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The Bargain Nexus - Sudden Fear
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List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $15.20
Your Save: $ 4.75 ( 24% )
Availability:
Manufacturer: Kino Video
Starring: Joan Crawford, Jack Palance, Gloria Grahame, Bruce Bennett, Virginia Huston
Directed By: David Miller
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786303918464
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 6303918468
Label: Kino Video
Manufacturer: Kino Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Kino Video
Release Date: 2000-06-27
Running Time: 110
Studio: Kino Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1952-08-06
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Quit your whining, this DVD rocks!
Comment: Alright, there are no special features. Alright, so there aren't even any subtitles. And there are a couple of seconds where the picture had grain- ok, I give. But overall, this film is excellently presented. I don't have any complaints about the sound or the picture- in fact, I thought it was remarkably clear considering that it hasn't been preserved as well as a lot of other pictures. Trust me, the plot more than makes up for any minor annoyances.
In an Oscar nominated performance, Joan Crawford plays successful playwright Myra Hudson. When she falls in love with a handsome actor named Lester (played by Jack Palance, nominated for Best Supporting Actor) everything seems perfect. But when she discovers her husband's plot to murder her, she designs a plan to reverse the gun.
This movie is great, and if you're not one of those people who whine when they don't get all the bells and whistles, you'll love it too.
Customer Rating:
Summary: sudden fear
Comment: i think sudden fear is a very good example of the so called films noirs and also joan crawfords performace is very convincing as the frightned woman who tries to save her life as well as she can
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Movie But Awful Sound Quality by KINO
Comment: This is one of those great film noir classics and Crawford gives one of her great performances. However, all of this is marred by the poor sound quality by Kino. I had to turn up the volume on my TV all the way to hear it. Crawford (in her last Oscar nominated role) and this superb film deserve much better.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Great Joan Crawford Gem!
Comment: "Sudden Fear" is one of the top 5 best Joan Crawford films ever as well as one of the best suspense films Hollywood has ever made. The story is strong as Crawford plays a woman who's husband is plotting to kill her. Great acting, writing, and the direction of David Miller is superb. Miller also directed Crawford in 1957's "Story of Esther Costello". The picture was one of Joan's favorites and resurrected her career after many flops. The picture would go on to win 4 Academy Award nominations including one for Best Actress for Crawford, her 3rd. Even her daughter Christina liked it. Sit back and enjoy a wonderful Crawford film. However the DVD transfer, as many have said, isn't up to par. Don't expect perfect digital quality and extra features. Buy the film because it is a great movie and the fact that it's on DVD will enable us to have it for many years. Truely a must have for any Crawford fan and fans of film noir!
Customer Rating:
Summary: CUE UP WOULD-BE SUSPENSE MUSIC ...AND PREPARE TO LAUGH!
Comment: In this irresistible potboiler, Joan Crawford is Manhattan's greatest playwright AND San Francisco's wealthiest heiress, wooed by younger Jack Palance --- an actor she once fired. Cue up would-be suspense music, and prepare to laugh.
Tripping, carefree, down stone steps to the bay, Crawford shrugs off Palance's warning that a railing is needed. "Remember what Nietschze said," she shirps, " 'Live dangerously.' " Palance replies, "He's dead." Palance's fellow con artist and lover, Gloria Grahame, turns up to help plot Crawford's demise, even as Crawford is rejuecting her lawyer's plea to leave Palance little in her will. "I'm not going to hang onto any man from the grave," she insists.
That night, Grahame and Palance talk privately in Crawford's study. Come morning, Crawford slips into the room to use her futuristic, ultrasophisticated recording device to dictate changes in her will --- leaving everything to Palance --- but finds she'd absent-mindedly left the machine on. Prepare for your jaw to drop as Crawford dives headlong into a bravura display of Bad Acting, listening in mounting shock, horror, and unrelieved hamminess to the record of Palance's conversation with Grahame.
For seven l-o-n-g minutes, listening to pithy remarks like Palance's "Sometimes when I'm with her, it's all I can do to keep form saying, 'Wise up. Love you? I never loved you, never for one second,' " Crawford goes where no one's ever gone before, gasping, crying, furrowing her brow, shutting her eyes, widening her eyes, darting her eyes from side to side, clamping her hands over her ears.
And that's BEFORE she hears them plot to kill her. "It'll have to look like an accident," says Palance. "We'll work something out," replies Grahame. "I know a way." The record starts skipping, so Grahame's voice repeats, "i know a way," over and over, thirty-two times while Crawford acts and acts.
What next? She picks up the record and --- accidentally breaks it. In bed, Crawford has crazed nightmares of being pushed from a building, her car going off a cliff, Palance smothering her only to wake up and find that she's holding a pillow over her own face!
Delightfully, the fun has just begun, for Crawford --- our greatest playwright, remember? --- schemes a plan of her own. Suffice to say that it involves several key cast members having personalized stationery, duplicate keys, a bottle labelled "POISON," a hidden gun, Crawford's natural flare for forging signatures, a fall down a staircase, a toy windup dog, a truly crazed "mad scene" into a mirror, and --- oh yes --- the random occurence that Crawford and Grahame will, BY CHANCE, wear EXACTLY the same color dress, coat, gloves, and scarves.
Funniest of all is that Crawford and Palance got Oscar nominations!!
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Editorial Reviews:
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Legend has it that Joan Crawford fought against having Jack Palance as her leading man, protesting that he was the ugliest man in Hollywood. Her producer finally prevailed by convincing her that her character had to be sympathetic--and Palance was the only actor in town who was scarier than she was. The result was Sudden Fear, a thriller that earned Oscar nominations for both actors as well as for its gorgeous black-and-white cinematography. Crawford plays Myra Hudson, a successful playwright and heiress who insists that actor Lester Blaine (Palance) be fired from the Broadway production of her new play because he doesn't look properly romantic. But when she takes a train back home to San Francisco, they meet again, and this time she falls head over heels in love. Before long they're married. A wedding photo in the New York City newspapers brings Blaine's old girlfriend, Irene (the criminally underappreciated Gloria Grahame) back into his life. The two start plotting Hudson's murder--but when Hudson stumbles onto the scheme, she starts concocting a plot of her own. The direction is taut and heavily influenced (but successfully so) by Alfred Hitchcock; the use of sound is particularly skillful. And whether it's because she's playing opposite Palance or not, this is definitely one of Crawford's most sympathetic performances. --Bret Fetzer
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