Edith Atwater

Alfred Hitchcock's last film is a hilarious romp that successfully combines mystery and humor. When a wealthy woman hires a phony psychic and a con man to find her missing heir, the results are diabolical, deadly, and laugh out loud funny! Essential viewing for all film fans, not just Hitchcock buffs! Featuring Academy Award nominees Karen Black, Bruce Dern, and Barbara Harris.

Various flashbacks and images introduce Lucy Harbin [Joan Crawford], a young woman who comes home unexpectedly to find her husband in bed with another woman. Carol, their very young daughter, is in bed right in the next room, but she is awake. Heartbroken, Lucy suffers a moment of fury and confusion that leads her to spontaneously pick up a nearby axe and decapitate her husband and his lover while they sleep. Carol watches in terror and shock as Lucy hacks the two bodies to pieces. Lucy is declared insane and sent to an asylum, where she endures traumatic shock treatments for her mental breakdown. The narrator of the flashback is revealed to be Carol, now a young woman. It is twenty years later, and Carol is opening up about her past to her boyfriend, Michael Fields. After Lucy's incarceration, Carol was taken in by her aunt and uncle, Bill and Emily, and the family lives on a farm in a rural location. Carol is revealing the family history to Michael because Lucy is being released from the asylum, and is coming to live with the family. When Lucy arrives, she is skittish. She cautiously acclimates to the farm, exploring the area with Carol and meeting the gritty-looking farm hand, Krause. But she is clearly thrilled to see Carol again, and is touched by the lovely young woman Carol has become. Carol is a sculptress and has a spacious studio filled with her work, and she thrills Lucy by giving her a bust of herself just as she was in her youth. Things quickly start to get strange. Carol shocks Lucy by presenting her with two bracelets she used to wear when she was a young woman, large dangling charm bracelets that jangle when she walks. Carol seems intent on recreating Lucy as a young woman, taking her clothes shopping and buying her a wig that mimics the hairstyle she wore the last time Carol saw her. Lucy is uncomfortable with this, but agrees to dress this way to please her daughter, whom she desperately wants to make amends with. While they are in the wig shop, Lucy hears strange voices, as if children are singing a morbid nursery rhyme about her crimes. She dismisses it as nerves. Later, she suffers a terrible nightmare and wakes up to discover two bloody heads in bed with her, with a bloody axe lying nearby. When she wakes the others, the items are gone from her room. Lucy starts to think she is relapsing. Things get worse when Carol attempts to introduce Michael to her mother. When Michael stops by for drinks, Lucy seems to try and seduce him, all with Carol right there in the room. The embarassing scene is interrupted by Lucy's former psychiatrist, Dr. Anderson, who makes an unexpected visit. When he sees how unstable Lucy seems, Dr. Anderson makes comments to the family that suggest he would like to take Lucy back to the hospital. When the doctor gets Lucy alone, his comments upset her and she runs off. As Dr. Anderson searches for her around the farm, he enters the darkened barn and a shadowy figure corners him--it appears to be Lucy, the silhouette revealing her hairstyle and figure, right down to the jangling bracelets she wears. The figure is holding an axe, and quickly decapitates Dr. Anderson. Carol returns to the farmhouse to find her mother alone in the darkened living room. The doctor's car is still outside, and Carol quickly comes to the conclusion that her mother has killed him. In a panic, Carol drives the doctor's car into a barn and locks it in, but she is spotted by Krause, who is lurking the shadows. The next day, Carol sees Krause painting the car a different color and angrily confronts him, but he smugly suggests that he knows what happened to the doctor, and that he'll turn Lucy in to the authorities if Carol fires him. Lucy overhears the conversation from the window. Later that evening, Krause is stalked and murdered with the axe. Lucy prepares for an evening that she dreads, a dinner party intended to introduce her to Michael's parents. If Michael and Carol are to be married, these will be their in-laws, and Michael's family is very wealthy, his father being the proprietor of a very successful dairy farm. Lucy has a panic attack in the powder room while at the Fields'--after spilling coffee on her dress, she retreats to the washroom and suffers a flashback because of the wallpaper, which resembles the bars of a prison cell. Carol calms her down and takes her back to the party. Mr. & Mrs. Fields are cordial until they plot to get Lucy alone so they can have a private conversation with her: Mrs. Fields is suspicious of Lucy, and poor Lucy makes a terrible misstep by revealing to Mr. & Mrs. Fields that her daughter and Michael are planning to be married. The Fields had not been informed of this yet, and they react disapprovingly. Mrs. Fields in particular gets very haughty with Lucy, making suggestions about her past, and Lucy suddenly snaps at her, revealing that she was in an asylum for twenty years. She says that under no circumstances will she allow the Fields' to interfere with her daughter's happiness, and she storms out of the house. Michael drives Emily and Carol back to their house while he and Bill go out looking for Lucy, who has disappeared. Emily sends Carol to bed, but Carol is restless and cannot sleep. With Michael gone from the Fields' house, Mr. and Mrs. Fields are alone in their house and they hear sounds to suggest someone is prowling around. Mr. Fields is oblivious, but when he goes into his closet to get undressed for the evening, he is attacked by the figure of Lucy, brandishing an axe. Mrs. Fields becomes suspicious and goes looking for her husband, eventually finding his body in the dressing room. Horrified, she retreats, only to be confronted by the figure of Lucy in the bedroom. Before the axe can fall, the bedroom door opens and the real Lucy comes in; after scuffling with the other figure, Lucy tears off a mask to reveal her daughter's face underneath. Carol has been committing the murders while dressing as her mother; scarred by witnessing the double homicide committed by her mother, Carol's mind was unstable ever since. Certain that Mr. and Mrs. Fields would never allow Michael to marry her without a great deal of trouble, she plotted to make it appear as if Lucy murdered them in a rage, which would send Lucy back to the asylum and allow her to marry Michael. Her mind shattered, Carol clutches the mask of her mother and screams at it "I hate you! I hate you! Oh I'm sorry, I love you! I hate you! I love you!" Outside on the porch, Lucy hears her daughter's insane ravings and weeps, perhaps remembering her own moment of insanity. An epilogue reveals Lucy discussing her plans with Bill. With Carol now committed to an asylum just as she once was, Lucy intends to stand by her daughter and be whatever kind of support that she needs.

Mike and Danny hitch a ride to the World's Fair in Seattle after the sheriff seizes their crop duster biplane to cover Danny's gambling debts. Mike looks after the driver's 7 y.o. niece at the fair, where he meets a cute nurse. Mike and Danny fly a crop duster, but because of Danny's gambling debts, a local sheriff seizes it. Trying to earn money, they hitch-hike to the World's Fair in Seattle. While Danny tries to earn money playing poker, Mike takes care of a small girl, Sue-Lin, whose Uncle Walter has disappeared. Being a ladies' man, he also finds the time to court a young nurse, Diane. —Mattias Thuresson

A powerful Broadway columnist coerces an unscrupulous press agent into breaking up his sister's romance with a jazz musician. J.J. Hunsecker, the most powerful newspaper columnist in New York, is determined to prevent his sister from marrying Steve Dallas, a jazz musician. He therefore covertly employs Sidney Falco, a sleazy and unscrupulous press agent, to break up the affair by any means possible. —David Levene <D.S.Levene@durham.ac.uk> J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), is a tyrannical Broadway columnist for the New York Globe who rules his demimonde with the press's power to create or destroy. Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), is the hustling publicist who is consumed by desperate ambition and hates himself because of it; he will do anything to gain the admiration of Hunsecker ("My experience, in brief, is dog eat dog.") The film was shot in black and white by James Wong Howe, giving it a grittiness that underscores the class ranking among the characters. In the script by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, Falco's early prediction - "Every dog has its day" - comes crashingly true. —alfiehitchie New York press agent Sidney Falco's livelihood, and by association those of his clients, are largely dependent upon getting those clients' names in the New York newspaper columns, most notably that of the most influential of all the New York columnists, J.J. Hunsecker. Sidney's livelihood is in jeopardy because J.J., a so-called "friend," asked Sidney to do him a favor which he couldn't accomplish, namely breaking up the relationship of his 19-year-old sister, Susan Hunsecker, toward whom J.J. is overprotective, and Steve Dallas, a jazz guitarist who leads his own combo. J.J. won't give Sidney or his clients the time of day until Sidney accomplishes this task. Sidney decides to use the only tool he truly has available to him in his professional life, regardless of the effect on Steve or Susie. Sidney worries about J.J.'s reaction, which he needn't have worried about as J.J. wants not only to break them up but to ruin Steve in the process for being this thorn in his side. Both Steve and Susie are aware of both Sidney and J.J.'s roles in what is happening around them, but they may feel helpless in getting themselves out from their predicament. The question becomes whether J.J., Sidney and Susie's individual relationships with the other two, and J.J. and Sidney's professional lives can survive what was meant as a means to bolster their own individual power. —Huggo Sidney Falco is a press agent. His livelihood depends on him getting coverage for his clients with influential newspaper columnists. The most influential is JJ Hunsecker and Falco would do anything to get in his good books. Currently he is trying to break up the relationship of Hunsecker's sister with a jazz guitarist that Hunsecker doesn't like. This leads to a Machiavellian plot and profound repercussions. —grantss