The Lady Confesses (1945)

I wanted to but couldn't!

Fresh and Exciting

Best movie ever!

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Okay, not much can be expected from quickie director Sam Newfield or an independent outfit like Alexander-Stern. Then too, the production never does rise above bare-bones status. However, the script does show imaginative twists plus dashes of snappy dialog. In short, the 60- minutes manages to be better than expected, even if the lighting bill couldn't exceed a buck fifty. So who killed meanie wife Norma, who, all in all, should have stayed dead. That's the whodunit part. But, in a neat twist, the last part turns unexpectedly into a nail-biting suspenser.Got to admit I didn't recognize cult favorite Hughes in dark hair and even, surprise, surprise, playing a good girl, which she does well. Then too, there's Beaver Cleaver's dad, Beaumont, playing what else but somebody's husband. At least, he doesn't have a couple kids to amusingly cope with. Anyhow, kudos to the writers for rising above the usual formula, and maybe to Newfield for noirish direction. All in all, the little flick's a cut better than the standard programmer.

This low budget PRC epic is a modestly entertaining murder mystery about a man who strangles women. "Dead Men Walk" director Sam Newfield and scenarists Helen Martin and Irwin Franklyn pull off one of the oldest and slickest tricks in the mystery genre: the use of the red herring. The big surprise in "The Lady Confesses" occurs well past the half-way point of what seems like a grown-up version of a Nancy Drew mystery.Vicki McGuire (Mary Beth Hughes of "The Oxbow Incident") is planning to marry Larry Craig (Hugh Beaumont of "The Blue Dahlia") when his long lost wife Norma (Barbara Slater of "Monsieur Verdoux") shows up to tell her that the marriage won't happen. According to Larry, his wife Norma and he haven't laid eyes on each other in seven years. Larry plans to wed Vicki until Norma throws a monkey wrench into the works. No sooner has Norma been in town than she is killed. The police learn that she was strangled by a wire. This sounds like a precursor to a 1970's Italian murder mystery. Captain Brown (Emmett Vogan of "Ride, Vaquero!") starts snooping around town to see whose alibi won't hold water. Everybody at a local night club--Club 711--assures the captain that Larry was passed out in the singer's room when the murder occurred. The catch is that nobody actually saw Larry Craig sleeping off a drunk on a couch. During a scene in a restaurant, Larry explains to Captain Brown that Norma inherited her money from her mother. Meanwhile, the most suspicious person, night club owner Lucky Brandon (Edmund MacDonald of "Detour") behaves even more suspiciously. All of this prompts Vicki to launch her own investigation and Captain Brown doesn't dissuade her from acting like a sleuth. The surprise is actually a matter of performance because the last person that you think murdered Norma is the last person you should suspect.

This film makes "Detour," also released through PRC, look like "How Green Was My Valley." Yes, it's THAT cheap and phony looking. Yet, the performers are good and the plot has cool twists.I loved seeing Mary Beth Hughes as a lead. She got third or fifth billing in so many better known noirs. At PRC, she was the leading lady she could be.Hugh Beaumont is fine as her boyfriend with a past. The scenes of him and other men in silhouette are right off the cover of a dime novel.The ladies in the movie are all fine. We have Ms. Hughes. Claudia Drake is very effective as a café singer. Much of the action takes place in the joint where she sings: the Club 711. And Barbara Slater is appropriately nasty as Beaumont's wife. She's been gone, thought dead, for seven years and has just reappeared as the story begins.I have to say, the title makes no sense. No spoilers but I'm not sure why it was chosen. (I see that one of its working titles was "Ladies of the Night." That would have been too controversial. It also would have been too obvious, too blatant. And, again, it would not have really fit.) Also, the print I saw was terrible. I'd have rated it higher had it been restored. And I hope it will be!

The Lady Confesses doesn't have a lot going for it, except for plot, and even that's pretty hackneyed. But it's foolish to expect more from a 64-minute cheapie from Producers Releasing Corporation starring Mary Beth Hughes and Hugh Beaumont (later to grasp immortality as The Beaver's dad). Nonetheless, there have been worse programmers.After a seven year absence (unexplained to us), Beaumont's wife suddenly shows up, putting the kibosh on his plans to marry Hughes. Soon after her return, alas, she's found garotted. Beaumont, the prime suspect, has an alibi: he was passed out in the dressing room of a nightclub singer. Hughes, in the plucky style of the 40s, cops a job as a roving photographer in the club to dig up clues. What she turns up, however, brings her into peril....The Lady Confesses has been called noir by virtue of its era and its setting, but it's really more of a quick-and-dirty mystery thriller with its roots in the previous decade. The director, Sam Newfield, started out in silents and directed a whole passel of forgettable Westerns before catching up with the emerging noir style of the post-war years. He retains the dubious distinction of having directed Beaumont in nine films.