Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS**** The 1st of 4 films that Howard Duff & his wife Ida Lupino were together in has to do with this spooky mansion that seems to be haunted by its former resident Jennifer Brown who vanished without a trace about a year ago. It's the place's new caretaker Agnes Langley, Ida Lupino,who ends up being victimized by the ghostly Jennifer in what her reasons are for her strange disappearance as well as what she had to do with a number of people including her former boss lawyer Irving Samson's untimely deaths. It's the fact of Samson killing himself when he found out that his clients money, that he kept in a wall safe, was stolen from right under his nose. Agnes suspected Jennifer stole it by finding a bank book hidden in the place with over $70,000.00 in it that was-she feels-the result of Samson paying her off in him being blackmailed by her.It's grocery store owner and live in tenant at the Brown Estate Jim Hollis, Howard Duff, who gets very friendly with Agnes in trying to keep her from cracking up in fear that Jennifer is or was a serial murderess who's still stalking the place and targeting her as her next victim. The local delivery boy Orlin Slade, Robert Nichols, doesn't help either feeding Agnas all these weird stories about Jennifer whom he feel is still in the house hiding in a closet or the basement and coming out at night terrorizing it's inhabitants.****SPOILERS**** Shock down to your socks final with Hollis revealing the truth about Jennifer that kept Agnes from flipping out and going stark raving mad. It's after Agnes recovered from her unfounded fears about Jennifer who as it turned went mad and ended up dying in a sanitarium that we see what seems to be Jennifer reappearing in shadow making Hollis' story about her death seem a bit phony. That's unless she's the ghost that Agnes always suspected that she is.

jarrodmcdonald-1 What I most love about this film is the way we are kept off-guard about who the title character is, and why she has this power over a meek caretaker named Agnes (played by Lupino). To say Jennifer is a ghost is only half-right. Maybe it is easer to say she is a living woman or a way of life that possesses the weak. But the story maintains its hold on the viewer as Lupino's character struggles to get to the bottom of things. It plays out in spots as an unhealthy obsession. And Howard Duff, Lupino's real-life husband, who appears as the love interest seems to have his own obsession where Agnes is concerned, wresting her away from Jennifer.If you get the chance to look at JENNIFER, and especially if you see JENNIFER twice or more, listen carefully as you hear the dialogue. The lines lead in multiple directions, and it is like the mystery only grows deeper about who and what is overtaking Lupino and Duff until they finally confront the truth about the life they live. Also, listen carefully to the music. There's a record that Lupino's character finds, that is replayed throughout the story. Plus during a nightclub scene, we are shown a man singing a tune called 'Angel Eyes,' while Duff holds Lupino close and looks into her eyes. It is clear to him, and to us the audience, that something has started unraveling.It's a profound film, infused with the type of atmospheric touches that can only come from smart cinematography that takes full advantage of on-location filming. And it is anchored with an extraordinary performance by its lead actress. Ida Lupino shined in so many classics over the years, but I think this one has to be her best.

robert-temple-1 I hate to say it, considering how much I admire Ida Lupino, but this film is a total flop. It was directed by 'Joel Newton', and is his sole directorial credit, so I suspect that may have been a pseudonym of someone else. Ida Lupino and her husband Howard Duff are the two leads. But despite their best efforts, the film is so badly made, so corny, and has such extremely ludicrous music that it is essentially worthless. It aims at being a sturdy film noir film, but it fails on all counts. James Wong Howe was the cinematographer, but even he is below par. His shots of 'a mysterious shadow' are not even good. In this same year, Lupino directed her brilliant film THE BIGAMIST (1953), and the previous year she had delivered a fine performance in ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952), so she was not at all in decline at the time of JENNIFER. This is just one of those duds which all concerned must have wished to forget, and so should we.

bmacv I first caught up with Jennifer years ago while out of town when it showed up on TV in the middle of the night; I fell asleep before it ended but it stuck with me until I had to track it down. Its appeal is that, though there's not a lot to it, it weaves an intriguing atmosphere, and because Ida Lupino and Howard Duff (real life man-and-wife at the time) display an alluring, low-key chemistry. Lupino plays a woman engaged to house-sit a vast California estate whose previous caretaker -- Jennifer -- up and disappeared. (Shades of Jack Nicholson in the Shining, although in this instance it's not Lupino who goes, or went, mad). Duff is the guy in town who manages the estate's finances and takes a shine to Lupino, who decides to play hard to get. She becomes more and more involved, not to say obsessed, with what happened to her predecessor in the old dark house full of descending stairways and locked cellars. The atmospherics and the romantic byplay are by far the best part of the movie, as viewers are likely to find the resolution a bit of a letdown -- there's just not that much to it (except a little frisson at the tail end that anticipates Brian De Palma's filmic codas). But it's well done, and, again, it sticks with you. Extra added attraction: this is the film that introduced the song "Angel Eyes," which would become part of the standard repertoire of Ol' Blue Eyes.