clanciai It all seems so perfectly comfortable and neat, with a lovely Anne Baxter in a great villa by the sea off Barcelona, a perfect paradise, and then someone turns up, who is not given any hearty welcome. A mystery enters of a most embarassing nature, since someone who has long been dead apparently isn't, or at least that death is most persistently disputed. There is an uncle who maybe could bring some relief to the situation, which however only gets constantly more complicated, as Richard Todd won't give in and mercilessly seems to get everyone on his side and keep the upper hand on the situation, which continues to build up...Well, it certainly is the perfect set-up for an extremely screwed up criminal plot, and there is even a murder, but it is never committed...More shall not be revealed here, enough said, that Julian Bream bandages the whole thing with his charming guitar music, the film is not without its romantic elements no matter how cool certain of the protagonists are, and a dead father also finally gets to be of some importance to the plot, since the whole matter actually is only about his suicide with its unfathomable consequences...A highly enjoyable criminal mystery for the intelligent mind, which might even afterwards bring forth some releasing laughs...

Leofwine_draca CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW is a low budget British crime thriller with a simple plot well brought to the screen. Anne Baxter plays a lonely woman living in a big villa who is visited by a stranger who claims to be her brother, previously thought dead. The man assimilates himself into her life, gradually sending her over the edge, while friends and associates refuse to believe that he's not who he claims to be. This very much plays out as a psycho-thriller like the many such films that Hammer Films made during the 1960s (A TASTE OF FEAR, for example). The writing is clever and literate, successfully building to a twist climax that you won't see coming despite all the guesswork you'll be putting in. Richard Todd and Herbert Lom make up the excellent little cast.

MikeMagi Okay, there are a few loose threads in the plot. But Michael Anderson's direction is so good and the performances so spot-on that who cares? Anne Baxter is a very rich young lady, holed up in a luxurious Spanish villa, who is understandably scared when a visitor shows up claiming to be her brother. Only problem is that her brother died a year ago and she identified the body. With the would-be brother come a lurking butler and a gaunt, steely-eyed housekeeper who have given the previous servants their notice. Oh, and there are some papers they want her to sign. Richard Todd is icily smooth as the visitor and Herbert Lom confused as a local policeman who doesn't know who to believe. Well worth watching.

frankatcccp When I was a little boy, I had seen the film, but remembered little of it. However, in the early sixties, my Dad took me on a holiday to Spain, to a little village south of Barcelona, called Sitges. During one coach journey, the courier told us that the mountain road that we were now on was the scene of a fast car drive in a film made a couple of years previously, called 'Chase a Crooked Shadow'. I remember the road well, with the cliff drops hundreds of feet below to the sea and this coupled with my fond memory of that holiday in Franco's long gone Spain and the fact that the film itself is a brilliant piece of old cinema with a terrific twist at the end, makes me watch this film over and over again. I see something in it every time I watch it - the sign of a good film!