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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Thursday, March 21, 2019

The Woman Who Came Back (1945)

Starring John Loder, Nancy Kelly, Otto Kruger, Ruth Ford, Harry Tyler
Directed by Walter Colmes
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

After returning to her ancestral town, and being the only one to survive a bus accident, a young woman fears that she is being possessed by the town's legendary witch.

This is an entertaining low budget horror film released by Republic Pictures, with a quality cast, and some fine use of shadowy photography and effective library music.  Set in Eben Rock, a town where witch trials once took place, suspicions about Kelly among the townspeople build as terrible things seem to start happening, only in her vicinity.  Kruger, playing the kindly town pastor, who has been researching the town's history and tries to keep rumors about her at bay, is excellent, as is an uncredited Elspeth Dudgeon, who plays the old woman who might be the condemned 300 year old Jezebel Trister, still alive after all these years.  Loder, as Kelly's paramour, who was left at the altar by her years before, comes off a bit bland, but Kelly herself is adept at displaying the nervous state all this has put her through.  You have to admire Kelly, and her ability to connote nervous shock in this film, on top of her later casting as the horrified mother in The Bad Seed.  The ending of the film does wrap things up in a way that all don't approve of from some of the other reviews I've read, but it's really a well put together picture I enjoyed.

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