The Strange Woman (DVD)

Beautiful and sensuous screen legend Hedy Lamarr is an ill-treated waif out to better herself by any means necessary in Edgar G. Ulmer's lavish costume drama about passion, class and culture in frontier era America.

Gorgeous Jenny Hager (Hedy Lamarr) suffers from poverty and the abuse of her drunken father in the bustling port town of 1830's Bangor, Maine. The town elders place the girl in the home of wealthy aging businessman Isaiah Poster (Gene Lockhart) who comforts the the girl, first as a father, then as a husband. Jenny immediately begins to seduce her new stepson, Ephraim (Louis Hayward), who has loved her since childhood. Heartlessly playing father against son, she effectively destroys both men and emerges as the richest and most powerful woman in the community. Her dead husband is barely cold in the grave when the calculating widow turns her attentions to her handsome foreman, John Evered (George Sanders), and his sweet young fiancee (Hillary Brooke), whose engagement is the next victim of her cruel and lustful intentions. Emerging as a pillar of society with a new young husband, Jenny has no idea of the shocking fate which awaits her.

• drama