Antonius Block Campy and entertaining, there are flashes of brilliance here: tight shots on Loy, made up as an evil Indian mystic bent on getting revenge against her old classmates, some scenes where tension is built up rather nicely (I won't spoil them), and even a car chase scene, 1932-style. You'll have to suspend disbelief over the concept that the mind can be controlled by another via 'waves', but that's part of the fun. Loy's motivation is revealed towards the end as she confronts Irene Dunne, and it reveals the racial climate of the times: as a "half-caste Indian half-breed", she was not allowed to "pass" as white in a sorority. As she explains it, for half-breed men this meant being a coolie, and for a woman, she simply shrugs, implying prostitution. As with many films treating race relations at the time, it has a mixed message, on the one hand, pointing out the unfairness of the sorority (and how racist its rules were), and on the other, elevating fears of violence by non- Caucasians. It's interesting that the film has quite a bit of the framework of the modern thriller in it, but it's not fleshed out as much as it ideally would have been, and seems abrupt in places. Finding out that the original release was 14 minutes longer could explain that, but I have to review it for what survives. You could do worse, and it's actually kind of a fun movie. Oh, and last point – interesting to see Peg Entwistle in her only credited screen role, before jumping from the 'H' in the Hollywood(land) sign in despair. Watch for her character 'Hazel' early on.

bkoganbing Watching Thirteen Women I wonder what Merle Oberon must have thought. She lived in real life what Myrna Loy's character was experiencing in the film. It was only after she died that it came out that Merle was of mixed racial origin. She successfully passed her entire life.Loy who was in fact Caucasian until she became the incarnation of the perfect wife and mother played a whole lot of these exotic characters. She borrows a bit from her performance as Fu Manchu's daughter in playing a woman who is exacting terrible revenge on members of a sorority at a finishing school who discovered her background and used it to get her expelled. It was her ticket into the white world and respectability as she saw it.Using C. Henry Gordon as a phony swami she has unpleasant horoscopes made against her thirteen enemies. Loy doesn't want to just kill them, she wants to torment them and uses Gordon as her means. Loy wants maximum satisfaction.In the case of Irene Dunne who she sees as her chief enemy Loy also has plans for Dunne's child as well.A whole lot of women dominate this film as the sisters like Kay Johnson, Jill Esmond, Florence Eldridge and more. Ricardo Cortez plays the police sergeant who tracks down Loy and Edward Pawley plays another of the men she uses in her fiendish schemes.As this was a before the Code film, there was some frank talk about racism under the guise of snobbery. No doubt that Dunne and the rest were guilty of it. It drove Loy off the deep end and she enacts a terrible vengeance.A really good before the Code film that should be better known.

dougdoepke No need to repeat points made by others. One unmentioned ingredient the movie sorely lacks is mood, which is usually established by visual style. In short, the movie has no visual style to complement the eerie proceedings. Instead, director Archainbaud films in unimaginative, straightforward fashion, using high-key lighting even in those spooky situations crying out for shadow. That's not surprising since the bulk of the director's career was spent helming undemanding Gene Autry half-hours for early TV. No wonder the pass-off stunt between the two cars in this film is so expertly handled. Archainbaud was an action director and clearly the wrong man to develop a Gothic exercise like Thirteen Women. Think what a great visual stylist like Edgar Ulmer (The Black Cat) or Tod Browning (Dracula; Freaks) could have done with the same dark material. For example, note the weird looking interior constructed for Ursula's two- story abode. It's a real eye-catcher but goes unaccented by Archainbaud's pedestrian style. Think what Ulmer, in particular, would have done with that bizarre set-up. Then too, maybe a more attuned director or producer could have prevented the studio from butchering the contents with its notoriously clumsy deletions and departures. Nonetheless, mood or no mood, cat-eyed Ursula (Loy) can cast a spell on me any day of the week and the proverbial twice on Sunday, that is, if I can manage it.

movingpicturegal Odd and mysterious film revolving around a woman described as a "Hindu half-breed" (played by Myrna Loy) who writes fake horoscope predictions under the guise of a famous Swami and mails them to a circle of former female classmates to get even with them. Death and suicide is the norm for these "predictions", which somehow start to come true just based on the power of suggestion. One woman receives a horoscope predicting the death of someone close to her - then, oh dear, the power of persuasion is in full force when she and her sister perform their "world famous double flip done without a net" flying trapeze circus stunt and the sister falls to her death. Luckily a bright cop is soon on the job to solve the mystery and put an end to these "horoscope murders".This film is short, fast-paced, mysterious, and quite good, actually. Myrna Loy is fine in her performance, using her hypnotic eyes in close-up to seduce unwilling partners - and victims, though the very heavy eye makeup on her here isn't exactly grounds for making her believable as half Asian. Irene Dunne is excellent in this too, as the classmate who tries to persuade the others to use reason and not believe these silly horoscopes, then has Loy on her back trying to "break" her - by sending poisoned candy and a ball with a bomb to try and kill Dunne's little boy. Yeah, you got it - a real evil piece of work, that woman. Quite a good film, well worth seeing.