Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

JasparLamarCrabb David Miller directed this noir and it's loony in the best possible ways. It's outrageously plotted and impeccably mounted and features some of Joan Crawford's best post-MILDRED PIERCE acting. Crawford is a profoundly wealthy heiress/playwright who falls wildly in love with actor Jack Palance (after having him fired from her play!). Mayhem ensues as Crawford & Palance head to San Francisco where their courtship is tied together in a series of montages. Miller keeps this fast paced thriller moving and he's helped along by a stunning Elmer Bernstein score. Crawford emotes a lot in her own inimitable style but really has just one moment of pure Crawford camp...as she discovers that the diabolical Palance is not at all what he seems. The great supporting cast includes Gloria Grahame, Bruce Bennett and a very young Mike Connors as "Junior."

blanche-2 In the old days of Hollywood, glamorous leading ladies were finished getting starring roles around age 30. Many times they were reduced to horror films, badly produced B movies, and television. If they want to strip their glamour and gain weight, they could do character roles. However, Joan Crawford, whose contract was terminated by MGM at the age of 35, continued to make good films throughout the '40s and into the early '50s. One of them was this one, Sudden Fear, for which she served as executive producer. In that capacity, she chose the screenwriter, the actors, the director, the composer, the cinematographer - and they were all top drawer.The story concerns Myra Hudson, a woman born into a wealthy family who became a successful playwright. She marries an actor, Lester Blaine (Jack Palance) and then realizes that he and his mistress (Gloria Grahame) are plotting to kill her.Crawford registers the bliss of new love, the pain of betrayal, hysteria, and then the steel to pull herself together and take action. Really it is one of her best roles. This is a woman who knew how to play to her strengths.Sudden Fear is exciting, suspenseful, atmospheric, and highly entertaining. Of course, if I saw Jack Palance and Gloria Grahame together, I'd know something was up. The first choices for the Lester role were Gable and Marlon Brando. Palance is excellent as a masculine, romantic man hiding a violent and psychopathic personality. As his flirtatious mistress Irene, Grahame is perfect.While there is no actual sex, there is a lot of raw desire and innuendo in this film.The end of the film has very little dialogue, and you'll be glued to the screen.It's sad to see once great stars like Lana Turner, Merle Oberon, and others reduced to poor circumstances in film, and sadder still that they knew that once they were at the top of the heap. Crawford at least fought the good fight and in Sudden Fear proved that she was still a force.

museumofdave This is a quintessential 1050'w "Woman In Peril" thriller, a genre that dynamic Joan Crawford visited several times,best, marshaling all her considerable melodramatic skill to cope with the personal horrors she must endure when the man she trusted is doing her wrong.Sudden Fear is a well-made noir from a reliable studio, the story of a woman playwright who misreads a potential lover and suffers because of it; the film was nominated for four Oscars (Joan's last nomination of three), and the evidence is there in superb lighting, cinematography and costumes (that pajama outfit is quintessentially 1950's).If you are a fan of slightly hysterical noir, replete with a hidden Dictaphone and cars chases down dark alleys in San Francisco, this one's for you--be warned, however, the available transfer is grainy, and fairly dreadful, with a soundtrack that needs to be cranked way up--this film deserves a better quality print (my rating would be better with a better transfer). But it's still quite watchable and great entertainment of it's kind.

Wael Katkhuda This is The Forth film I saw for Joan Crawford after seeing (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962 , Mildred Pierce 1945 and Grand Hotel 1932) and to me her best performance was in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?Now about this film : I don't know what to say, it's not a bad movie and it's not a good one. in the first 45 minutes the film is so boring the film show us a love or to be specific a blind love between an old-woman and a young man played by (Jack Palance) and you know from the beginning that he is a bad guy in these cases when you knew from the beginning the bad guy you become angry unless the film made it in a professional way ,( but not this one) cause Jack Palance face is evil so how could Miss.Crawford loved him I just don't know besides in all of his films he played the bad guy.( so nothing new) the big problem is that Joan Crawford couldn't convince anyone that she was in love with him although she is doing and performing it well she just didn't convince me there isn't a chemistry between these to leading stars. Then after the 45 minutes when she discovered that her lovely husband is a NEMESIS the movie began to get much better and it continuous till the end. but there were many scenes in the second part are funny and made me laugh ( although they didn't suppose to made you feel that way) such as the two imaging scenes they are just not real and when she made herself falling down the stairs if I were her I would probably broke my neck! As for Joan Crawford performance she is doing a good job here especially at the closet scene she did it in a great way and when she see here emotions after looking at herself at the mirror and feeling terrible about becoming a killer that was great one to. if you are Joan Crawford Fan(like me) see this Film , but don't expect too much.