Black Widow

Name: Black Widow
Director: Vernon Sewell
Genre: Crime/detective, Drama, Thriller
Released: 1951
Duration: 1 h 2 min
Cast: Christine Norden, Robert Ayres, Jennifer Jayne, Anthony Forwood, John Longden

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Crime/detective
Drama

1951
Vernon Sewell
62 mins
PG

Summary

A man who has lost his memory after being attacked tracks down his wife - whom he does not realise wants him dead. Crime drama, starring Christine Norden and Robert Ayres

IMDB

Review

A star rating of 3 out of 5.

Steve Morrissey

Before Hammer struck gold by moving into horror it was making noirish B-movie thrillers like this one for the British market, often with a second-string Hollywood actor in the lead. Here, it's Robert Ayres playing an American in the UK who loses his memory as a result of a vicious attack. When he is eventually reunited with his wife he is unaware, for a while at least, that she's less than delighted to have him back. Given the title, it's not hard to guess what this British version of the femme fatale (played by the deliciously horrible Christine Norden) has in mind. Director Vernon Sewell gets off to a blistering start and packs plenty of incident and nicely drawn character studies into this well plotted tale. But he's trying to cram what was originally three hours of radio drama into just over an hour of screen time. Hence the almost comical dénouement, in which plot reveals and their consequences tumble over each other en route to an abrupt curtain-down.

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6.0/10