A Mulher que Voltou

Nancy Kelly (Lorna) returns to her small town after a 2 year absence. She is on the bus into town when cackling hag Elspeth Dudgeon (Jezebel) gets on and sits next to her. This old lady seems to know Nancy and claims to be 300 years old. The next thing that happens is the bus crashes into a lake and there are no survivors. Except Nancy. What is eerier is that there is no body of the old woman, she has just disappeared and no-one believes Nancy that she even ever existed. Well, she did exist. And Nancy seems to now possess some kind of evil spirit and be in tune with the darker forces of nature. There is a reason as foretold by a curse that tells of the revenge of an innocent woman burnt at the stake after being accused of a witch - she will return after a 300 year period and take over the body of a young woman to exact revenge. Uh-oh, guess who Nancy has just had an encounter with…..

This film has great potential and a good beginning but just sort of meanders until a real let-down of an ending that doesn't make sense. Shame. And why is John Loder (Matt) topping the bill in this film? It's Nancy Kelly's film – she's even in the goddam title, folks! There are some nice touches and spooky sequences but the film lacks that "kerpow!" factor, especially with the let-down of an ending. Could have been a strong, spooky witch film. As it is, it's OK as something different to watch.

THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK stars Nancy Kelly (THE BAD SEED) as Lorna Webster, direct descendent of the 17th Century magistrate responsible for "sending eighteen women to their fiery deaths," in the infamous Massachusetts town of Eben Rock. Coming back by bus, Lorna shares her seat with a black-veiled hag (THE OLD DARK HOUSE's Elspeth Dudgeon) who claims to be Jezebel Trister, Judge Elijah Webster's most famous victim. When the bus plunges into Shadow Lake, Lorna is the sole survivor - with the body of the strange woman nowhere to be found. So begins a series of strange encounters that threaten to plunge modern Eben Rock back into the dark ages.

THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK is a neat little Lewtonian drama about Old Country superstitions festering in the New World. Eben Rock is a town unable to rest comfortably on its own foundations (the Webster family tree hangs heavy with the kind of scoundrels that found nations), making less a story about the supernatural than of how superstition drives the sensitive and marginal away from reason and true faith (embodied here by the friendship between John Loder's town doctor and Otto Kruger's sage minister).

Although THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK seems influenced by the psychological horror films being produced by Val Lewton at RKO around the same time, the film also anticipates a key bit of business in the later CARNIVAL OF SOULS (the survivor of an aquatic auto accident later coming to doubt her sanity). Highly recommended.

After a two-year absence Lorna Webster (Nancy Kelly) is returning to her hometown. Beside her on the bus is a crone looking woman, Jezebel Trister (Elspeth Dudgeon,) who is also traveling to the town to get revenge on the descendent of the Webster that burned her as a witch 300 years ago. The bus veers off the road in crashes into the lake. Only Lorna survives and the body of the old lady is not found.

Was there an old lady? Or was it an imaginary figment? This and other strange coincidences are convincing Lorna that she is being possessed with whtchyness and the town is going along with her.?

Will she and her little dog too, dispatch the town's people one by one or will they have the courage to do unto her first?

As a psychological thriller, some may want to compare this film to Val Lewton. I think more in the line of A Fera de Londres (1946) with June Lockhart.

THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK is a 1940s-era spook fest with much in line with the Val Lewton horrors of the era. It's a low-key, atmospheric production about a woman who arrives at a small town in Massachusetts and is the only survivor of a bus crash (shades of UNBREAKABLE). Once she settles down in the town, the superstitious locals begin to suspect that she's possessed by the spirit of a vengeful witch.

It's fair to say that not much really happens in this movie, and nor does it need to. THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK is a short, thinly-plotted story that's more about building a sense of mood and place than anything else. It's quite expressionistic in style, with lots of shadowy scenes and spooky, half-explained moments. The cast are certainly adroit and the only thing that really lets it down is the ending, but until that point? Lewton himself would be proud.

The Woman Who Came Back is one of the many low budget horror movies made in the 1940's. Of the ones I've seen, this is one of the best.

After surviving a bus crash, a young woman comes back to her home town of Eben Rock and thinks she is a 300 year old witch and blames herself for a series of strange happenings in the town which include the bus crash and making a little girl become ill.

This movie is rather creepy at times and includes a thunderstorm and some good photography.

The cast includes Nancy Kelly (Tarzan's Desert Mystery, Bad Seed) as the "Witch", Otto Kruger (The Colossus of New York) and John Loder (Now, Voyager).

The Woman Who Came Back is a must for old horror fans. See it if you get the chance.

Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5.