An old-fashioned damsel-in-distress story, scarcely surprising considering it's literally an old damsel-in-distress story. The novel on which it is based was finished in 1963 by Charles Williams, one of a legion of American thriller writers -- the Edgar Allan Poe Brigade -- better appreciated in other parts of the globe than at home, particularly in France under the Série Noire label (cf. Truffaut's Confidentially Yours, Sautet's L'armée Gauche). Orson Welles, more of a European himself at the time, undertook to film the book once before in the late Sixties, but it remains one of several Welles projects gotten underway but never brought to the light of day. The present rendition is up from Australia and by Phillip Noyce (Newsfront, Heatwave), an altogether more workmanlike moviemaker, which is all the project really needs. (Only the half-fallow wide screen hints at ambitions unfulfilled.) Solidly, if simply, constructed; well-sustained; temperately suspenseful. With Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, and Billy Zane. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd
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