Cast a Dark Shadow [VHS]

The entire cast was excellent but particularly Bogarde. Compelling plot from start to finish. Love that noire...

Very atmospheric.Dick Bogarde makes for abelievable and cunningmurderer!

Really good kind of spooky "thriller'. Just exactly as advertised on line.

This DVD is in a format that cannot play on US machines

Excellent. Of course he's good, as always, but the 2 strong women really stole the show. The 2 'weak' ones were also outstanding in their roles. I love these older British films.

The inimitable Dirk Bogarde stars as Edward (Teddy) Bare, he is a ladies’ man – that is on occasion that the lady is filthy rich. He has married wealthy but older Monica (Mona Washbourne) and thinks he will inherit all her money as he is her spouse. However, she wants to make a will, so he decides it might be time for him to become a widower a little sooner than had been expected.Alas he gets it all wrong and so is left ‘financially embarrassed’. Well as he has gotten away with murder once he decides he needs another Mrs Money bags with a short potential life span and so he puts another dastardly plan into action.This is lovely for all the right reasons. Bogarde as the deranged yet charming killer is just excellent – his facial expressions alone make this film. The supporting cast including Margaret Lockwood and Kathleen Harrison as the maid are all superb and totally believable in their respective roles. This was an adaptation of a play and that come across at times but it does not matter as this is a ‘sit back and enjoy film’ of how the other half once lived and more importantly died – recommended to all fans of old black and white British crime flicks.

LOVE this movie. Delicious to watch and savor from beginning to end. Every character, every scene, and the creepy scary story as well. And a wonderful surprise twist ending too. Excellent. Wish I could find more like this!

This film based on a play called Murder Mistaken by Janet Green is directed with pace by Lewis Gilbert, and only reveals it's stage origins at the climax when the cast yell at each other. We begin with Dirk Bogarde as the irresistably named Teddy Bare, married to an older woman, who he kills for the inheritance. The murder occurs offscreen, with the camera moving to a curtain fluttering in front of an open window. Gilbert presents Bogarde as threatening from the opening where his wife (the touching Mona Washbourne) screams and he glowers as they ride the ghost train at an amusement park. Gilbert also uses Wellesian deep focus framing of the couple, for an expressionist effect. However Bogarde's next intended victim, his new wife Margaret Lockwood is a lot more resistant to his charms. It's hard to decide which of Lockwood or Bogarde is the more unlikeable character, so when they court to the strains of a torch singer's Leave Me Alone, you're not sure which one should leave and which should be left. Things are complicated by Lockwood being the aggressor, but as we see she is no fool, it becomes a game of outwitting. When Kay Walsh enters after Lockwood becomes the new Mrs Bare, and appears to be Lockwood's successor, the stage is set for a venomous triangle. The suggestion that Washbourne remains some sort of accomplice to Bogarde's actions and his confidante, with her symbolic rocking chair prefiguring Mrs Bates in Psycho, doesn' make sense since there was no hint that his wife was in on her own demise, even though we see that Bogarde enshrines her bedroom. Perhaps it is more a device left over from the theatre staging, so that Bogarde can deliver asides, more than a demonstration of his mental state. And the suspicious lawyer breathing down Bogarde's next makes similarly theatrically timed entrances. However Gilbert gives Bogarde a nicely conceived partially shadowed face when he is confronted with his past as motivation, and whilst the end may bear a hole, we're still willing to go along with it. This film was one of the roles Bogarde took on to escape his Doctor at Large typecasting, which explains his working class accent, though his character reading a muscle magazine just before he meets Lockwood is something left unexplained and a subtextual hint not further explored. Lockwood too roughens her Hitchcockian Lady Vanishes image. I liked 2 of Green's lines. At the wedding of Lockwood and Bogarde is told "You've landed the fish but don't forget who supplied the chips". And in response to Bogarde's anger at Lockwood invading Washbourne's bedroom, she says "If he had any more wives, I'd have to sleep in the bathroom".

Jolly good fun from the always reliable Lewis Gilbert with an excellent cast. I've never been much of a Margaret Lockwood fan but she's a revelation here and steals the show. Bogarde does smarmy very well and practises his dark side which will reach its peak as Barrett in The Servant, but here chews the furniture in the final act. Nice shots of 50s Brighton. A fine entertainment but not a patch on Hitchcock's Suspicion, by way of Francis Iles, even with its cop-out ending, and that is minor Hitchcock. It's actually extremely funny and I wanted Dirk to get away with it and go off with Kay Walsh, who was lovely.

Good story line. Very nostalgic for those who were alive in this period.

Love it, proper old fashioned black and white film.And no adverts. Will see what other titles they have.Value for money

What a great film, a bit hard to hear Dirk without his posh accent, but god is he good in it, you in the end want to kill him yourself. Margaret Lockwood good, but a bit annoying with that laugh.

I bought this for my mother who was thrilled because it was filmed near where my parents lived & shows their cottage.