson cannot act so, in the same way she has fired once Lester, she is replaced in the final act by Gloria Grahame for a tragic final.Myra Hudson cannot act nor direct. Luckily enough for us, David Miller has showed us that he can.A scene access as sole extra feature ( it's too much, you shouldn't have, IMAGE ! )A DVD for your library.