I hate the American title, it sounds like a horror-comic, which this isn't. The British title is sly and insinuating, which this is. The plot's as old as the hills but time-honoured and the presentation here is masterly. Totally artificial but layered with intrigue and capped with a surprise that, on first viewing, really surprises. And continues to haunt and enthral thereafter.. There are little nods to PSYCHO - the dark specs, the eerie score, the wandering corpse - but it parts company with Hitchcock in its preservation of mystery, a commodity he never much cared for. In VERTIGO he disposed of it as soon as he could in favour of the truth, thus heightening the tension between Scottie and the girl(s) while PSYCHO itself is more a study in ambiguity, the why rather than the who. If Hitch had helmed Seth Holt's film - or indeed Michael Anderson's CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW - he would have restructured the scenario to permit the punters access to the heart of the situation via at least one lead character in order for his identification-techniques to come into play. His STAGE FRIGHT had notably failed very lamely because he deliberately lied to the audience and meandered off track (maybe out of desperation).
Here, however, and in Anderson, we're in Agatha Christie country with all the masks firmly in place until the final showdown. The revelation that the 'frightened lady' is actually the steely impostor rather than her persecutors is a powerful reversal-of-form (see Merle Oberon in DARK WATERS for the more conventional approach) and the casting of Lee Strasberg's daughter is marvellously apt. In her quest for answers Maggie must become a Method actress, psyching herself into Penny's 'condition' even when confronting horrors. Who was on the other end of the phone is not explained (neither was the McKittrick Hotel sequence in VERTIGO) but these energetic conspirators did employ a tape-recorder at one point so presumably could patch together anything that crossed their evil minds. What some folk will do for money.
Here, however, and in Anderson, we're in Agatha Christie country with all the masks firmly in place until the final showdown. The revelation that the 'frightened lady' is actually the steely impostor rather than her persecutors is a powerful reversal-of-form (see Merle Oberon in DARK WATERS for the more conventional approach) and the casting of Lee Strasberg's daughter is marvellously apt. In her quest for answers Maggie must become a Method actress, psyching herself into Penny's 'condition' even when confronting horrors. Who was on the other end of the phone is not explained (neither was the McKittrick Hotel sequence in VERTIGO) but these energetic conspirators did employ a tape-recorder at one point so presumably could patch together anything that crossed their evil minds. What some folk will do for money.