Crow Hollow

I am 70 years of age and my family had our first t.v. (a "Murphy" 12" one channel BBC only) in 1954.I can still remember seeing Nora Nicholson playing her specialised role of a dotty old woman from those days in similar mystery plays.Esma Cannon another eccentric actress was an Australian who I first recognised playing a comic seamstress, "Lill" in the sit-com "The Rag Trade" in the early sixties.

The other reviewers have adequately commented on "Crow Hollow" (1952) and I see no reason to dispute their comments nor the official IMDb.com. rating which I would describe as adequate.The screen play writer & director very properly held back the solution of the mystery of who murdered the character maid "Willow" until the last reel; and why our dark brunette, newly married heroine's life had been previously threatened.Yes I too thought it reasonably well acted and I stayed the course to award it an rating of 6/10.

You have to hand it to British audiences and producers in the 40's, 50's and 60's, they loved their murder mysteries, some were terrible, some iconic, fortunately for a whodunnit addict like myself there are still so many gems to discover.

Today I found Crow Hollow, and it is partly what you'd expect from a 1950's British mystery, The House is creaky, the characters are eccentric, everyone is in the exact place you'd expect them to be for the time, with the exception of Esma Cannon, Aunt Judith, who's a spider loving crazy Aunt, an actress I've always adored in comedy, she's fun to watch as always.

It's generally well acted, engaging, and certainly an entertaining watch. I wouldn't call it a classic, but I really enjoyed, 8/10

This was made in the day when men were rational and women were either hysterical or dotty. For example, the part of Doctor Robert Amour played by Donald Houston is portrayed as the rational, sane and logical man, against his wife, the irrational hysterical, weak woman. Similarly the doctor's aunts are portrayed as dotty eccentrics with unusual hobbies.

Of course these are women's stereotypes, which through the medium of cinema helped to shape attitudes toward women in the public's mind. This is the power of cinema.

In the end though the film illustrates that the doctor's wife was indeed perfectly rational and sane, with a lot of guts in a dangerous situation. Everything turns out...... well let's not spoil it.

Overall a nice mystery film with a fabulous old house feel. It's full of suspense albeit played through the idea of women stereotypes. Nevertheless it's worth a look for fans of mystery and suspense.

It's pretty slow much of the time, but this is a decent mystery story that has enough atmosphere and suspense to hold your interest. The story starts with a young bride coming to live with her husband at "Crow Hollow", which is dominated by his three aunts, none of whom are ideal in-laws. Gradually she realizes that her situation is not just unpleasant, but hazardous. It has quite a low-budget look to it, but the characters are interesting enough, and one detail that is done well is the presence of the many crows on the family property, whose constant racket parallels the anxiety building up inside the main characters. It might have been better if the first part had moved much more quickly, because they spent a lot more time setting up everything than they did with the actual mystery. But for a low-budget mystery, it's not bad at all.

Not exactly good, but the photography by Robert LaPresle helps compensate for the cheap sets while papering over the cracks in Michael McCarthy's wildly inconsistent direction of this adaptation of Dorothy Eden's 1950 Gothic novel populated largely by women, in what resembles a very low budget rehash of 'The Three Weird Sisters' (1948), with Natasha Parry in the role played by Nova Pilbeam in the original.

Both are lured from London to an old dark house in the middle of nowhere occupied by three wacky old aunts; including Esma Cannon as an expert on spiders!