Thirteen Women

This fascinating, hypnotic RKO 'A' film bombed so badly that the studio withdrew it from release, chopped out 15 minutes (from 74 to 59), and disposed of it on the bottom end of double bills. The question is: Why?

Even after 70 years, "Thirteen Women" is an eerie, lushly produced thriller that provides more genuine chills than in any of today's counterparts. For movie buffs, the real treat is seeing Irene Dunne and Myrna Loy (both of whom within a year or two would emerge as two of Hollywood's most bankable and respected leading ladies) slumming in a nasty pre-Code creeper about a half-caste sorority girl (Loy) who enlists the aid of a sinister spiritualist to exact revenge on the prejudiced campus "ladies" who expelled her from their club a few years earlier. One by one, and by devious means, Loy (still playing slant-eyed fiends, but not for much longer, thank God!)meticulously plots and carries out the not-for-the-squeamish deaths of her victims--until the last one alive, Irene Dunne, happily married with an adorable young son, remains her sole surviving target. After her plans to poison the toddler go awry, Loy goes bonkers and boards the train where the police (it certainly takes them long enough to figure out what's going on) have secreted Dunne until they apprehend Loy. The climax--with a dagger-wielding Loy chasing the terrorized Dunne through one car to the next--is a corker--meticulously copied and working equally well a half a century later in the climax of "Terror Train" (with Jamie Lee Curtis duking it out with a transvestite psycho). Even chopped to 59 minutes, "Thirteen Women" is still a landmark horror film. The most baffling mystery is why audiences rejected it in 1932. Perhaps it was ahead of its time. Depression-era loved mysteries--but uncensored exercises in sheer terror like "Thirteen Women" were too scary for comfort (even today, it provokes an unsettling series of shocks that make it the "Psycho" of the '30s--and even the "Psycho" of 30 years later had to overcome initial critical pans before audiences pounced on it and lapped up every sick, terrifying minute.) Hopefully, the 15 minutes a worried RKO cut from the original prints of "Thirteen Women" will be discovered and restored so we may someday see this unexpected treasure as it was intended to be seen. Meanwhile, even the expurgated version (shown occasionally on Turner Classic Movies--check the listings) is as dazzling and brazen a shocker Hollywood turned out in the early 1930s--before the Hayes Office took over and thwarted any further movie from going as gleefully and sadistically over-the-top as the delicious "Thirteen Women." (Even MGM had to severely edit "Freaks" to placate horrified censors and audiences.)

I looked forward to seeing this film on TCM. I was disappointed in what I saw. I've read that several minutes were cut from the original for censorship and other reasons and have never been restored. Even Turner who usually attempts to present features uncut and in as pristine condition as is humanly possible hasn't done much with this early talkie, even the sound was bad. So I have to go with what I saw. First, being an early talkie, many of the actors were still gesticulating and shouting their lines as if on stage or doing a silent flick. Particularly guilty of this was C. Henry Gordon who played a key character Swami Yogadachi. Fortunately for the viewer he is killed not long after the movie begins. The two future divas, Irene Dunne and Myrna Loy, do much better and appear very modern with their acting skills. Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy) is sinister and evil to the core yet smiles like an adorable angel. Irene Dunne as Laura Stanhope plays the type role that she would perfect in later movies. Ricardo Cortez as Police Sergeant Barry Clive does a decent job in a role that isn't all that demanding.

Second, the writing is good with an intriguing plot: twelve former classmates of a boarding school are being killed off by rejected classmate number thirteen through the use of phony horoscopes. The plot should have enabled the story to move along at an even pace. Yet there are places in this approximately one hour film that are very boring. These boring stretches are broken by a few exciting moments. The trapeze scene is a dandy as is the final scene aboard the fast-moving train. Cinematography is exceptional in some places considering the age of the film, especially the final scene featuring Myrna Loy. Also impressive is the car chase sequence when the chauffeur is attempting to make a getaway with Laura Stanhope captive in the back seat.

Third, though the racial prejudice angle is bold and enlightening for 1932 when Hollywood was notorious for racial stereotyping, it actually only figures in at the very end of the movie in one extremely well-done and well-written scene when the two protagonists Ursula and Laura (Loy and Dunne) confront one another in a spell-binding moment of truth and retribution.

How long must we wait until a restored version of this film is released on DVD so we can make a more accurate assessment?

This is an oldie but a goodie, albeit a short one - one of the other comments explains what happened, but no one knows the reason.

Myrna Loy is very beautiful and exotic as Ursula Georgi (which I actually think is an Italian name) who is a half-caste seeking revenge on sorority sisters who kept her out of their group. She uses the power of suggestion, switching their actual horoscopes by mail that they receive from a swami with predictions of doom. One by one, the women die. She ultimately knocks off the swami and turns her sights on the disbeliever of the group, played by Irene Dunne.

Loy would soon break free from exotica with "The Thin Man" series. Mrs. Laurence Olivier at the time, Jill Esmond, appears in the film, as do Ricardo Cortez and Peg Entwhistle. For Entwhistle, the dire predictions in the film played out in real life for her. Shortly after this movie was made, she achieved a lasting fame by committing suicide by jumping from the "Hollywoodland" sign in Los Angeles.

This is a very unusual film, not least because Myrna Loy, best known for cheerier films, here plays an extremely sinister character. What is more surprising is that she is extremely convincing in that kind of role. There must have been another side to Myrna! Even more unusual, she plays an Anglo-Indian woman. For those who don't know, that means people who were born in India during the Raj who were half English and half Indian. The Anglo-Indians experienced a great deal of prejudice in India because they were not accepted by the Indians, being 'half-breeds', and were also looked upon as inferior by the English. Here, Myrna has a huge chip on her shoulder and is obsessed with resentment at having been treated in a humiliating manner at her boarding school by the other girls. She is, not to put too fine a point on it, dangerously mad. She is determined to get even despite the fact that it is so many years later. She tracks down the other twelve 'girls', now obviously women, and starts killing them one by one. I first came across this film under the title TREIZE FEMMES ('thirteen women'), and wrongly dated 1936, as a DVD release in the RKO Series by Editions Montparnasse in Paris. On its rear cover is the boast, in the form of a quote from Serge Bromberg: 'A rarity never distributed in France' (in French of course.). Well, things have changed, it is now widely available, as more and more forgotten old movies get released. Another reason for the French to get excited was that the film was directed by the French-born director George Archainbaud, who emigrated to America when he was 25 and became a director of 146 films, including the TV series THE LONE RANGER (1949-50), HOPALONG CASSIDY (1952-54), ANNIE OAKLEY (1954-57), and a host of other such Americana. He was therefore very drastically 'un-Frenched' in his new environment, something that the French find incomprehensible, fascinating, and also alarming. The film includes a somewhat subdued performance by Irene Dunne, who four years later would become an eternal icon for her starring role in SHOW BOAT (1936). Both Irene Dunne and Myrna Loy doubled up and played two of the other twelve girls who were minor characters, though this was not revealed in the credits. Another interesting feature of this film is that Myrna uses hypnotic powers to wreak her vengeance. Spell-binding stuff!

Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy) is a half-white, half-Indian girl who a missionary sends to an exclusive finishing school so that she can learn to "pass" as white. But the 13 women in a particular exclusive sorority learn that Ursula is "half caste'", expose her, and as a result she is expelled from the school. If these racial attitudes all sound very archaic it's because they are, but then this film is over 90 years old. So bear with me.

So Ursula has apparently been itching for revenge ever since. And 15 years later she puts her plan into action. One of the girls asks for horoscopes for all 13 from the imminent Swami Yogadachi. His lover happens to be Ursula who has hypnotic powers of her own. Yogadachi casts the horoscopes, which seem at least semi positive. Ursula then puts the Swami in a deep sleep and replaces the horoscopes with her own for each woman, warning of death, prison, insanity, etc. With Yogadachi's usefulness to her finished , she then hypnotizes him so that he runs into the path of a moving train. This woman is NOT a nice person!

But Ursula never seems to finish what she starts. She disposes of only three of the 13 women when they read the horoscopes, become obsessed with the inevitability of their predicted fates, and actually cause their horoscopes to come true. Ursula then becomes oddly focused on Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne) who is urging the others to ignore these horoscopes as so much hogwash. She seems determined to break Laura, not because she was particularly cruel to her, but because she is resisting her little game. Complications ensue.

The film does have something to say about the power of the mind over situations. And Ursula is not in the least bit a sympathetic character given that she has no natural affection towards anyone. She has enemies and men she uses to get revenge on those enemies - Those are the only two kinds of relationships she seems to have as an adult.

I'd say the one hokey thing that the film does consists of the special effects. For some reason a bright star appears in the center of the screen every time a sorority sister fulfills her face or Ursula hypnotizes someone to do her bidding. It's short at just under an hour and pretty entertaining.