Sudden Fear

Sudden Fear: An aging Mommie Dearest stars as a rich playwright who fires ugly-and-weird-looking Jack Palance from her latest Broadway production because Palance, being ugly-and-weird-looking, is too ugly-and-weird-looking to play a romantic lead. Later, Mommie Dearest meets ugly-and-weird-looking Jack Palance on a train, and ugly-and-weird-looking Palance charms the panties off the old-and-no-doubt-sexually-frustrated-Mommie Dearest bag. Ugly-and-weird-looking Palance may be ugly-and-weird-looking, but his sweet-talking and his fawning attention, and no doubt his youthful bedroom vigor, soon make him seem to old bag Mommie Dearest all an old bag of a woman could want in a man, no matter how ugly-and-weird-looking.

Of course, for Mommie Dearest it certainly is too good to be true. Ugly-and-weird-looking Jack Palance is still bitter over being fired, and, more importantly, he smells the old bag’s money, and it is an intoxicating scent, indeed—fragrant enough to cover the stench of coital relations with Mommie Dearest, who really is nearly old enough to be his Mommie, indeed.

Noir Super Hottie Gloria Grahame plays the ugly-and-weird-looking Palance’s real object of desire, and the odd-looking couple scheme to murder Mommie Dearest. . .but Mommie Dearest discovers the odd-looking couple’s vile plans, and seeks to turn the tables on her much-younger tormentors.

Flicks like Sudden Fear are made-to-order for Grande Dame scene-chewing actresses like Joan Crawford, and Mommie Dearest didn’t disappoint here, putting on enough of an over-heated thespian display of love, fear and hate to earn her last Academy Award nomination. This is good old-time movie fun.

Share
|