Rainey Dawn Extremely atmospheric at times... eerie, dark and suspenseful. I loved all the film minus the ending. Eerie Halloween costumes, creepy dolls, a very protective - almost evil - German Shepard, strange happenings in the town of Eden Rock, Massachusetts, dead roses, a scary old lady, a witch in town - yea this film has everything needed for a great horror film if they would have kept it that way in the ending.I really liked Rev. Jim Stevens he's a really good character and his church sermon was scene was great - if you have seen this film you know the scene I'm speaking of - really outstanding.The dead roses scene at the beginning of the film would have been good IF John Loder, who plays Dr. Matt Adams, would have acted shocked about the fresh roses being dead when he gave them to Nancy Kelly (who plays Lorna Webster). He almost ruined that scene with his wooden performance - at least Nancy Kelly continued with grace.I would have rated this film 9/10 if it wasn't for the ending - the film is great but I was disappointed with the ending.7/10

mark.waltz Great spooky visuals open this story of a small Massachussats town whose past comes back to haunt them in this supernatural thriller. Nancy Kelly is the descendant of the judge who sentenced a bunch of people to death on the suspicion of being witches. She is returning home after having run out on her fiancée (John Loder) and while on the bus, she is joined by a spooky looking old lady (the always wonderful Elspeth Dudgeon) who claims to be a witch from centuries before. The bus suddenly careens off a bridge into the river below and of the dozens killed, only Kelly survives. The town doesn't exactly welcome her back with open arms as her ex-fiancée's sister (Ruth Ford) is mysteriously stalked, Ford's daughter's fish are accidentally poisoned by Kelly (accidently picking up poison instead of fish food), and a mysterious doberman stalks Kelly everywhere she goes. After her nervous housekeeper (the prickly Almira Sessions) quits, rumors of her being a witch start to spread, and Kelly's own behavior begins to make Loder question whether or not this is true. Only the town's reverend (Otto Kruger) has any doubts of what's going on, and even his faith will be tested as well.There's so much potential in this Republic horror movie that is totally a let down with its Scooby Doo like ending. Certainly, there's enough evidence presented in the various character's research of their own town's wretched history to have given the opportunity for this to take on some maudlin twists rather than the let down which happens at the end. In fact, you can see that coming, and what is at first entrancing you with its mystery becomes more obvious towards the end. Elspeth Dudgeon had several similar roles years before in some Warner Brothers mystery that gave the opportunity to create a character for which she would be long remembered, but other than her spooky appearance at the beginning, she is only mentioned afterwords. Certain plot elements give way to the fact that this is going to end in a more satisfying angle, and had somebody like Val Lewton or Tod Browning been behind its creation, it certainly could have gone down that path.How would I have ended it? Certainly, the character that Nancy Kelly is playing seems to be under some sort of curse. Even if Dudgeon's character had not been a witch, her spirit could still have roamed the earth in search of revenge, and with the letter that claimed she would be around for a 300 year period until her death was avenged, it really seemed as if Kelly would be possessed by this bad seed that caused her to do witch-like things and arise the townspeople's suspicions. A "Frankenstein" chase at the end between the townspeople and Kelly under Lewton's camera eye would have ended with her falling over a cliff and when her corpse is discovered revealed to be Dudgeon's long-dead character instead. Like the same year's "The Body Snatcher", that would have given the viewers a thrill in addition to the chill, but what does happen at the end is a chilly reaction to how these writers chose to end a missed opportunity rather than making it into the classic it could have become.

capkronos Feeling uneasy with her surroundings and the community at large, Lorna Webster (Nancy Kelly) had fled her hometown of Eben Rock, Massachusetts years earlier with no explanation to anyone. On her trip back to town - presumably to be reunited with her former love Dr. Matt Adams (John Loder) - the bus she's riding on pulls over to pick up an old woman (Elspeth Dudgeon) dressed in black and walking a dog. The woman takes a seat next to Lorna and immediately begins acting strangely. She somehow knows her name and claims to have known Lorna's great great great grandfather who's been dead for hundreds of years. Suddenly the old lady cackles and the bus goes crashing over some railing into a lake. The driver and all of the passengers die; everyone except for Lorna, who makes her way to a local inn wet, confused and delirious. Seeing how no old woman's body is ever recovered from the accident site, no one believes her story. And then a series of strange and possibly supernatural events occur...Lorna has a fondness for the dark, envisions the face of the witch in a mirror, causes fresh flowers to wilt, accidentally feeds a little girl's pet goldfish rat poison, drives away her maid (Almira Sessions) with her screaming and has no clue why the dead bus driver's neck appears to have been chewed away by an animal. She is however fully aware that she's a descendant of witch-hunting fanatic Elijah Webster, who was responsible for condemning eighteen innocent women to death for witchcraft back in 1645. Among his victims was an old woman named Jezebel Trister, who vowed to get revenge on Elijah's descendants. Rumor has it, Jezebel also made a deal with the devil which will allow her to possess the body of a young woman after three centuries of rest. The citizens of Eben Rock are well-versed on these legends and begin to suspect that Lorna is evil and directly responsible for misfortunes that have recently been befalling their community.This is a good movie that could have been a great movie with just a few alterations to the script. Kelly does a wonderful job in the central role; effectively portraying the ever-increasing paranoia and desperation of her character. There are also fine supporting performances from Otto Kruger as a reverend who tries to discourage the townspeople from ganging up on Lorna, Ruth Ford as Matt's distrustful sister who blames Lorna when her little daughter comes down with a mysterious illness, Harry Tyler as a town gossip and others. In addition, this is well-photographed and there are nice visual touches that recall the subtle expressionism of concurrent Val Lewton productions; utilizing tranquil shots of the sky and the lake, shadows and other simple touches for eerie effect.Where the film falters a bit is with the screenplay. It presents an intelligent and thought-provoking central idea: contrasting the "narrow bigotry" of the olden days to our supposedly more civilized, enlightened times and showing how people are still easily prone to mob mentality and rushed judgment. That's a theme every bit as timely today as it was in 1945. Unfortunately, the explanation behind the events given during the last few minutes relies too heavily on sheer coincidence and is implausible at best, ridiculous at worst. Regardless, this still has enough positives to make it worth watching.WOMAN is also notable in another way. There were several dozen other horror films bankrolled by the likes of MGM, Fox, Universal, RKO, Monogram and Republic in 1945, but WOMAN was made by Walter Colmes Productions, which would make it the only truly independent genre film made apart from the established studios during its year (though it was later picked up and distributed by Republic). As a result, the film utilizes more outdoor filming and feels a bit less stagy than other films made during this time.

Richard_Harland_Smith 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.