An action-packed slog

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

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...

The idea behind "Cast a Crooked Shadow" is really neat....it's what they did with it that really, really disappointed me and left me irritated. After all, with such a great idea, surely they could have dealt with it better than this mess of a film!When the film begins, Kimberly Prescott (Anne Baxter) is taking control of her family's estate in Spain. It seems that her father killed himself and she's the surviving heir. However, soon her brother arrives and this is a SERIOUS problem since he is dead!! No, he's NOT a zombie but a man who is claiming to be her brother. She KNOWS he's a phony, as she saw her brother's dead body. But the man has all the documentation to prove he IS her brother! And, soon he brings folks into the home and soon Kimberly is a virtual prisoner due to these strangers! How is she to resolve all this, as they probably are going to kill her and the police think she's nuts!So why did I eventually feel cheated? Well, how all this was resolved....it was terrible. And, I have no idea why they chose to run away from the menacing fake brother angle and where the film eventually chose to go. It didn't work and the big confession scene at the end was ridiculous. A BIG misfire.

Chase A Crooked Shadow which was filmed in Spain and produced by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. has Anne Baxter as a rich heiress living in the family villa which is her's free and clear due to the deaths of her father and brother a year earlier. All seems well enough when Richard Todd shows up claiming to be her brother. Well and good, but when the household staff and her uncle Alexander Knox all accept him as the brother she identified as dead after an automobile crash in South Africa, Baxter thinks she's heading for the rubber room. She also gets little sympathy from the local police in the person of Herbert Lom.There's also the matter of a fortune in diamonds that was stolen from the company where father made his millions. Another mystery as yet unsolved.So just who is the bad one in this film? That you won't know until the very end when as the Belgian sleuth always says 'all will be revealed'.Charles Boyer did not do a neater job of gaslighting Ingrid Bergman than Todd is doing to Anne Baxter. Both the stars do well, but the underlying reason for this particular gambit is a bit far fetched for my taste.

Chase A Crooked Shadow numbers among those ingeniously plotted movies that are too clever by half. But it sustains interest and stars Anne Baxter, nothing to sneeze at. Baxter plays a South African diamond heiress `resting' at her seaside villa in Spain. One night, up shows a total stranger (Richard Todd) who claims to be her wastrel brother, supposedly killed in a racing-car crash. He presents his alternative reality with needling superiority, and in Todd they found precisely the supercilious cold fish to present it.Pleas to the local police (in the person of Herbert Lom) prove bootless, as Todd's papers and passport prove in order; he's also uncannily familiar with family details, such as the ingredients of Baxter's `swimming drink' (vermouth cassis with a splash of soda). At the bottom of the imposture is a quest for some $10-million in diamonds gone missing before Baxter's father's Transvaal Company went belly-up, resulting in his suicide. Baxter tries to find a chink in Todd's armor, but he seems to have covered every angle, including suborning her avuncular uncle (Alexander Knox, in a wisp of a role). Though the movie is confined almost entirely to the villa and boasts a cast of six and a half, it's well photographed – the arches and wrought iron lend themselves to subtle and effective lighting. But what about the final twist of the plot? Since producer Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. appears in a coda to warn against giving away the secret, it won't be revealed here. But it leaves rapt viewers faintly disgruntled, wondering if and how they've been somehow swindled along the way.