Yesterday's afternoon double feature at Noir City 9.

A lonely, mentally unbalanced woman invents a fictitious daughter and has the "daughter" write to a Marine stationed in the South Pacific. When the soldier returns back to the States, he goes to look up his pen pal, and is told by the "mother" that the daughter has moved away. An acquaintance of the women tells the soldier the truth, and in a rage the "mother" kills her. In order to cover up that crime, she realizes she must kill the soldier, too. Written by frankfob2@yahoo.com and swiped, by me,  from imdb.

Best Line (thanks to a tweet from anniebacon): "we've got a randy dandy at the door" "what's that?" "its nurse slang for a marine."

Everybody's probably already seen this movie and most would agree that the best thing about it is Angela Lansbury, who was both devastating and scene-stealing. 

My BFF, Halliwell's Film Guide of 1994, tells me that the Bergman/Boyer version is a remake of an apparently much more suspenseful British film by the same name and that stars my boyfriend, Anton Walbrook. Halliwell's gave the movie a rare four stars, describing the story as: A Victorian schizophrenic drives his wife insane when she seems likely to stumble on his guilty secret of an old murder and hidden rubies. The newer film it called "a grossly overblown and less effective version" with "moments of power..." and gave it two stars. Which seems fair to me.

But MGM didn't want the original film to compete with its big-name version and decided to buy the rights to the British film. Then it destroyed all prints but one, which was saved on the sly by the filmmaker, Thorold Dickinson.

Not very sporting of MGM, don't you think?

My problem with gaslighting generally is that it's such an inefficient and overly elaborate way to get rid of a spouse. Just have her strangled already.