Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

bkoganbing Very old Elspeth Dudgeon flags down a bus and sits next to Nancy Kelly the descendant of an old hanging judge, or maybe burning judge would be better of the town she's headed for. Right after the bus crashes and everybody dies except for Kelly and the fierce German Shepherd dog who was Dudgeon's companion. When she gets back all kinds of things start happening to make Kelly thinks she's possessed by the spirit of one of those women that was burned as a witch who threatened to come back and get even. For one thing the old woman's body was not accounted for. It's all a puzzle to the town doctor John Loder and the town preacher Otto Kruger. In the words of that old Fred Astaire song, this film builds you up to an awful let down. Some compare it to a Val Lewton type thriller. I think if Lewton had anything to do with it he was right to keep his name off.Everyone looks so earnest in this film though. A shame for some talented players to waste their time.

capkronos Feeling uneasy with her surroundings and the community at large, Lorna Webster (Nancy Kelly) had fled her hometown of Eben Rock, Massachusetts years earlier with no explanation to anyone. On her trip back to town - presumably to be reunited with her former love Dr. Matt Adams (John Loder) - the bus she's riding on pulls over to pick up an old woman (Elspeth Dudgeon) dressed in black and walking a dog. The woman takes a seat next to Lorna and immediately begins acting strangely. She somehow knows her name and claims to have known Lorna's great great great grandfather who's been dead for hundreds of years. Suddenly the old lady cackles and the bus goes crashing over some railing into a lake. The driver and all of the passengers die; everyone except for Lorna, who makes her way to a local inn wet, confused and delirious. Seeing how no old woman's body is ever recovered from the accident site, no one believes her story. And then a series of strange and possibly supernatural events occur...Lorna has a fondness for the dark, envisions the face of the witch in a mirror, causes fresh flowers to wilt, accidentally feeds a little girl's pet goldfish rat poison, drives away her maid (Almira Sessions) with her screaming and has no clue why the dead bus driver's neck appears to have been chewed away by an animal. She is however fully aware that she's a descendant of witch-hunting fanatic Elijah Webster, who was responsible for condemning eighteen innocent women to death for witchcraft back in 1645. Among his victims was an old woman named Jezebel Trister, who vowed to get revenge on Elijah's descendants. Rumor has it, Jezebel also made a deal with the devil which will allow her to possess the body of a young woman after three centuries of rest. The citizens of Eben Rock are well-versed on these legends and begin to suspect that Lorna is evil and directly responsible for misfortunes that have recently been befalling their community.This is a good movie that could have been a great movie with just a few alterations to the script. Kelly does a wonderful job in the central role; effectively portraying the ever-increasing paranoia and desperation of her character. There are also fine supporting performances from Otto Kruger as a reverend who tries to discourage the townspeople from ganging up on Lorna, Ruth Ford as Matt's distrustful sister who blames Lorna when her little daughter comes down with a mysterious illness, Harry Tyler as a town gossip and others. In addition, this is well-photographed and there are nice visual touches that recall the subtle expressionism of concurrent Val Lewton productions; utilizing tranquil shots of the sky and the lake, shadows and other simple touches for eerie effect.Where the film falters a bit is with the screenplay. It presents an intelligent and thought-provoking central idea: contrasting the "narrow bigotry" of the olden days to our supposedly more civilized, enlightened times and showing how people are still easily prone to mob mentality and rushed judgment. That's a theme every bit as timely today as it was in 1945. Unfortunately, the explanation behind the events given during the last few minutes relies too heavily on sheer coincidence and is implausible at best, ridiculous at worst. Regardless, this still has enough positives to make it worth watching.WOMAN is also notable in another way. There were several dozen other horror films bankrolled by the likes of MGM, Fox, Universal, RKO, Monogram and Republic in 1945, but WOMAN was made by Walter Colmes Productions, which would make it the only truly independent genre film made apart from the established studios during its year (though it was later picked up and distributed by Republic). As a result, the film utilizes more outdoor filming and feels a bit less stagy than other films made during this time.

ferbs54 In the little-seen 1945 chiller "Woman Who Came Back" (not, strangely and irritatingly enough, "THE Woman Who Came Back"), we meet a very disturbed young lady, Lorna Webster (played by Nancy Kelly, perhaps known to most viewers for her role in 1956's "The Bad Seed," and here looking very much like Joan Crawford in "Mildred Pierce"). Returning to her hometown of Eben Rock, MA (a stand-in for Salem) for the first time in years, she meets an evil-looking old crone on the bus, who claims to be Jezebel Trister, a supposed witch who had been burnt at the stake by Lorna's ancestor 300 years before. Following a series of increasingly suspicious incidents involving a bus crash, some dead flowers, rat poison, a burning book, a canine "familiar" and a sickened young girl, Lorna comes to believe that she has been possessed by the old witch...and so does the rest of the town. But has she really? This short film (it all transpires in only 68 minutes) has been directed by Walter Colmes (I know...who?) in a pleasing, atmospheric manner. It is occasionally creepy and brooding, but sadly dissipates a terrific setup with a forced and mundane explanation for all the frissons that had come before. Still, the picture serves as a nice object lesson on the perils of superstition and paranoia. Had it been made just five years later, it would have been read as a biting commentary on McCarthyism, and the modern-day witch hunt that the Wisconsin senator would then be initiating. As it is, the film comes off like an ominous predictor of America's future. Kudos to the wonderful character actor Otto Kruger, here playing a levelheaded reverend, as well as to John Loder, in his role as Lorna's increasingly frustrated doctor fiancé. In all, this is a pleasing little film that will certainly disappoint many, but one that still offers up an important message. And it appears just fine, too, on this crisp-looking Image DVD.

Richard_Harland_Smith THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK stars Nancy Kelly (THE BAD SEED) as Lorna Webster, direct descendent of the 17th Century magistrate responsible for "sending eighteen women to their fiery deaths," in the infamous Massachusetts town of Eben Rock. Coming back by bus, Lorna shares her seat with a black-veiled hag (THE OLD DARK HOUSE's Elspeth Dudgeon) who claims to be Jezebel Trister, Judge Elijah Webster's most famous victim. When the bus plunges into Shadow Lake, Lorna is the sole survivor - with the body of the strange woman nowhere to be found. So begins a series of strange encounters that threaten to plunge modern Eben Rock back into the dark ages.THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK is a neat little Lewtonian drama about Old Country superstitions festering in the New World. Eben Rock is a town unable to rest comfortably on its own foundations (the Webster family tree hangs heavy with the kind of scoundrels that found nations), making less a story about the supernatural than of how superstition drives the sensitive and marginal away from reason and true faith (embodied here by the friendship between John Loder's town doctor and Otto Kruger's sage minister).Although THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK seems influenced by the psychological horror films being produced by Val Lewton at RKO around the same time, the film also anticipates a key bit of business in the later CARNIVAL OF SOULS (the survivor of an aquatic auto accident later coming to doubt her sanity). Highly recommended.