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Chase a Crooked Shadow [VHS]

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You really do need to love Anne Baxter in order to fully appreciate CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW. Thankfully I'm a huge fan, in particular her roles in "The Ten Commandments", "The Blue Gardenia", "The Razor's Edge", and "Three Violent People"; not to mention her signature, Academy Award-nominated performance as the title character in "All About Eve".

In CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW, Baxter is diamond heiress Kimberley Prescott. Living a typically glamorous lifestyle on the Costa Brava, Kim is stunned one evening when a man (Richard Todd) claiming to be her dead brother Ward arrives on her patio. Everyone seems to believe him to be genuine, except Kim who identified Ward's body after the car-crash that supposedly killed him. Kim starts to believe she's going mad, until a sympathetic police chief (Herbert Lom) decides there's more than meet's the eye with Ward's resurrection...

You'll never ever guess the surprise ending! Needless to say, the film is full of twists and turns; we're never quite sure of who to believe or what motives are driving "Ward" in his quest to come back into Kim's life. Anne Baxter, with her honeyed and cultured speaking voice, is a perfect fit for the glamorous Kim and chews the scenery appropriately.

A tight, gripping thriller which clips along at a brisk 84 minutes. Definitely one of Anne Baxter's better movie vehicles. Recommended.

Chase a crooked shadow is one of the best suspense movie I have ever seen. It is too bad that the movie is not available in DVD or even VHS format. It is not included in the TCM classics. I would highly recomend Amazon to get this movie on their movie list. Thanks.

You really do need to love Anne Baxter in order to appreciate her performance in CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW. Thankfully I'm a huge fan, in particular her roles in "The Ten Commandments", "The Blue Gardenia", "Five Graves to Cairo", "The Razor's Edge", and "Three Violent People"; not to mention her signature, Academy Award-nominated performance as the title character in "All About Eve".

In CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW, Baxter is diamond heiress Kimberley Prescott. Living a typically glamorous lifestyle on the Costa Brava, Kim is stunned one evening when a man (Richard Todd) claiming to be her dead brother Ward arrives on her patio. Everyone seems to believe him to be genuine, except Kim who identified Ward's body after the car-crash that supposedly killed him. Kim starts to believe she's going mad, until a sympathetic police chief (Herbert Lom) decides there's more than meet's the eye with Ward's resurrection...

You'll never ever guess the surprise ending! Needless to say, the film is full of twists and turns; we're never quite sure of who to believe or what motives are driving "Ward" in his quest to come back into Kim's life. Anne Baxter, with her honeyed and cultured speaking voice, is a perfect fit for the glamorous Kim and chews the scenery appropriately.

A tight, gripping thriller which clips along at a brisk 84 minutes. Definitely one of Anne Baxter's better movie vehicles. Recommended.

Why are we so sure that diamond heiress Kimberly Prescott, who lives alone in a cliffside villa on the Costa Brava, is as neurotic as Sylvester the Cat being stalked by Tweety Bird? Because she's played by Anne Baxter. By 1958, Baxter's career had moved down to that crowded niche of aging female stars who played gracious but melodramatic divas. Baxter always had a penchant for "acting." When she didn't have a strong director, she'd almost always pull out the stops. With Chase a Crooked Shadow, these include breathless fear, tremulous helplessness, puzzled innocence, dramatic pauses while looking out into the distance, and all those short, rushing steps to the nearest balcony or sofa to reach something to lean against. As Kim, she's not a woman we really want to get involved with. As luck would have it, Kim has to deal with Ward Prescott, a man who shows up in the dead of night in her villa's garden and says, while lighting a cigarette, that he's her brother. Kim is positive that can't be because she identified her brother's body after a car crash. Kim becomes marginally sympathetic because Ward is played by top-billed Richard Todd as a man so insufferably confident and resourceful that it's hard not to dislike him.

A couple of years earlier Kim's father, the owner of a large but failing South African diamond consortium, killed himself. Just hours before, her brother had died in that car crash. Kim has been close to falling apart since then. Sure, she has her uncle (played by Alexander Knox) who lives nearby in his own villa, but Kim is fearful, lonely and very unhappy. We know all this because the movie opens in a dark Barcelona hotel room while the man who says he's Ward and the woman with him watch a film of the villa which must have been taken surreptitiously. They tell us a bit about Kim...and we immediately assume they are crooks.

The plot is an old one. Baxter chews the scenery. Todd is insufferable. Still, the movie kept me guessing. Up until the last ten minutes or so, Chase a Crooked Shadow could be about a ruthless con game, or a deranged murderer of either sex, or a story where either Kim or Ward could be good guys or bad guys. The truth, when it comes out, is so overacted by Baxter that, in my view, the story falls as flat as a rejected marriage proposal. If you don't mind Baxter's divaness or Todd's air of superiority, the shifting possibilities of the plot might be enough to keep you interested. I wouldn't watch the movie again, but I don't regret spending a little time with it.

One of the bright spots is Faith Brook, daughter of Clive Book, who plays Ward's associate. Brook was a tall, good-looking woman who spent most of her acting career on stage. None of the movies she made were worth much but they helped pay the bills. She was a fine actress. She shows Baxter how to do it. And if you've never heard of her father, one of the great leading men of the Twenties and Thirties, try his last two movies. The first, On Approval in 1944, is one of the best high society farces ever made. He wrote, directed, produced and starred. His last movie was The List of Adrian Messenger in 1963. He's the aged, wealthy and irascible Marquis of Gleneyre. He shares several scenes with the star, George C. Scott. At 76, he steals every one of them.

Chase a Crooked Shadow is a Region 2 movie available from AmazonUK. It has a good video and audio transfer and no extras. If the price is right, you might enjoy it.