Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Too bad we can't watch these instead of reality TV shows.Have watched House For Sale,A String Of Beads,The Island,among others,these three include George Macready,the man you love to hate back in the day.He was downright terrifying in House For Sale with Ida Lupino s his victim(he later said his was one of his favorite TV performances),a total SOB in The Island,who is redeemed after taught a lesson in humility by Niven and the threat of losing his wife to Niven,and String Of Beads with Ronald Colman/Angela Lansbury,Macready/and one of Nigel Bruce's last performances.String Of Beads Macready is a Count who commits a practical joke which leads to all kinds of fun,something I can imagine the actor capable of being a great deal of fun in real life.Love the ending for String Of Beads.These all need to be released to the public,not just a set here and there.Can't wait to watch more episodes.

Four Star Theatre is a superb dramatic anthology series which ran between 1952 and 1956.Uniquely the series featured four stars, Dick Powell, Ida Lupino, Charles Boyer and David Niven who rotated weekly as the guest stars of the episodes.Powell, Niven and Boyer all also served as producers of the series. All the stars give fine performances in this and the episodes are a mixture of dramatic and comic stories.The reason I love anthology series such as this and The Twilight Zone is because you never know what story or setting you'll be presented with next, that's part of the attraction to such series.It's such a shame that anthology series are not made today.It must have been great seeing these series at the time they originally aired, seeing these famous actors appearing weekly on TV must have been quite a treat.Some of my favourite episodes are The Bomb, House For Sale, The Gun, A Study in Panic, The Man on the Train, Desert Encounter and The Girl on the Bridge.

According to the Tony Thomas book on The Films Of Dick Powell although the company was named Four Star Productions only three stars ever invested on the producing end, David Niven, Charles Boyer, and Dick Powell. They never came up with a fourth though Ida Lupino kept them dangling for a while.Niven and Boyer were glad to let Powell run the business end of Four Star Productions. Powell himself eagerly embraced the new small screen medium of television, it was his firm belief that like Madonna you had to reinvent yourself periodically or become a has been in the entertainment business. So he went from crooning tenor in musicals to tough guy leading man to big time TV producer. Four Star Playhouse was one of many anthology series in those early television days of the Fifties and a source of good drama.Not to mention it was the first of many television series that Four Star Productions created. You'll find a lot of familiar names in the credits of Four Star Playhouse in front of and behind the camera. Powell had a good eye for spotting talent and gave a boost to a lot of careers. When Dick Powell died in early 1963 he was quite the tycoon, creating many shows under the Four Star banner. He even acted in several stories in Four Star and the Zane Grey Theater. Several Four Star shows have been put on YouTube and I urge you strongly to see them.

Although Ida Lupino was not that interesting to look at, her themes of loneliness and singleness made a valuable contribution to later projects such as 'The Twilight Zone' and 'Thriller'. I can't say that I enjoyed this particular project, or any of her projects leading up to 1959. She was probably a better writer than actress.