Sudden Fear (1952)

It's not a patch on Hitchcock's Suspicion from 1941  - that movie tells the same story but with humour, a grisly connection to true crimes, as well as the electric pairing of Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine - but this lesser Sudden Fear is still a gripping noir with a young Jack Palance starring as Crawford's playwright's new murderous man.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Phone Call From A Stranger (1952)

We spend so much time with "The Four Musketeers", a self-named group of not terribly interesting - and in the case of Keenan Wynn's Eddie Hoke, a novelty salesman, downright annoying - plane passengers thrown together by chance, that it comes as a bit of a shock when the plane crashes, killing three and leaving the fourth, Gary Merrill's dullard lawyer, to take up the others' unfinished business - unfinished and very melodramatic business involving guilt, shame, love, betrayal and other overwrought stuff that only a movie-final appearance by Bette Davis can neatly, patly resolve.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Home At Seven (aka Murder on Monday)(1952)

It opens like an episode of The Twilight Zone - a banker returns home from work one afternoon unaware he has been missing since he left for work the morning before - and although not much is made of the potential of this kooky premise in the end, likeable characters and a brisk pace make this gentle mystery drama fun enough rainy day viewing.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Ghost Ship (1952)

Rumours of a ghost don't stop a couple from buying a ship but after their crew members flee their jobs, the couple hire a paranormal investigator whose arrival on board the ship marks the point this low-budget nautical thriller becomes really, really scar...ily bad - none of the actors has any choice but to bear with stoic faces the paranormal investigator's awful explanations and the acting from that point becomes more wooden and more hollow than the ship's hull. 

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

My Cousin Rachel (1952)

A sumptuous adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's gothic romance, but Phillip, who suspects his 'cousin' Rachel conspired first against his late Uncle Ambrose and now against him for the family's Cornwall estate, is portrayed by Richard Burton as such a dunderhead - insipid, delusional, violent, naive, and let's face it, a likely xenophobe - that from the word go modern viewers' sympathies rest not with him but with the possibly conniving, possibly murderous Rachel.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

East of Eden (1952)

This family melodrama based on a John Steinbeck novel is sure to make you uncomfortable as James Dean writhes and squirms and grapples with immature impulses playing Cal Trask, the second son of a Californian farmer, a man whose high standards Cal just cannot live up to. 

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW