This is How Movies Should Be Made

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Best movie ever!

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Woman Who Came Back is a mild horror movie which manages to be fairly entertaining and has plenty of atmosphere. The story concerns a young woman who finds that an old lady who has sat next to her on a bus may be the ghost of a witch who was executed 300 years earlier. The bus crashes, but the old woman's body cannot be found. Is it possible her spirit now controls our modern day traveller? Nancy Kelly is fine as the young woman who comes to believe she is the reincarnation of a sorceress, and she's ably supported by John Loder and Otto Kruger (previously seen in Dracula's Daughter). There are several memorable scenes here - notably the accidental poisoning of some fish (or is it accidental) and the sequence where a young girl seeking shelter for the night comes to the home of our possible witch, is driven away in fright, and then drifts into a mysterious fever.I enjoyed this film in a mildly diverting way; it holds the attention to the end and even if the "it was all in your mind" trope is dragged out Woman Who Came Back is still worth seeking out if you can find it. In the UK at least it seems to be an extremely obscure little film that doesn't turn up on t.v. at all. Time for a DVD release?

In the little-seen 1945 chiller "Woman Who Came Back" (not, strangely and irritatingly enough, "THE Woman Who Came Back"), we meet a very disturbed young lady, Lorna Webster (played by Nancy Kelly, perhaps known to most viewers for her role in 1956's "The Bad Seed," and here looking very much like Joan Crawford in "Mildred Pierce"). Returning to her hometown of Eben Rock, MA (a stand-in for Salem) for the first time in years, she meets an evil-looking old crone on the bus, who claims to be Jezebel Trister, a supposed witch who had been burnt at the stake by Lorna's ancestor 300 years before. Following a series of increasingly suspicious incidents involving a bus crash, some dead flowers, rat poison, a burning book, a canine "familiar" and a sickened young girl, Lorna comes to believe that she has been possessed by the old witch...and so does the rest of the town. But has she really? This short film (it all transpires in only 68 minutes) has been directed by Walter Colmes (I know...who?) in a pleasing, atmospheric manner. It is occasionally creepy and brooding, but sadly dissipates a terrific setup with a forced and mundane explanation for all the frissons that had come before. Still, the picture serves as a nice object lesson on the perils of superstition and paranoia. Had it been made just five years later, it would have been read as a biting commentary on McCarthyism, and the modern-day witch hunt that the Wisconsin senator would then be initiating. As it is, the film comes off like an ominous predictor of America's future. Kudos to the wonderful character actor Otto Kruger, here playing a levelheaded reverend, as well as to John Loder, in his role as Lorna's increasingly frustrated doctor fiancé. In all, this is a pleasing little film that will certainly disappoint many, but one that still offers up an important message. And it appears just fine, too, on this crisp-looking Image DVD.

The only reason I don't rate this film higher is due to the tidy explanation at the end, that wraps everything up a bit too quickly. A little more time spent on the ending would have made this a near perfect movie, but it's really good anyway, in spite of feeling rushed at the end.Cinematography is excellent, with threatening landscapes and buildings. Even the church looks sinister. Clouds, the moon, wind and rain are all used to create a sense of fear and tension, with the most prosaic settings seeming to hold a burden of the past impinging on the present.Writing and performances are top notch, with all the characters believable individuals. Nancy Kelly gives what is perhaps the best performance of her career as the tormented Lorna Webster. The small town atmosphere is well captured and the child actors seem especially natural and not overly cute.There is something almost indefinable about this movie, an odd feeling of being ahead of its time, in a way that predates Twilight Zone and low budget horror movies from the Sixties. It's too bad this movie isn't better known, because it deserves to be seen by anyone interested in classic horror films. It has an almost dream like quality, as if the viewer were drawn into a nightmare of the leading character. One is kept continually wondering, and it never becomes dull or predictable.Often compared to the films of Val Lewton, this movie is a fascinating film in its own right. Well worth seeing if you can find it.

THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK stars Nancy Kelly (THE BAD SEED) as Lorna Webster, direct descendent of the 17th Century magistrate responsible for "sending eighteen women to their fiery deaths," in the infamous Massachusetts town of Eben Rock. Coming back by bus, Lorna shares her seat with a black-veiled hag (THE OLD DARK HOUSE's Elspeth Dudgeon) who claims to be Jezebel Trister, Judge Elijah Webster's most famous victim. When the bus plunges into Shadow Lake, Lorna is the sole survivor - with the body of the strange woman nowhere to be found. So begins a series of strange encounters that threaten to plunge modern Eben Rock back into the dark ages.THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK is a neat little Lewtonian drama about Old Country superstitions festering in the New World. Eben Rock is a town unable to rest comfortably on its own foundations (the Webster family tree hangs heavy with the kind of scoundrels that found nations), making less a story about the supernatural than of how superstition drives the sensitive and marginal away from reason and true faith (embodied here by the friendship between John Loder's town doctor and Otto Kruger's sage minister).Although THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK seems influenced by the psychological horror films being produced by Val Lewton at RKO around the same time, the film also anticipates a key bit of business in the later CARNIVAL OF SOULS (the survivor of an aquatic auto accident later coming to doubt her sanity). Highly recommended.