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Joan Crawford, Jack Palance, Gloria Grahame, Bruce Bennett, Virginia Huston ... see more see more... , Touch (Mike) Connors

Joan Crawford stars as wealthy San Francisco heiress Myra Hudson, a successful playwright who meets Lester Blaine (Jack Palance) while casting her new play in New York. They meet again on the train ri... read more read more...de back, fall in love and marry. Unknown to Myra, Lester is seeing mistress Irene Neves (Gloria Grahame), whom he still loves and has married only for her money. While looking through her study, Irene and Lester learn that Myra has made a will leaving only $10,000 a year to Lester (though if he remarries following her death he receives nothing). Seeing that the will has not yet taken effect, they plot to kill Myra without noticing that Myra's dictating machine is on and recording their conversation. After listening to the conversation and spending a sleepless night, Myra goes to Irene's apartment and steals a gun. Irene then lures Lester to the apartment, intending to kill him. Losing her nerve, she flees the apartment with Lester chasing her. The film has an exciting and surprising climax as all meet unexpectedly during the chase. Joan Crawford gives a fine, if melodramatic performance, and Jack Palance is amazingly effective playing against type as a leading man. Despite a slow start, this is a fine suspense thriller that earned Oscar nominations for Joan Crawford and Jack Palance and a nomination for Charles B. Lang Jr. for his striking black and white photography. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi

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80% liked it

1,256 ratings

Critics

100% liked it

5 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 50 min.

Directed by: David Miller

Release Date: January 1, 1952

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DVD Release Date: October 12, 1999

Stats: 90 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (90)

  • dunmyer
    March 18, 2012
    dunmyer
    "Sudden Fear" is not much more than an ordinary thriller, but it is directed and acted so perfectly that it is uniquely gripping and satisfying. Its stars, Joan Crawford and an alarmingly young and studly Jack Palance, both won Oscar nominations for their work in the film. Not ma... read moreny thrillers can say that. Director David Miller may have had a lackluster career overall, but he was in top form here.

    Crawford plays a highly successful playwright, Palance a struggling actor trying to get a part in one of her plays. The two eventually fall in love, marry, and move to her native San Francisco, despite a fairly significant age difference.

    The movie plays like a delightful love story until a shocking turning point morphs it suddenly into a film noir. I won't reveal the details and ruin the surprise. I'll just say that you'll be on the edge of your seat every minute, and the emotional shock that Crawford's character undergoes you will feel deeply.
  • groaningbitch
    July 3, 2011
    groaningbitch
    poetic justice is a common term in ancient greek drama as ""virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punished, often in modern literature by an ironic twist of fate intimately related to the character's own conduct."" (wikipedia). vintage noir pictures, under he surveillance of mor... read moreality code, are also required to have the villain punished in the end despite its skeptism toward the decarmation of the good and evil within human nature. when it comes to joan crawford's "sudden fear", POETIC IRONY would be the term i consider apt for its spirit.

    a broadway female playwright (joan crawford) fires an actor on stage, who is casted as the lead in her newly written play because she considers him somehow insincere, and too slick for the romantic hero of his play. ironically, later she falls head over heels in love with the actor she fires when she bumps into him on the train. thus he becomes the love of her life, her lawful husband. the man even swoons her over his feet by lyrically reciting the quotes of her play.BUT unexpectedly she discovers that he schemes to murder her to get her inheritance because her recording phonograph accidentally tracks down his private conversation with another woman, and the heart-aching truth is that he never loves her for one second! (it's like, if you could discern immediately that this man is dubiously sleek for the drama-play but in real life, you're gullible enough to be tricked by the same routine without ruminative second thought!)

    but, dismayed as she is, she carelessly ruins the only evidence to prove his murder-scheme against her. therefore, she has to do some precautionary acts for survival and also to entrap this pair of cuckolds into the righteous course of poetic justice...as for what she will do, that's the most fascinating part of the movie as crawford performs the ultimate fury conflicted by her self-contradictive conscience.

    "sudden fear" also has some perverse forms of sexuality rendered thru sadomascohistic inneundos between the interactions of jack palance and gloria grahame who are the adulterers, such as "i love you so much that i could break your bones" (an eerie expression of love, isn't it?)..in one scene, man inflicts some physical violence to the woman by pushing her off to the coach meanwhile threatening her that he would disfigure her face if she reveals his dark secret, but oddly the woman responds cheerfully "thank you, thanks a lot...for still loving me" while igniting a cigarette. (code of sex in the old noir, whenever you see man and woman light off cigarette for each other, that means they're intermingled in sex since noir thrived after the 1934 morality code. sex had to be suggested thru various gimmicks)

    one last good picture of joan crawfood in her final comeback in 1950s when film noir was about to be obselete due to the bloody maccarthyism.

    crawford is the only actress hard-boiled enough to pull off the position of sap in noir piece. (maybe bette davis could as well, but miss davis' movies turn out to be melodrama much more often than noir)...great pop-freudian-ism illustrated by expressionistic cinematographies, such as the sequence of crawford having nightmares about her husband trying various brutal ways to kill her off....isn't it great? when the world is artfully presented in the dichotomy of black and white, when the talented elites still give a shit to psychoanalysis and glorifies it thru various forms of avant-garde craftsmanship like noir for one example. that was before noir became a nostalgic product for blank parody and immitations...
  • ajv2688
    November 7, 2010
    ajv2688
    I really want to see this movie again, I can't remember why I liked it so much!
  • kenstachnik
    January 9, 2008
    kenstachnik
    Jack Palance steals the show in this intrestingly shot thriller
  • jjnxn
    March 29, 2007
    jjnxn
    melodramatic but its is joan after all so you know that going in
  • inhonoredglory
    October 9, 2011
    inhonoredglory
    Not my favorite, but Joan Crawford does do a splendidly emotional acting job. The story got more exciting in the end; the plot took a while to get on its feet, and I didn't know where the tale was going until much later. Though it had a worthwhile moral and unique twist, both typ... read moreical of the genre.
  • bahplease
    March 6, 2008
    bahplease
    Another amazing Crawford classic, Palance is a freak and weird looking even as a young man. See this!
  • jcrawford691
    March 6, 2007
    jcrawford691
    a dynomite film noir thriller...and joan once again is outstanding as a woman whos comes to learn her new hubby is out to kill her.
  • nanoqna
    January 17, 2007
    nanoqna
    this is her best movei she should of got an oscar. jack palacen is good too. hollywood make her bad scripts or she wold be the best actress ever.

View All Sudden Fear Reviews

Critic Reviews

Cole Smithey
April 6, 2008
Cole Smithey, ColeSmithey.com

Joan Crawford is great in this noir thriller.

Dennis Schwartz
February 11, 2005
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

The suspense is marred by plot devices that don't hold up to further scrutiny. Full Review

March 26, 2009
Variety

Click to read the article Full Review

October 31, 2006
New York Times

Click to read the article Full Review

Pat Graham
January 1, 2000
Pat Graham, Chicago Reader

Click to read the article Full Review

Emanuel Levy
July 16, 2005
Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com

No review available.

Carol Cling
August 22, 2003
Carol Cling, Las Vegas Review-Journal

No review available.

Matt Brunson
April 30, 2003
Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing

No review available.

Geoff Andrew
June 24, 2006
Geoff Andrew, Time Out

Click to read the article Full Review

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

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