KILLER CHILLERS

Turner Classic Movies channel featured "Homicidal Husbands Night" yesterday.  Oh, be still my murderous heart!  These were three black and white oldies I'd never seen before or even heard of, for that matter.  All the better.

Woman in Hiding has Ida Lupino discovering on her honeymoon that her hubby (overplayed by Stephen McNally, whoever he is) is a philanderer who may have caused her wealthy father to die in an "accidental fall" at the mill he (daddy) owned.  Ida decides to hightail it out of their mountain cabin while pretending to be asleep, but she doesn't know that Stephen has mucked up the car brakes.  After a harrowing drive down the switchbacks, the car busts through a road guard and plunges into a river. Woe is Ida.

But wait!!!  Ida has leaped to safety right before the crash, and now she is a Woman in Hiding!!!  She spends the rest of the movie roaming around North Carolina trying to avoid her evil husband, but he still keeps popping up at every turn.  With the help of Howard Duff (who later became Ida's non-homicidal husband in real life) and lots of heavy-duty cigarette smoking, she manages to get out of every nasty jam thrown her way.  Great movie!  And through it all, she never has a hair out of place!  Amazing!  Simply amazing!  The Flaming Bore gives it three-and-a half flames out of four!

Next up was Julie, starring sweet Doris Day and dastardly Louis Jordan (as in Loo-ee Jzor-DAWN).  Like Ida, cute Doris finds out shortly after the wedding cake is digested that her husband is a homicidal maniac.  He strangled her first husband to death and made it look like a suicide by hanging.  Early on, he makes a bedroom confession...this time at a beach home.  Doris plots her escape plan. Louis removes the coil wire on the car.  Doris hitchhikes into town and becomes, what else, a Woman in Hiding.

With the help of a lawyer friend and a few cartons of cigarettes to get her through the really tough times, Doris returns to her previous job as an airline stewardess.  And who should show up on one of her flights, hiding behind a newspaper, but...Louis Jordan!!!  Next thing you know, he's in the cockpit having a shootout with the pilot. All is doomed for sure.

But wait!   Doris and a passenger/doctor come to the rescue.  Doris takes over control of the plane, of course, and in a harrowing 20-minute-long conversation with the control tower, is able to safely land the plane. Big Bore says she wasn't sweating much, but her relieved facial expression looked like she'd just experienced the best orgasm of her life.  Light me up a cigarette.  I'm exhausted.  Three flames from The Flaming Bore.

Our finale of the evening was The Two Mrs. Carrolls starring two immortals--Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck.  Bogie is a successful artist whose first wife dies of a lingering illness, also known as death by poisoning.  Fast forward two years and he's married to Babs but struggling with his art. A younger, sexier gal enters the picture, resurrecting his artistic inspiration and erecting his paint brush. Time to get rid of #2 and move on.  Poison worked the first time.  Let's try it again.

But wait!  We all know that Barbara Stanwyk is a tough old bird and she doesn't die so easily. When she won't cooperate with the plan, he decides to bust into her bedroom window, a la Dracula, and strangle her with a curtain cord.  But wait--again!  Here comes her ex-fiance with the cops!  End of Bogie's attempt at attempted murder. He goes into a crazy act, reminiscent of  Gloria Swanson at the end of Sunset Boulevard, and offers the officers glasses of milk.  They aren't so thirsty.  The end.  --Since this movie lacked the cinematic and plot challenges of the previous two --it mainly just took place at home--and the smoking was minimal, The Flaming Bore only gives it two flames.

It's going to be hard to top this dramatic trio any time soon--which is just as well.  But if TCM has a Homicidal Housewives Night coming up soon, you can bet I'll be watching.