"House on Haunted Hill" director William Castle's murder & mystery "Where Strangers Marry" is a good crime thriller with a great surprise reversal in the final moments. By now, everybody knows that Castle cribbed from Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps" when the maid took the mask off the dead man and the editor cuts to a train with a screaming whistle. All I can say is that it works for Castle as well as it worked for Hitchcock. Performances are above-average in this hypnotic tale of deception with Dean Jagger cast as a shady salesman who has just gotten himself hitched to sweet, innocent heroine Kim Hunter. When our heroine suspects that her husband, Paul Baxter (Dean Jagger of "Bad Day at Black Rock") may be a notorious 'silk stocking' slayer, she runs to another salesman, Fred Graham (Robert Mitchum of "The Night of the Hunter") for advice. Paul fails to show up at a hotel in New York City, so Fred takes her to see a homicide detective, Lieutenant Blake (Neil Hamilton of TV's "Batman), where he played Commissioner Gordon of Gotham City. Throughout "When Strangers Marry," Jagger casts a crooked shadow. He is downright anti-social. Furthermore, he lies to his newly wed bride and she catches him in a lie. Neither Castle nor his scenarists, Oscar-winner Philip Yordan for "Broken Lance" and Dennis J. Cooper of "Fear," working for a story by George G. Moskov of "Green Fields," telegraph the revelation during the closing moments. Everything about "When Strangers Marry" is polished. Clocking in at a nimble 67 minutes, Castle never loiters, and the last minute train scene hearkens back to an earlier one.
Review of When Strangers Marry
