Celos mortales

Another crazed logic-free over-acted melodrama in the same late Forties/early Fifties hothouse mode of Warners' Beyond The Forest, The Damned Don't Cry and This Woman Is Dangerous, this time sans the stellar fuel tank of Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. Judge this rating accordingly-- if you enjoyed aforementioned pictures, you'll get a kick out this; if not, take shelter. . .stormy weather indeed.

No need to rehash plot revealed by earlier posters, a Texas-set dramatic chile con carne liberally laced with murder, unrequited love and dark secrets set in one of those those only-in-the-movies remote desert communities where people live miles apart in remote rancheros. . .but still show up in gowns and white dinner jackets at swank poolside barbecues that would put Manhattanites to shame.

Although the smoldering-yet-vanilla Richard Todd, underused Ruth Roman and Zachery Scott(in a "hey-it's-a-paycheck" role that comes out of nowhere and getsthere fast) are ostensible stars, show is stolen by cactus-chomping Mercedes McCambridge in (apparently unintentional) schizophrenic role as a butch desert denizen (think of her role in Johnny Guitar, only less feminine) who not only has inexplicable crush on charmless Todd after he has allegedly killed his wife. . .but is nevertheless selected to serve on jury during his murder trial to boot! Things go off-cliff (as does at least one vehicle) from there.

Whatever film lacks in reality, it more than makes up for in implausibility and psychological chaos that would baffle Freud. But rest assured, everyone gets their just deserts(sic). If you're in right frame of mind, a yucca minute.

It's lurid and ludicrously plotted. Yet despite, or perhaps because of its overwrought melodrama, it's oddly entertaining, like a Carol Burnett parody of one of those classic "women's pictures". If you can just give in to the absurdities of the story, you might have a good time. The acting is slightly over-the-top, but it suits the material.

If something is really good, I will forgive plot holes or situations that stretch the imagination. I won't do it here.

"Lightning Strikes Twice" stars Ruth Roman, Richard Todd, Mercedes McCambridge, and Zachary Scott. Roman plays an actress, Shelley Carnes, who has been sent out west for her health and is going to a dude ranch. The talk on the train is about Richard Trevelyan who was convicted of murdering his wife and received a death sentence. He was given a stay of execution pending a new trial and freed because the jury had one holdout who thought he was not guilty.

When her car gets stuck in the mud, Shelley is helped by a man in a house nearby, who turns out to be Trevelyan. She leaves the next day. The dude ranch, it turns out, is closed. She is invited by the caretakers Liza and String (McCambridge and Darryl Hickman) to stay for a few days anyway. She has already met their neighbors, who were friends of Trevelyan. Everyone seems to be looking for him. She learns that Liza was the one holdout on the jury. Because he wasn't convicted, the people in town are nasty to her (reminds me of the Casey Anthony trial where the local restaurants wouldn't serve jurors). Liza believes in his innocence.

Shelley meets Richard again, and the two of them fall in love. Shelley wants to prove him not guilty. But was he? This noirish film was a nice diversion thanks to the acting, but it had a few problems. The first is, what the heck was Liza doing on the jury if she knew this guy? Doesn't that suggest a certain prejudice? Second, things happen too fast. Roman and Todd are madly in love after one kiss and a couple of days. Third, why was Zachary Scott in this film? Talk about being superfluous, and he was hardly in it anyway.

Richard Todd is miscast as Trevelyan. He and Roman make a beautiful couple, and Todd was a good actor, but he is out of place in the west, given his accent and bearing. As someone on the board suggested, Scott may have been a better choice for the role, or Jim Davis.

The rest of the acting is very good, with a strong performance by Mercedes McCambridge and a solid one by Roman. In the end, though, this film is pretty routine, though atmospheric.

Richard Todd sits on death row, waiting execution for his wife's murder. At the eleventh hour, a reprieve and new trial come through; he's acquitted, thanks to one holdout juror (Mercedes McCambridge). Released, he disappears into the west Texas desert.

Enter Ruth Roman, a touring actress in search of the desert's restorative climate. An innkeeper and his wife become solicitous of her when she stops in a small town, and lend her a car to get to the dude ranch where she hopes to recuperate. En route (in a scene prescient of Janet Leigh's flight from Phoenix in Psycho), she gets lost in thunderstorms and takes refuge in an abandoned house -- where Todd is holed up. They size one another up and, next morning, she continues on to the dude ranch. Run by McCambridge and her emotionally disturbed young brother (Darryl Hickman), it has closed down, but they agree to put Roman up for a few days. But she seeks out Todd again, despite conflicting stories about his guilt or innocence.

Director King Vidor and scriptwriter Lenore Coffee, having goaded Bette Davis to pull out all the stops in Beyond The Forest two years earlier, here take on another overloaded melodrama, with mixed results. We see too little of key events and rely instead on hearsay about other characters, who sometimes haven't yet been sufficiently established (and the one brief flashback is a mistake -- we need either more or none). And of eight major characters, two or even three (including Zachary Scott) prove superfluous. But the movie's biggest stumble lies in the casting of Richard Todd. Remembered if at all as the title character in that echt-1950s biopic of pious patriotism A Man Called Peter, here his stiff British accent and acting falsify the whole Southwestern milieu (Lightning Strikes Twice, like Desert Fury of five years earlier, evokes the new Sunbelt of money and leisure).

Happily, the female characters fall on the plus side. Kathryn Givney shows spunk and intelligence as the strangely solicitous Mrs. Nolan. Ruth Roman, on evidence of this movie and Tomorrow Is Another Day, had more range and subtlety than she was let display in her best known role as Farley Granger's mannikin-like fiancee in Strangers on a Train. But the acting honors, inevitably, fall to McCambridge. Looking especially tomboyish, her face registers every thought and feeling that passes through her head; she's hyper-alert in her moods and responses. And so, as was her custom during her disappointingly thin screen career, she delivers the most memorable performance of the film.

A film noir buff, I recently came across this film, which has all the hallmarks of a sharply focused Warner Brothers film noir, with an excellent cast and some scenic black-and-white cinematography somewhere in the southwestern desert.

A promising start features Ruth Roman as an actress seeking a dude ranch for her health (which appears unimpaired, by the way) who stumbles into an unresolved murder mystery involving Richard Todd (who appeared gorgeous even to this straight male) as a rancher acquitted of murdering his wife after two trials, the first ending in a conviction.

Roman and Todd "meet cute" and she becomes smitten with him before learning his identity. She becomes determined to establish his innocence once and for all to quiet area residents still harboring doubt.

At this point I was wondering why this film wasn't mentioned more among noir classics but then things started getting weird.

There are various subplots involving Todd's foster parents, from whom he is estranged, Mercedes McCambridge, both the owner of the now-shuttered dude ranch and juror responsible for Todd's acquittal, and Zachary Scott as an indolent playboy who seems a bit out of place in ranching territory.

Indeed there is an air of opulence, including a swank Beverly Hills-style dinner party at a ranch, that seems out of keeping with the setting. And Todd, is remarkably well dressed and groomed even when hiding out in the wilderness.

Eventually, with the plot and setting becoming progressively less realistic and various characters going into unexplained hysterics, the film seemed less noir than fantastic melodrama. However, it does resolve the murder mystery, if only via the indiscretion of the real culprit.

There's also a background story that eventually fades from the plot about a lovable priest with a Hispanic flock that perpetuates Hollywood stereotypes of childlike Mexicans speaking broken English and taking siestas against walls.

Despite my misgivings, I enjoyed the film on its own terms and wouldn't mind watching it again some time down the road. Good cast and cinematography and fast-paced enough to distract you from the anomalies.