Chained for Life (1951)

User Rating:

3.5/10   

Director:

Harry L. Fraser

Writers:

Ross Frisco (idea) and
Nat Tanchuck (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

29 October 1954 (Finland)

Genre:

Crime

Tagline:

Frank! daring! bold! Like nothing you've ever seen!

Plot:

A Siamese twin kills the husband who left her. The courts have to decide if she is convicted of murder, how can they punish her sister, who had nothing to do with the crime?

Plot Keywords:

Murder | Siamese Twins | Exploitation

Cast

Violet Hilton	...	Vivian Hamilton
Daisy Hilton	...	Dorothy Hamilton
Mario Laval	...	Andre Pariseau
Allen Jenkins	...	Hinkley
Patricia Wright	...	Renée
Robert Keys	...	Defense Attorney (as Alan Keys)
Norval Mitchell	...	Judge Mitchell (as Norvel Mitchell)
Edna Holland	...	Mabel
Brian O'Hara
Herbert Lytton	...	District Attorney
Jack Mulhall	...	Dr. Thompson
Jim Hope
Roy Regnier
Zena Barry
Tony Iavello	...	Singer

Runtime:

81 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | UK:(Banned)

Company:

Spera Productions Inc.

Trivia:

Much of the plot was derived from real events in the lives of Siamese twins Daisy Hilton and Violet Hilton: the sham-marriage for publicity; the difficulty getting a marriage license due to morals concerns; the vaudeville singing career.

Movie Connections:

Edited into "Muchachada nui: (#2.4)" (2008)

Text-Book Exploitation Flick

One has to really feel sorry for the Hilton sisters. Fine vaudeville singers, they were screwed over throughout their whole lives due to the fact that they were conjoined (siamese) twins. It should be fitting then, that they took the lead roles in this film, based on their lives.

CHAINED FOR LIFE tells the story (typical of the time, in "flashback") of Vivian and Dorothy Hamilton (couldn't they be a little less obvious with the names?), conjoined twins who sing in a vaudeville show, but are humiliated by their manager through a publicity marriage stunt that goes horribly wrong when one of the twins genuinely falls in love with the "husband" Andre, only to have her heart broken when he takes the pay advance promised him for the stunt, reveals he never loved her, and annuls the marriage to marry his "normal" lover. The other twin, who never liked him anyway, avenges her sister's sorrow by shooting him during one of his final presentations with his own pistol (he was the show's trick shooter). A single judge in court has to hear the case and decide the fate of both twins, the guilty and the innocent.

Sounds interesting right? I thought so too, unfortunately this film totally ditches the court-room aspect which pulled me in, focusing instead on the re-telling of the plight of the heartbreak and the marriage stunt. In retrospect, this was probably a good thing, because the film is boring, and limiting it to the court room would be the only thing that could make the film even worse. The acting is totally dry, and, although the film attempts to address the morality of the situation and has some interesting/thoughtful quotes in monologues towards the end, the script is humdrum, exactly the same as all the other dull, low-budget '50s "thrillers", only with conjoined twins!

One can't really blame the Hilton sisters though. They deliver the goods in several musical sequences in the film, which have no purpose whatsoever other than to show us that, though bad actors, the Hilton sisters are great singers; this is really the only reason to watch the film, to see the "amazing singing siamese twins". Really, it's sad that this film and FREAKS were the only way the Hiltons could be preserved, since neither film shows their true potential, as prejudice against them had ensured that they would never get a proper recording or film contract. This is why the film itself is ironic, since its only appeal to the audience is to gawk at the siamese twins (save for those short times when we are swept up in song and hear the voices, ignoring the bodies they came from) and its overlying message is about how they have suffered throughout their lives and how this gawking and exploitation is wrong.