Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Console best movie i've ever seen.

TwoCrude From John Farrow, I had hoped for better.This take on the cheating spouse theme was uninspired at best. The pacing is almost languid. Admittedly, the whodunit aspect isn't there. But that doesn't mean the movie in question has to turn out like this.From the opening scene, the platinum blonde Dors (dark eyebrows and all) glides rather indifferently through this noctambulant drama. Her scenes from the post-murder flashback are admittedly a bit better. Steiger gives an earnest effort, but can't overcome Farrow's direction. Or lack thereof.East of Eden (both versions) was better than this. As was Unfaithful with Diane Lane.

mark.waltz Diana Dors is seen on death row telling her story of how her own greed lead to her downfall. She is married to wealthy vineyard owner Rod Steiger whom she met in a bar, but bored spending the day taking care of his elderly mother, she is soon involved in an affair with rodeo horseman Tom Tryon. She commits a murder which her husband is blamed for.I have seen several films with blonde bombshell Diana Dors, and I just don't get her appeal. She certainly isn't beautiful enough to rank up there with Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield; She's sort of a second-rate "Baby Doll" with a bit of a Gloria Grahame type pout thrown in and is truly unbelievable here as the vixenish wife. She has twice as much hair as Mansfield and Monroe combined, and a head too small which looks like a lion who needs his mane trimmed. She just looks ridiculous. In an attempt to soften his demeanor from early villain roles, Rod Steiger sensitizes his personality in an effort to move into a leading role. His character does have many different nuances-soft at times yet strong in his business dealings, but ultimately stupid for ending up with Dors. The usually lovely Beaulah Bondi, one of my favorite character actresses ever, plays a character that grates on the nerves. Had this been a better script with a better leading lady, it would have been genuinely chilling to see Bondi's fear grow during the spooky storm that ends up with a visit by death. In fact, had the film been in black and white and released during the height of the film noir era, it could have ranked a lot higher in ratings. But late RKO's color films looked somewhat washed out and were poorly photographed, so it is not too surprising that they were only a few films away from turning strictly into a TV studio.Marie Windsor, whose days as a film noir femme fatale were over, is wasted here as Dors' pal. I feel bad for Rod Steiger here; He really tries to do something with his character, but the script defeats him and he comes off as a small touch of class in an otherwise trashy story. This is a film that works better as a pulp fiction book with a colorful cover that leaves everything else to the imagination.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** In a very reserved and non method and overacting, that were used to seeing him back in the 1950's and 1960's, role Rod Steiger steals the movie, even though he's the star in it, as the sensitive tragic as well as guilt-ridden California wine baron Paul Hochen.We already see that Paul is up the creek with his wife Phyllis, Diana Dors, in prison clothes and her bleached blond hair a ruddy brown spilling her guts out to how she tried to frame him in the murder of his best friend and fellow wine grower Gino Verdugo, Joe DeSantis. As Phyllis tells her story the movie goes into flashback as we see the events that lead up to Gino's tragic death. It seemed that Phyllis was having an affair with bronco busting rodeo cowboy San Sanders, Tom Tyron, behind her husbands back. If that wasn't bad enough Phyllis planned to murder Paul and make it look like an accident in that he was mistaken for a prowler trying to break into the Hochen Mansion. Waiting for the right moment to pull off the "Perfect Crime" Phyllis saw that opportunity arise in a fight that Paul had with Gino at a wine grower convention over him selling his vineyards to an out of town and get rich quick shyster outfit. Despite making up with Gino in private all those that were at the convention saw was the slug, or better yet slapping, feast the two had in public. Knowing that Paul was to cut short his precipitation at the convention and go home Phyllis waited for him, with a revolver in hand, to show up and blow him away making it look like he was a prowler trying to break into the house! The thing that screwed up Pyllis' plan was that Gino coming to talk business over with Paul, not Paul, got there first and ended up being shot to death with Phyllis mistaking him for Paul!***SPOILERS*** With Phyllis faced with a possible murder charge Paul together with Phyllis concoct a plan where he'll take the rap in accidentally killing Gino where she can be free to look after her and Paul's 8 year old son, from a previous marriage, Michael, Gary Hunley, while he in awaiting trial spends the next few months behind bars. The one thing that Phyllis and her boyfriend San, who was in on her murderous plan, never anticipated, until it was too late was the sick and frail and not having long to live Momma Emma Hochen, Beulah Bondi, overheard the whole ghastly plan to murder her son Paul which put a wrench into it! That's if Momma Hochen lived long enough enough to tell to police about it! ***MAJOR SPOILER**** It was also Momma Hochen who knowing that her daughter-in-law Phyllis was totally rotten without a decent bone in her entire body that she took the institutive and did the unthinkable in getting her convicted of a crime that she didn't commit! That was to make up for Phyllis getting off Scot-free for a crime that she did!The very fine acting, especially by Rod Steiger, made up for the so-so script that at times seemed totally unbelievable. There's also the drop dead gorgeous British actress Diana Dors as Phyllis Hochen to look at when the movie got a bit confusing and hard to follow. And of course there's Arther Franz as Paul's older brother Father Steven Hochen who finally got Phyllis to fess up and take responsibly for what she did in her killing Gino while sent to the San Quentin gas chamber for a crime that she didn't commit. Yet ironically had everything to do with it having happened!

dbdumonteil Next to last movie by John Farrow,this work is a return to the style of some of his earlier films Noirs ,particularly "Alias Nick Beal" and above all William Irish's (aka Cornell Woolrich)" the night has a thousand eyes" :what was written in the stars in the 1948 effort (thus everything man does to change his fate is pointless) has become a supernatural (shall we say divine?) intervention.This immanent justice,the old lady believes in it and she is sure that God will know his own.Ray Milland portrayed the Devil in "Alias Nick Beal" which was an updated Faust .Diana Dors portrays another devil with a red dress on.The title says it all: "the unholy wife" is a Christian movie (In Irish's books the Gods are closer to the Greek divinities) ,which the presence of a priest in the family (the husband's brother) reinforces . The story,which is a long flashback ,is a long confession -and becomes a true one ,in the religious sense of the term in the last sequence.There's an unusually inventive use of colors ,with blue ,yellow and black predominance .Hot Diana Dors 'look sharply contrasts with the prisoner in jail.Farrow 's obsession of time running out recalls "the big clock" (remade as " no way out" by Roger Donaldson with Johnny Depp); it was also present in "night has a thousand eyes" .Time becomes a matter of life .The big clock invented by Farrow and Latimer in 1948 was a splendid metaphor of this time which is rarely on man's side.