Kind Lady Double Feature

"Broadway's Dramatic Thunderbolt!" topped the posters for both movie versions of Edward Chodorov's hit Broadway shocker based on a Hugh Walpole story. Lightning struck twice on the screen as well. The first screen version appeared soon after the play's sensational stage debut, with character great Aline MacMahon playing the lead role of wealthy spinster Mary Herries. Much younger than the stage version of Mary, Aline's performance up against Basil Rathbone's charming narcissist Henry Abbot crackles with psychosexual tension between its leads before descending into true household horror that mixes the Brechtian and the bizarre. The 1951 version, under director John Sturges, returns Mary to her more advanced age with grande dame Ethel Barrymore making one of her final screen performances. Maurice Evans' Henry is more cold-blooded, while Angela Lansbury and Keenan Wynn add menace, and it all builds to a Hitchcockian climax.

• crime
• thriller