This is a miniature but a very efficient one. Ida Lupino is one of those actors I never found lacking but on the contrary raising every film she was in to a top level. She excelled in acting parts where she could make something great out of a small character, and this is a typical example. She gets a job as a caretaker at a large but desolate mansion of a great past but with a very dark secret developing into a looming mystery of constantly more threatening proportions, as Ida finds herself persecuted by the same kind of ghost that evidently scared away Jennifer, the previous lodger. No one knows what became of her, she just vanished without a trace, and that's the mystery, which immediately starts to haunt the vulnerable Ida, who gets more and more possessed by it. Two male characters also haunt the place and act as some kind of aids but seem both very suspicious, and she definitely cannot trust them and even less the more helpful they are. What's really happening is that everyone is keeping a secret from her, and as she can get no clue to the threat of this fact she naturally feels more and more exposed to unknown dangers, and she has a right to be. It all ends up to a shocking climax, making the structure of this film very similar to many Hitchcocks, especially "Suspicion" with Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine 10 years earlier. The interest and quality of the film lies entirely with suggestions and innuendos, shadows speak more than words, the moods take over and dominate reality, and you get involved in Ida's increasing terror of the unknown. It's a marvellous small film and the greater and more interesting for its fascinating minimalism.

First and foremost...this film is not a "noir"! That term is easily the most abused on the IMDb site. Yes, it's black and white. Yes, it's shot on location in the early 50s. NO, it is in NO way a "film noir".This is a suspense thriller, with more than a bit of the haunted house genre thrown into the mix. It's also a well-made "B" flick, with the surprising services of cinematographer James Wong Howe, as a bonus.The film is quite moody, with wonderful location filming. (I hope to find out the location of the mansion, and if it still stands.) Granted, the whole thing falls apart in the final ten minutes...the ambiguity is surprising, for a film of the early 50s. Did Jennfer really die? What's with that weird "college" kid? The opening/closing shot...not sure what to make of it. While I don't mind a film leaving questions unanswered, the ending here is rather pointless.However, I do recommend it. If for nothing else, the locations, the cinematography and Ms. Lupino.

I hate to say it, considering how much I admire Ida Lupino, but this film is a total flop. It was directed by 'Joel Newton', and is his sole directorial credit, so I suspect that may have been a pseudonym of someone else. Ida Lupino and her husband Howard Duff are the two leads. But despite their best efforts, the film is so badly made, so corny, and has such extremely ludicrous music that it is essentially worthless. It aims at being a sturdy film noir film, but it fails on all counts. James Wong Howe was the cinematographer, but even he is below par. His shots of 'a mysterious shadow' are not even good. In this same year, Lupino directed her brilliant film THE BIGAMIST (1953), and the previous year she had delivered a fine performance in ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952), so she was not at all in decline at the time of JENNIFER. This is just one of those duds which all concerned must have wished to forget, and so should we.

Ida Lupino hasn't "been well". She's just bundle of paranoid nerves quite frankly and arrives at the old empty mansion as caretaker. She immediately becomes obsessed with the prior caretaker, cousin Jennifer, who has disappeared. Ida hears noises..sounds..things that go bump in the night and then Howard Duff appears. He runs the village store selling scotch. Soon Ida's obsession with Jennifer gets spooky and all the time the background music with the high-pitched, Yoko Ono "wooo-wooo" screechy warbling and the record playing "vortex" doesn't help matters, but Duff perseveres and manages a smooch from Ida. Toss in the ever so slightly loony local college boy, Orin who fuels Ida's out-of-hand obsession and you have one flaky Ida. After much running in and out of the mansion, slamming doors, a terror in the basement boiler room, Duff calling for Ida, more annoying wooo-wooo soundtrack and a now fully hysterical Ida accusing Duff of murdering Jennifer, all thing come to a fully calm and serene ending except for the schmaltzy lingering shadow. Could that shadow be trying to tell us that even tho all's well that end's well, it isn't? Is Ida just as slightly if not more wacko-o than when she first arrived? This is a cheapo and you can tell, but what the heck---with nothing better to do, why not give it a shot?