Wow! Such a good movie.

Wonderful character development!

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Shortly before she is to be married, a young woman gets a visit from her fiancé's wife, who had been missing for seven years and presumed dead. Soon both the girl and her fiancé find themselves mixed up with a crooked nightclub owner, gangsters and murder.It's a nifty little very low budget film.Will keep your interest more or less.Not sure why they cant make these sorts of movies today. With video being so cheap it should be a shoe in.Guess no one is writing this stuff anymore.Best part -- the guy who played the father on the TV show Dennis the Menance is in it!

Okay, not much can be expected from quickie director Sam Newfield or an independent outfit like Alexander-Stern. Then too, the production never does rise above bare-bones status. However, the script does show imaginative twists plus dashes of snappy dialog. In short, the 60- minutes manages to be better than expected, even if the lighting bill couldn't exceed a buck fifty. So who killed meanie wife Norma, who, all in all, should have stayed dead. That's the whodunit part. But, in a neat twist, the last part turns unexpectedly into a nail-biting suspenser.Got to admit I didn't recognize cult favorite Hughes in dark hair and even, surprise, surprise, playing a good girl, which she does well. Then too, there's Beaver Cleaver's dad, Beaumont, playing what else but somebody's husband. At least, he doesn't have a couple kids to amusingly cope with. Anyhow, kudos to the writers for rising above the usual formula, and maybe to Newfield for noirish direction. All in all, the little flick's a cut better than the standard programmer.

I rarely give these programmers (especially PRC) more than a five or six rating, but this one rises a notch above on the strength of a decent plot and some twists that keep you guessing. Unfortunately, the biggest puzzler of the story is dispensed with in the first five minutes. Where WAS Norma Craig for the past seven years? If you dwell on that bit of information you'll wind up too distracted for the rest of the story.I've seen a few flicks with Hugh Beaumont before he became Mr. Cleaver, and if that's the only thing you know him by, this one will probably shock you. He turns out to be every woman's worst nightmare once you fall out of his favor, and he usually sends his regrets by wire. I thought he did a pretty good job of playing the drunk in the early going. Did you notice how he slurred his speech and kind of bobbled around when he walked? Just the way I get when I've had one too many, which makes me think he might have actually been lubricated when he did those scenes.On the flip side, Lucky Brandon (Edmund MacDonald) wasn't such a bad guy after all when you think about it. However isn't it just a bit too convenient that he goes to repay Norma the ten grand she loaned him on the night she was killed? So what happened with the dough? That's what I want to know.You know, the Captain (Emmett Vogan) made a point of stating that Larry Craig's (Beaumont) alibi was just a little too perfect a couple of times and for the sake of the story it was. However you really have to suspend some disbelief over the idea that Larry woke up out of his drunken stupor, went over to Norma's place to kill her, and then returned to the 7-11 Club to go to sleep all over again. Seems to me like the adrenaline would have kicked in by then unless he was faking the whole drunk routine. Which makes him a better actor than I was going to give him credit for.

The Lady Confesses doesn't have a lot going for it, except for plot, and even that's pretty hackneyed. But it's foolish to expect more from a 64-minute cheapie from Producers Releasing Corporation starring Mary Beth Hughes and Hugh Beaumont (later to grasp immortality as The Beaver's dad). Nonetheless, there have been worse programmers.After a seven year absence (unexplained to us), Beaumont's wife suddenly shows up, putting the kibosh on his plans to marry Hughes. Soon after her return, alas, she's found garotted. Beaumont, the prime suspect, has an alibi: he was passed out in the dressing room of a nightclub singer. Hughes, in the plucky style of the 40s, cops a job as a roving photographer in the club to dig up clues. What she turns up, however, brings her into peril....The Lady Confesses has been called noir by virtue of its era and its setting, but it's really more of a quick-and-dirty mystery thriller with its roots in the previous decade. The director, Sam Newfield, started out in silents and directed a whole passel of forgettable Westerns before catching up with the emerging noir style of the post-war years. He retains the dubious distinction of having directed Beaumont in nine films.