In the old days of Hollywood, glamorous leading ladies were finished getting starring roles around age 30. Many times they were reduced to horror films, badly produced B movies, and television. If they want to strip their glamour and gain weight, they could do character roles. However, Joan Crawford, whose contract was terminated by MGM at the age of 35, continued to make good films throughout the '40s and into the early '50s. One of them was this one, Sudden Fear, for which she served as executive producer. In that capacity, she chose the screenwriter, the actors, the director, the composer, the cinematographer - and they were all top drawer.The story concerns Myra Hudson, a woman born into a wealthy family who became a successful playwright. She marries an actor, Lester Blaine (Jack Palance) and then realizes that he and his mistress (Gloria Grahame) are plotting to kill her.Crawford registers the bliss of new love, the pain of betrayal, hysteria, and then the steel to pull herself together and take action. Really it is one of her best roles. This is a woman who knew how to play to her strengths.Sudden Fear is exciting, suspenseful, atmospheric, and highly entertaining. Of course, if I saw Jack Palance and Gloria Grahame together, I'd know something was up. The first choices for the Lester role were Gable and Marlon Brando. Palance is excellent as a masculine, romantic man hiding a violent and psychopathic personality. As his flirtatious mistress Irene, Grahame is perfect.While there is no actual sex, there is a lot of raw desire and innuendo in this film.The end of the film has very little dialogue, and you'll be glued to the screen.It's sad to see once great stars like Lana Turner, Merle Oberon, and others reduced to poor circumstances in film, and sadder still that they knew that once they were at the top of the heap. Crawford at least fought the good fight and in Sudden Fear proved that she was still a force.

Joan Crawford delivers a typically strong performance as a wife who discovers that her husband plans to murder her, and it's fun to see Jack Palance in an early role (interestingly, playing a stage actor who was rejected for a part as a romantic lead). Film noir fans will appreciate the cinematography, especially in the final scenes, which of course take place in darkened rooms and on darkened streets and alleys. But the plot has more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. Most obviously, when Joan Crawford's character finds proof of her husband's homicidal intentions, she doesn't go to the police, as any sane person would do, but instead comes up with a convoluted plan of her own, which of course goes awry. Add to that the movie convention that a man can simply sweep a woman off her feet with a little sweet talking, and be married to her in practically no time at all, plus the stretch that Jack Palance's character is so angry about being rejected for a Broadway role that he decides to marry and then kill the playwright, that we're talking about some serious suspension of disbelief here. If you can overlook those flaws, it's a fun couple of hours.

There's an idea out there that Joan Crawford's life and career after a certain age amounted to "Tina get me the axe," getting drunk, and having campy moments in Pepsi boardrooms. But she worked very, very hard, and this movie - which she heavily pushed herself after being dropped by her second major studio and considered to be 100% washed up - may be the best example of that relentless drive. Yes, she made a lot of bad movies, and we get some of the trademark Joan mugging here (along with the prerequisite shots of her gorgeous gams, and hair and makeup that are more reminiscent of Mommie Dearest than many of her films) but there's such a need to wrap ourselves in camp that it's easy to overlook that some of these movies are perfectly fine, and can be studied for what they are, not for a parody of a parody of a parody.Initially this seems like another generic "woman in peril" noir that aging film actresses made a meal of in this period. Once we get past the awkward courtship and setup of the threat scenes, the whole thing flips on its head. The moment where Myra (Joan) listens to the recording, and along with the usual stock Joan Crawford dramatic closeups of horror, runs to the bathroom to vomit (offcamera, obviously), you know this isn't the typical Joan campfest. Instead of wondering what terrible thing may or may not happen to Myra (Joan), we walk with her as she does her utmost to stave off any and every possible grisly fate in store for her. The movie is, in some strange way, almost a comedy of errors, as both the heroine and the villains make one slipup after another. Some of these cost them their lives. Some of these save their lives. It's a good reminder that no matter how proactive a hero or heroine may be (and Joan is extremely proactive), sometimes you have no control over your own fate. The movie also chooses to ignore the trope of a good person becoming bad (which puts it in line with other underrated noirs of this period like Tension). Myra is a good, kind-hearted woman. Even when she goes down a dark path, she just can't do it. In the climax of the film, we see her still concerned about the fate of people who wanted to murder her for her money. This makes one more emotionally invested in the fate of the character.There are many beautifully shot scenes here - my favorites are the way the telephone in the main murder house always rings so loudly, dominating the headspace of the character and viewer, the fantasy sequence with Gloria Grahame (terrific and terrifically sexy in a role that would have been a throwaway in the hands of many actresses) screaming and screaming (a fantasy scene made even more compelling by Myra's eyes being in the background the entire time, reminding us we're literally seeing through her eyes), Myra going to throw up as Gloria's voice loops on the recorder, Myra seeing herself in the mirror as she waits to carry out her plan; the moment where a horrified Myra realizes how far she's fallen is one of those times where Joan really, really does act, and act extremely well), Jack Palance pulling Gloria Grahame down on top of him on the couch (even for a noir movie this shocked me for the Hays Code era), and finally, Myra walking away into the night, taking her white headscarf off and throwing it into the sewer, almost like a bride removing her veil to truly start life on her own terms. That final shot is so modern and so fresh - the look on her face alone - that it helps make this one of the very best works Joan made, and a damn fine picture on its own merits.

Seen today, sixty years later, this comes across as an out-and-out meller with some serious flaws - midnight in San Francisco and not a soul on the streets, and not just ONE street but several. When you start noticing things like that while the film is still RUNNING (and these are climactic scenes, the very last reel when, if everybody is doing their job, we should be so caught up in the action that we don't notice things like that) it's a sure sign that something is wrong and not JUST sloppy writing though that, of course, is where it starts. It's in a tradition of 'revenge' movies where a 'creative' person is rejected in the first reel and sets out to even the score (for a fine example see the French film 'The Page Turner' where a promising child pianist loses out on a scholarship because one of the judges is preoccupied; time passes, the child grows up and lands a job in the judge's household and guess what), in this case actor Jack Palance is set for the lead in author Crawford's new play; everyone likes him, director, producer, but author Crawford says no and Palance is back on the street. Next thing they're married and he's plotting with his real love, Gloria Grahame, to give Crawford the business and wind up with her fortune - she is, natch, a millionairess on the side. Of its ilk its well done if you don't count the risible deserted Frisco and probably had much more impact in fifty two. Worth seeing but not a keeper.