Another good film about twins from 1947 – the other being "Dual Alibi" starring Herbert Lom. In this offering, Bonita Granville plays both the good and the bad sister. One of them is murdered and it's up to Inspector Regis Toomey to get to the truth. Ex-soldier Don Castle (Mike) also does some investigating of his own.There is a small cast in this offering and so you may suspect the guilty party at some point. However, this story is clever and does provide you with extra twists and turns at the end. The film is short and basically, it fooled me.Twins always seem to be trouble whenever they pop up in films!

Wow, Nancy Drew all grown-up! And in a dual role to boot! Bonita Granville may be slightly miscast as a film-noir-type femme fatale (the role of the kinder, sweeter sister seems to suit her better), but she gives an honest, heartfelt performance anyway. The rest of the cast is fine. The film is a little slow-moving (it feels longer than its <70 minutes of running time), but fans of twisty-turny whodunits will find a lot to like here; Cornell Woolrich's story uses a daring storytelling device that was also employed by Agatha Christie in one of her most famous books; of course I won't spoil it for you by mentioning which one! **1/2 out of 4.

Bonita Granville was a child star who made an indelible impression as the demonic Mary Tilford in "These Three" (1936), she played another memorable meanie in "Maid of Salem" (1937) and then it was back to more conventional roles such as Nancy Drew. During the 40s she strove to find more adult roles and she made some interesting movies - "Youth Runs wild","Hitler's Children", "Suspense". "The Guilty" was one of those films. It was a gritty, tough film noir and being taken from a Cornell Woolrich story had more twists and turns than a mountain road. Olivia De Havilland had played "good twin/bad twin" roles in "The Dark Mirror" a glossy production with Lew Ayres as the baffled doctor, a year or so before."The Guilty" was able to use a similar story but take it in different directions - apart from the mother, everyone else seemed edgy and guilty!!! The plot is a lot tighter and more complicated, it is just an excellent little noir.Mike (Don Castle) shares his flat with an old army buddy, Dixon (Wally Cassell) who because of a head injury sustained during the war, is jumpy, jittery and relies too much on drink and drugs. Both of them are involved with Linda and Estelle, (both played by Bonita Granville) a classic good twin, bad twin mix and when Dixon realises that it is sweet Linda who he loves, Mike takes up with Estelle, a boy crazy party girl.One night Linda disappears and later turns up murdered - enter Police Inspector Heller (Regis Toomey) a very cool, calm and collected type who is like a dog with a bone. He encounters a baffling maze of false clues and Mike also starts his own investigation because he feels Dixon is being judged without defense. Not only has Estelle become Linda's protector (before her death they had hated each other - now she is determined to find the killer) but fatherly lodger (John Litel, who played Nancy Drew's father) seems to be a bit too fond of the twins. There is a scene at the start where he eagerly looks forward to going to the movies with Linda, only to be let down.The film is set mostly in the men's apartment (it is based on a Woolrich short story "Two Fellows in a Furnished Room") and a cheap bar, obviously Monogram had a tight budget but it just heightened the claustrophobic and seedy atmosphere that gripped you till the end. Something of interest - it was the first picture produced by John Devereaux Wrather Jnr., a Dallas oil millionaire and before the movie's premiere he and Bonita were wed.Highly, Highly Recommended.

In 1946, Olivia De Havilland donned monogram brooches and identity necklaces to take the dual role of good and bad twins Ruth and Terry in Robert Siodmak's The Dark Mirror. The following year Bonita Granville followed suit, as good and bad twins Linda and Estelle, in Monogram's sub-basement adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich story. Of the two, The Guilty is the creepier, more haunting movie, taking a place of dubious honor amid the nether reaches of film noir.Mustachioed Don Castle shares his walk-up flat with his superior from army days, Wally Cassel, who's a little unstable owing to a head injury sustained in combat. They're involved in a complicated foursome with the twins; when one of the fellows breaks up with one of the girls, the other takes up with the ditched sister. But the insanely jealous Estelle keeps playing one guy off the other; she wants both and her sister to have neither. One night Linda disappears; later her body is found on a rooftop, in a barrel of gravel (she was too big to shove down the incinerator shaft). Police investigator Regis Toomey encounters a baffling maze of alibis and false clues (Castle is on the hunt as well), until the movie ends with climaxes within climaxes.All this takes place in but three sleazy sets: The men's apartment; that of the twins, their mother and a long-time boarder (John Litel); and a corner bar from which most of the story is narrated in flashback. A few forays into the dark, deserted streets only enhance the claustrophobia, the obsessiveness of Woolrich's nightmare vision. (And his obsessive fiction reuses the same themes and gambits over and over; there are parallels here to the same year's The Fall Guy, which resembles The Black Angel, which...).Granville, of course, will ever be the screen embodiment of Nancy Drew, from the four programmers she starred in as the teenaged sleuth during the late '30s. Her career started to sputter in the next decade; for one thing her girlish exuberance didn't blossom into womanly glamor. But she developed a tough, no-nonsense, very-'40s face (not unlike Ann Savage's). Her noir appearances were limited to a small (but meaty) role in The Glass Key and a leading one in the low-budget Suspense. It's a shame, because grew up into quite a good bad girl.