The Other Woman

Hugo Haas, born in Czechoslovakia but driven out of his country by Hitler, immigrated to the United States. He is a curious figure in the history of independent American film. Rather like his contemporary Sam Fuller, he produced, wrote, and directed any number of low-budget films, often released under the banner of a major studio, but apparently with little studio interference. Unlike other auteurs, he was completely in charge of the product; in Hass' case, the standard "B" picture thriller on the lower half of the double feature. Haas usually played the male role in his films: that of a bewildered middle-aged and slightly overweight European, the unwilling victim of a sleek sexy but thoroughly cold-blooded American woman, living by her wits, out to get some poor sucker's money in any way possible. Cleo Moore or Beverly Michaels usually played the archetypical blonde; neither by Hollywood standards conventional beauties, more like George Grocz caricatures of femme fatales. There is no doubt that Haas was a serious filmmaker, very ambitious despite his limited budgets; one, however, that neither the newspaper critics in the United States nor, more surprisingly, the Cahier du Cinema gang chose to embrace. This film is probably his best, because it offers in addition to a conventional blackmail plot a backstage look at the real Poverty Row Hollywood with its thrown together sets, offices, cutting-rooms and out of work actors. In the story Hass is an émigré director, married to the daughter of the head of a big studio, played here perfectly by Jack Macy, who for once actually looks and sounds like a typical mogul of the time. No Walter Pidgeon he. There are some unusual exchanges between Haas and Macy about what makes for a commercial film. The dialogue comes from the heart. Haas's. Well worth watching.

Cleo Moore is an extra on Hugo Haas' latest picture. When a bit player has to go to the hospital, he gives the three lines to Miss Moore. She blows three takes, despite some quiet coaching by Haas, so he shuts down production for the day, and shoots it with another actress the next day.

Miss Moore does;'t take it well. She thinks she was doing fine, but Haas was tormenting her, trying to make her look like a fool. She decides to get even.

Hugo Haas wrote, directed, and starred in this movie about Miss Moore's search for revenge, and it's a nice little movie...except for Miss Moore, whose delivery is all over the shop. Perhaps that was a deliberate choice, but it winds up being unconvincing. She had been a minor actress in Hollywood for several years at this point. She had also been married to Huey Long's son in her native Louisiana for six weeks when she was nineteen, then came to Hollywood. A couple of years after this movie came out, she ran for governor herself. She died in 1973, aged 48.

Hugo Haas' films are never pleasant, there is an uncomfortable uneasiness dominating all his films, but they are always very well written and therefore of lasting interest. This is one of his most unpleasant films giving an inside view of the backstage of cinema making, exposing intrigues and base money interests in a cinema director's worst nightmare, being subject to blackmail of such an extremely vicious kind that he can't get out of it except by responding in the same way. It's all about a movie extra who gets a chance of a stand in and fails miserably by showing herself a bad actress, which she takes too personally and decides to take a gruesome revenge on the director, the over-reaction of a wannabe who can't realise her own limitations - a bad loser of exorbitant proportions. She does not realise she is falling but has to bring innocents with her down in the fall at any price. This is a shocker but extremely well written, and although you will be horrified you will be fascinated at the same time and be stuck like the director to the very end.

Even when he doesn't fall for the dame auteur Hugo Haas manages to get undone by the duplicitous species. In The Other Woman, Haas introduces Cleo Moore who would become in-house fatale to his pathetic doormat characters for half a dozen pictures with similar outcomes.

Director Walter Darman (Haas) is pressed for a minor replacement for his picture and chooses an extra (Moore) who quickly flubs her chance with a couple of lines. Humiliated she swears vengeance and concocts a story that would destroy his marriage and career. He overreacts and things quickly spiral out of control.

Hell's fury and then some, scorned Cleo pulls out all the stops to even the score with Darman whose drinking and thinking play co-culprit to banshee Moore's plotting. What she wasn't expecting is Darman's over reaction.

Moore is an unrepentant creep, hard to sympathize with beyond her cringeworthy screen test. Haas is his usual slow on the uptake self before finding himself mired in murder. The crime itself and a Columbo like Jan Arvan bring a touch of suspense to the picture but overall it is a more frustrating than tragic B in which the two myopic leads could settle matters by each being given a good shaking and told to grow up.

By the time he made this, his seventh independent production, Hugo Haas evidently had plenty to get off his chest both about dealing with producers and with blondes; the studio setting (as well on saving on sets) providing interesting glimpses of both the mechanics and compromises involved in the filmmaking process.

Cynically manipulated by the law by appealing to his conscience; the final shot memorably echoes that that opened the film.