DVD REVIEW - CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW - 21/01/08

A beautiful but neurotic young heiress called Kimberley Prescott (Anne Baxter) has her life complicated by the arrival of a handsome stranger (Richard Todd) who claims to be her late brother, Ward, who was killed in a motorcar accident a year ago. This man has gone to a lot of trouble to convince everyone that he is who he says he is. For instance, his passport and letter of credit from his bank are all in order and he even has an identical tattoo on his arm to that worn by her brother and even more frighteningly the photographs that Kimberley has kept of her brother have been switched to match his identity. Everyone apart from Kimberley seems convinced that the stranger is Ward including her Uncle Chan (Alexander Knox) and even the Police Commissar Vargas (Herbert Lom). The stranger wastes no time in making himself at home by employing a new maid in Elaine Whitman (Faith Brook) and a new butler, Carlos (Alan Tilvern) who are clearly involved in his plans whatever they are. It soon transpires that Kimberley removed $10,000,000 worth of diamonds from the safe at her father's company, which had been bought out by another firm before he died, so technically it was theft since the diamonds are now the property of the new owners. Ward and his cohoots seem interested in tracking the stones down but are they acting for the company, are they con artists or ruthless jewel thieves?

Chase A Crooked Shadow is an entirely gripping, well acted, beautifully photographed and tightly directed British mystery thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat from the first frame to the last even though it was made fifty years ago! The screenplay by David D Osborn and Charles Sinclair is peopled with characters who are not what they seem and are brought to life by some of the British film industry's top acting talent of the era such as Richard Todd who exerts just the right amount of charm and mysteriousness as the guy posing as Anne Baxter's brother whilst the underrated Herbert Lom shines as the Policeman who does not believe Kimberley at first but finally decides to help her get to the bottom of the mystery. Lom was always an underrated artist who became typecast in the Pink Panther movies as the mad Inspector Dreyfuss but some of his straight roles warrant greater attention such as his undervalued performance in The Phantom Of The Opera (1962). Some of the film's plot twists are a little far fetched and at times the film unashamedly borrows from Hitchcock such as the scene where Elaine Whitman brings a glass of milk accompanied by a Will on a tray making Kimberley believe that the milk is poisoned. Anybody who has seen Hitch's Suspicion will recognise the borrowing from that picture where Joan Fontaine believed that her husband in the form of Cary Grant was trying to kill her and the set piece of the apparently poisoned glass of milk brought to her by the husband to heighten the heroine's paranoia was employed in that film as well.

This Region 2 DVD offering from Optimum Releasing benefits from crisp remastering and although it is short of Special Features, they have put the original 1958 censorship certificate at the start of the picture, which gives us insight into the former censorship categories of the time. Optimum have done this with some of their other classic movie DVD reissues. Chase A Crooked Shadow was originally an "A" certificate, which back then meant that persons under the age of 16 had to be accompanied by an adult.