Overcooked Melodrama that is Quite Silly at Times and the Plot is Contrived to make things Come Together and the Result is Manufactured Suspense. The Cast is a bit Offbeat with Mercedes Cambridge Chewing the Scenery and Ruth Roman Looking Confused most of the Time. Zachary Scott shows up to make things Interesting but is mostly there to just Paw the Reluctant Lead Actress.It is Heavy Handed Stuff with Thunder Crashes and Telegraphed Terror (a spider on the bed is mistaken for an attempted murder), but it is Professionally done by the Filmmakers. The Result is Standard Stuff and Dime a Dozen Mystery Movie Assembly Line Product. Not Bad, but it is Second Tier Entertainment with Enough Layers of Involvement to make it Worth a Watch. Just don't Expect Anything Out of the Ordinary. Average at Best.

A low-budget murder mystery and undemanding time-killer – which is a real shame. Despite the occasional use of actual locations, obvious studio inserts and phony backdrops give the cost-saving game away. With just a little bit more money in the till, these hazards could easily have been avoided. Admittedly, on it's own penny-pinching level, the movie is interesting enough, even if somewhat slowly paced and somewhat short on action. Nevertheless, it's acted agreeably enough to sustain interest, directed with sufficient tautness, and atmospherically photographed. The characters are both realistically written and tautly played by a well-night perfect cast: Richard Todd, in his first American film, plays with customary charm and stolidity – although not always photographed from the most flattering angles, particularly in his reverse shots. Ruth Roman is delightfully sultry even in what – despite the movie's poster art – is decidedly a goody-two-shoes role. Mercedes McCambridge is her usual neurotic character. Zachary Scott makes a late entrance – 60 minutes late to be precise – but proves a diverting red herring at a point in the narrative where interesting was just beginning to flag. Frank Conroy heads up a very able support cast. King Vidor has directed with his usual dramatic tautness and economy. With just a little bit more money up front, this could have been a high-class mystery yarn, even though the identity of the killer is obvious.

You know something's wrong with a film when you keep asking yourself, in the middle of plot complications, where is Zachary Scott? He's given fourth billing in the screen credits but doesn't appear until the first hour is over. And after watching the film, it's clear that he would have been a better choice than Richard Todd to play the man suspected of killing his wife, rather than the playboy cad he always played.Richard Todd almost sleepwalks his way through his miscast role as a newly released jailbird exonerated of being guilty, except when staring intensely at Ruth Roman. Poor Ruth Roman has a heck of a time trying to decide which side to take in the stories she's heard about a man suspected of killing his wife. She meets that man (Richard Todd) on a dark and stormy night and from that moment on it's anyone's guess as to whom the real culprit is.Is he going to tell her what really happened to his murdered wife or is he staying mum to hide the truth or shield someone else? All of it is pretty contrived, asking us to believe that people behave in ways that defy common sense. Roman's character accepts Todd's innocence long before she has any right to do so, and the Mercedes McCambridge character is never given enough depth to suddenly change and revert to someone else for the final showdown.Everyone acts with their face toward the camera rather than facing each other whenever there's a moment of confrontation or even an intimate chat taking place. It's a cinema device encouraging the viewer to notice the subtle changes of expression on the faces, to better illustrate what their feelings and inner thoughts are. Unfortunately, it comes across as making the acting seem ludicrously over-the-top--no subtlety at all.Ruth Roman and Mercedes McCambridge, more than anyone else in the cast, uses this emoting device throughout. This seems to be a trademark of '50s acting--or at least it is under King Vidor's direction.Despite its faults, LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE remains watchable and taut as it winds its way toward a twisted resolution. Just don't expect too much, but it will keep you intrigued.

Richard Todd sits on death row, waiting execution for his wife's murder. At the eleventh hour, a reprieve and new trial come through; he's acquitted, thanks to one holdout juror (Mercedes McCambridge). Released, he disappears into the west Texas desert. Enter Ruth Roman, a touring actress in search of the desert's restorative climate. An innkeeper and his wife become solicitous of her when she stops in a small town, and lend her a car to get to the dude ranch where she hopes to recuperate. En route (in a scene prescient of Janet Leigh's flight from Phoenix in Psycho), she gets lost in thunderstorms and takes refuge in an abandoned house -- where Todd is holed up. They size one another up and, next morning, she continues on to the dude ranch. Run by McCambridge and her emotionally disturbed young brother (Darryl Hickman), it has closed down, but they agree to put Roman up for a few days. But she seeks out Todd again, despite conflicting stories about his guilt or innocence. Director King Vidor and scriptwriter Lenore Coffee, having goaded Bette Davis to pull out all the stops in Beyond The Forest two years earlier, here take on another overloaded melodrama, with mixed results. We see too little of key events and rely instead on hearsay about other characters, who sometimes haven't yet been sufficiently established (and the one brief flashback is a mistake -- we need either more or none). And of eight major characters, two or even three (including Zachary Scott) prove superfluous. But the movie's biggest stumble lies in the casting of Richard Todd. Remembered if at all as the title character in that echt-1950s biopic of pious patriotism A Man Called Peter, here his stiff British accent and acting falsify the whole Southwestern milieu (Lightning Strikes Twice, like Desert Fury of five years earlier, evokes the new Sunbelt of money and leisure). Happily, the female characters fall on the plus side. Kathryn Givney shows spunk and intelligence as the strangely solicitous Mrs. Nolan. Ruth Roman, on evidence of this movie and Tomorrow Is Another Day, had more range and subtlety than she was let display in her best known role as Farley Granger's mannikin-like fiancee in Strangers on a Train. But the acting honors, inevitably, fall to McCambridge. Looking especially tomboyish, her face registers every thought and feeling that passes through her head; she's hyper-alert in her moods and responses. And so, as was her custom during her disappointingly thin screen career, she delivers the most memorable performance of the film.