Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

markinmpls Not only does Miss Novak's hair change from scene to scene, it also changes from shot to shot.

A.W Richmond Well yes, it's compelling viewing in spite of, everything. So overwrought it's jarring and at the center of it all, Kim Novak. The swan of Picnic. James Stewart's obsession in Vertigo. She appears in The Legend Of Lylah Clare, but she's not really in it. Distant, cold, awkward. Pale, almost white lipstick. She has a death scene for goodness sake! It reminded me of that death that Goldie Hawn plays again and again in "Death Becomes Her", she watches it on TV as her arch rival, Meryl Streep, brilliantly plays an actress without talent - dies again and again strangled by Michael Caine. Meryl's Madeline Ashton even licks her lips before her death - Well, Kim Novak's Elsa Campbell/Lylah Clare doesn't lick her lips but almost.Peter Finch is the leading man. Peter Finch! Howard Beale in "Network" His dialogue here is not by Paddy Chayefsky, no, not by a long shot. Hysterically funny I must admit, specially because of the seriousness of the delivery. Then, surprise surprise a few genuine delights, Coral Browne plays a columnist with a wooden leg, Rosella Falk, a talkative lesbian and the glorious Valentina Cortese plays a costume designer. As I'm writing about it I feel an urge to see it again to make sure I didn't imagine the whole thing.

macpet49-1 This film truly marked the end of Kim Novak's career. Unfortunately, I think it was a combination things--the end of the studios, the end of the Hollywood dream era and the end of any kind of illusion of naivete in America at that time. The Kennedys, King assassinations, Vietnam. The bubble had burst. The films of this time when good were brutal and realistic and negative. The films that were bad were bloody, carnal and usually sadistic/masochistic in new ways for film. Sex was for the first time visual. Soft porn in PG rated films wasn't unusual. A breast of butt shot was the norm for most films. Lylah/Kim becomes the epidomy of the Hollywood actor--a confabulated doll, puppet really, who generates dollars at the box office and is of no importance to the studios than the money it receives. Follow the money. Money grubbing marked the end of any art able to be produced. The Jewish maxim "it's only business" ruled. You can snuff people on screen live and it is just what you do to get bread. This is a poorly written film, but does mark in a perverted (appropriately) way the beginning of the end of the dream of what film could be. The 1960s was both the apex and death of culture and civilization. We are now living in the decline period. All film produced now is either voyueristic or masturbatory.

abelposadas What could Mr Aldrich do with a script that was a concoction of Ms Jean Harlow, Ms Marilyn Monroe et al? On the other hand, you could see "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" as a follow up to "Sunset Boulevard". Mr Aldrich had always been an actors' admirer. In the commercials Barbara Davis and Anna Lee are watching in "What ever happened to Baby Jane" viewers are offered food for dogs. In "The Legend of Lylah Clare" the TV program is sponsored by an improbable food for dogs whose brand in "Bark Well".I think Mr Aldrich considered actors and stars as the "Bark Well" of the old industry. Éven when today Hollywood mainstream insists in offering faces and bodies and what not, nobody believes in the usual idiocies manufactured by the press."The Legend of Lylah Clare" is, perhaps, a dud but the "Bark Well" are not to blame. abel posadas