MY DVD Collection - 09 Feb 2007

(Eiskalte Rache [de])

USA 1952
d: David Miller
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

>> The Cast & Crew [click to show or hide]

Definitely a walk on the wild side, this has Crawford as a well-heeled playwright sacking hatchet-faced Palance from her latest production as lacking the right romantic personality, then falling for him in a whirlwind courtship when they 'happen' to meet on a train. Cue for a deadly cat-and-mouse game as Palance, aided by sulky Grahame, sets out to kill Crawford for her money and she uses her playwright's wiles to devise a counterplot. With suspense screwed way beyond the sticking point, superb camerawork from Charles Lang, and Crawford in nerve-janglingly extravagant form, it's hugely enjoyable.
— TM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
An independent production for distribution through RKO, this famous Joan Crawford vehicle - one of her best films from the fifties - has somehow vanished from circulation, and is next-to-impossible to see in an original 35mm print such as we will have the privilege of screening for this presentation. A noirish melodrama, "Sudden Fear" is photographed in darkly luxurious tones and shadows of black and white by Charles Lang Jr., and benefits further from the extraordinary chemistry of Joan Crawford and Jack Palance (!) in the leading roles of what turns out to be a truly bizarre story of love/disillusionment/fear/hatred/ and hysteria. On another level Sudden Fear is an extraordinary close-up documentary on Joan Crawford's face, a face whose evolution from the '20s to the '70s speaks volumes about the domestic American values it reflects from the other side of the lens/screen. The story concerns a wealthy playwright (Crawford) who finds it necessary to fire an actor (Palance) during a Broadway rehearsal. On the train home to San Francisco, playwright and actor meet and, it seems, fall in love. After marrying and settling down to a comfortable Nob Hill existence, dark schemes begin to hatch....
— PFA
•••••
Crawford rides a roller coaster of emotions from dewy-eyed love through hatred, pain, and, eventually, to triumph. Making his movie debut was Mike Connors, still using the nom de cinema his agent, Henry Willson, gave him after learning it was the young athlete's nickname at UCLA. Willson was also the man who changed Roy Fitzgerald to Rock Hudson and Arthur Gelien to Tab Hunter. Leading man Palance, one of the new breed of "method actors" who had studied at the Actor's Studio in New York, which hatched Marlon Brando and other introspective, inner-directed actors, proved to unnerve old line movie star Crawford. He was moody and distant during the production and alarmed the actress when, to build up his emotional state, he would run madly about the sound stage. The film was an enormous success, earning back many times its cost of $720,000. Crawford wisely elected to take 48 percent of the profits instead of her $200,000 salary.
— TV MovieGuide