Having myself been subject to the whims of a sanctimonious, humourless and controlling stepmother, every time the second Mrs Haddon appeared I would dearly have loved to see the poisonous old dragon punched in the face. The village are supposed to have known stepdaughter April and her real parents all her life but are remarkably quick to take her stepmother's side against her; although it's characteristic of the film's clumsy scripting that April keeping hurting her case by making her opposition to this cuckoo in the nest too obvious from the word go and blurting out wild allegations before she's bothered to gather sufficient evidence against her.The plot is sufficiently engrossing, however, and the ghastly Florence sufficiently loathsome, to keep you watching in anticipation of eventually seeing her get her comeuppance; maybe falling to her death or crashing her car attempting to escape. But it instead ends with a whimper rather than a bang, with a talky conclusion and the unbelievable revelation (which to compound the felony we're told rather than shown) that the handsome hero just happened to be passing by at 2am to provide salvation.

Gibraltar Films must have considered it a real feather in their cap to feature Mona Freeman who, even though towards the end of her career, was still youthful looking enough to be believable as the young girl, fresh out of college, who returns to England for her father's funeral. I found Freeman to be irritatingly abrasive and completely out classed in the acting stakes by Jean Kent. In a story similar to "My Cousin Rachel", Kent plays the sinister stepmother Florence - well, sinister to young April's eyes, to the rest of the village she is the Lady Bountiful. April returns to a changed home - not cozy but austere, with lots of odd modern art hanging on the walls. Her "There shall be no smoking or drinking in this house" and "I know these toys are sentimental but they are such dust collectors" don't exactly make April's homecoming welcoming!! The next day the unthinkable happens - she misses her father's funeral and even though Florence tries her best to stop the rumours, gossipy servant Elsie tries to inform everyone that it was because she was drunk!! And with sayings like "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" April then has to deal with another unpalatable question - did her mother die an alcoholic?Jean Kent who admired Claire Trevor built up a strong following as Gainsborough's bad girl of the movies, with roles in "Good Time Girl", "Fanny By Gaslight" etc but it was her subtle evilness as the wife in "The Browning Version" that bought her to prominence. Her Florence is more of the same vein. She is much admired in the village for not only having dignity at her husband's death but the way she tirelessly nursed April's mother through her final illness and April's bull in a china shop attitude is not winning her any friends. Even her childhood pal now the town doctor (Maxwell Reed) sings Florence's praises. But Florence doesn't get it all her own way - April tracks down some old family friends who positively don't like her but have no proof of her murderous intentions. And April also sees her drop her guard when she realises that because the newer will was left unsigned the one that stands leaves April as sole beneficiary!! Will she make it to her 21st birthday when she will inherit the bulk of the estate - already Florence is planning a nice little party for her!!!Maxwell Reed, after a stint in the Merchant Navy, tried his hand at movies and became a true teen idol being so many girl's heart throb. For a while he was married to Joan Collins.

Mona Freeman is the usual transplanted American star in this barnstorming thriller.Kent is you could say the female Tod Slaughter as she seems to relish every indignity she heaps on to the petrified Freeman.Quite what persuaded her late father to stipulate that Freeman should stay with Kent till she is 21 is rather unclear.However this is one piece of good news as it gives her a chance to accomplish her ambition of a hat trick of murders.She attempts to kill Freeman by jumping out of a moving car but that doesn't work,So she gets the local doctor to help drug her the subsequently ties her into a speeding motorboat headed for the rocks.Alas she does'nt succeed and Freeman is rescued and finds love with Maxwell reed.An enjoyable thriller.

I did not know this little thriller from UK and directed by the vet Albert Rogell, an American. No great surprise in this tale of a young woman - Freeman - who comes back home, after her father's death, to discover that his death was not an accident, as it was declared. She suspects her stepmother, the woman her father married after Freeman's mother death, to have something to do with that "accident". And she sees afterwards that her mother was probably killed too by the stepmother and former nurse of her father. And all this for And she finally faces the fact that the stepmother plans to kill her too...The ending is too predictable. Such a shame.