Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Thirteen Women (1932)


An astrologer sends twelve women letters warning them that their horoscopes predict someone will die because of something they did, that they'll kill someone else or will kill themselves. They turn out to be self-fulfilling prophecies.

One of the women was a trapeze artist. She reads the letter just before going out to perform. It was disturbing to watch. 

The astrologer is under the spell of the thirteenth woman, an old classmate out to get even. You have to have to admire that to one degree or another.

A lovely movie. Well made. An early David O. Selznick production. One of the pre-code horror movies featured on The Criterion Channel for Halloween. They have a 59 minute version. Originally 73 minutes. Fast moving. They only have five minutes to kill each one, although a couple are just newspaper headlines.

With Irene Dunne, Ricardo Cortez.

I'll give away one thing from the ending: It turns out that the killer had been abused in school by her "victims" because she was mixed race. The movie was sympathetic to her which is interesting coming from the producer of Gone With the Wind.

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