i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Blistering performances.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Sound cinema's greatest cad George Sanders does a 180 as Uncle Henry, a shy, retiring much put upon brother in this charming and malevolent Robert Siodmak light noir.Cloth designer Harry Quincy lives a quiet life in servitude to his two needy sisters in a New England town. Sister, Lettie is particularly demanding feigning constant fragility that calls for a lot of Henry's time. When a visitor comes on strong at the office his life is transformed much to the dismay of his possessive sister who now turns on the full court press to abort his intended marriage.It's odd and vastly entertaining to watch Sanders defer to physically delicate harridan Geraldine Fitzgerald. Sanders pulls off his grand stretch with room to spare, garnering our sympathy and passive support for offing the monstrous Lettie; convincingly played by Eileen Fitzgerald firing off a combo of cutting remarks and hateful glances. Moyna Magill as sister Hester whines as well but transitions at times to the the most logical person in the room. As the love interest Ella Raines comes on as a man eater full steam to Henry but is no match for sister Lettie.This is director Siodmak's last light film before delving into the darkest (and some of the best) noir in history and while cannot be argued that Henry is a well paced suspense thriller along with the fact it is a given if ever their was a man with original sin it was Sanders the film sells out and while some may be disappointed by this ending you'll never stop pulling for George for a change.

Harry lives with his two sisters. Hester is a widow. She's the nice one although ever- suffering. Lettie is younger, in her 40's, unmarried and much, much too devoted to Harry. Everything is relatively peachy with the three; they are the last of a once highly prominent family but since the lost the family fortune in the stock market crash of 1929, they have been reduced to gradual decay and Harry supports them in the gloomy old family home by working at the local textile mill as a fabric designer. Harry is an effete, sullen, boring, lump of milk-toast played by George Sanders of ( one of Zsa-Zsa Gabor's stable of ex's).Enter sexy,slinky, Lauren Bacall-Veronica Lake look-alike, Debrorah from NYC and the movie picks up. Sister Lettie is totally. possessive,manipulating and controlling. She will not stand by and see her precious Harry attend to, let alone marry Deborah. After she fails to intimidate Deb, Lettie fakes Illness and Deb leaves Harry as Harrydumps their wedding plans to attend to ailing sister Lettie.Soon Harry discovers Lettie has connived all along to destroy Harry's marriage to Deb. He is angry so he poisons her cocoa but good sister Hester drinks it instead. Since Lettie and Hester had been fighting and since Lettie has bought the poison, they arrest and convict her even tho Lettie knows Harry meant to poison her.On the eve of Lettie's execution, Harry, guilt-ridden mess, confesses but nobody believes him and Lettie refuses to attest to his confession as she sees a future for Harry as a guilt-ridden mess. Harry goes home & in walks Deborah, she has come back to him, and then dead sister Hester walks in. The part of the movie where Harry poisons Lettie 's tea and then on has been a dream! Harry & Deb walk off to be married. The End. Definitely a nice drama piece, good twist ending so everyone is alive, no harm done. Not noir by any stretch, just good old B&W soap.

...with a zest of misogyny -already present in his French masterpiece "Mollenard" (1937) and in his harmless comedy "Le sexe faible" (1934) which would continue in the shape of the femmes fatales Ava Gardner and Yvonne De Carlo -thrown in for good measure.The excellent EG Robinson portrays one of those demeaning parts in which he had become a past master (see also Fritz Lang's "scarlet street" or Julien Duvivier's "Tales of Manhattan").Here he is under his sister's thumb ,who thinks that he needs her ,that without her ,he would be like a child.A monstrous love,a repressed incest? The film features an-ending-you-will-never -guess ,but which it borrows from Lang's "woman in the window" ,made the precedent year."The strange affair ..." is a well told and well acted story ,but it's on in the same league as Siodmak's great works ("Mollenard" "Pièges" "Phantom Lady" "Dark mirror" "criss cross" "cry of the city" "die Ratten" or "L'Affaire Nina B.).To make sense ,the movie should have depicted an irrational atmosphere ,an eerie dreamlike side ..At last in its last part..Now I know where French director Henri-Georges Clouzot borrows his "warning " at the end of his celebrated "Les Diaboliques" (currently in the IMDb top 150 ):"please,he insisted,do not be diabolical (sic),and don't tell a spoiler to your friends who would like to enjoy the movie!".That's exactly what Robert Siodmak did,ten years before him!

Harry Quincey is a bachelor who lives with his two sisters and is head designer in a small town cloth factory. When a New York colleague comes into town to design new fashions early in the production process Harry falls for her and soon it is evident that his relationship with Deborah is going somewhere in the longer term. This is seen as a threat by Harry's sisters, specifically the glamorous hypochondriac Lettie who selfishly guards her brother as her own and has no intention on ever losing him to another woman.The title of this film and the early tone suggests an enjoyable if standard romantic comedy with some light wit, however it becomes much more dramatic and interesting with some good character development and themes. Harry's romance is indeed quite light and enjoyable but it gives way (well, produces) tension between the women in his life – specifically Deborah and Lettie, who is a wonderfully acerbic and possessive character that leads the film into darker territory towards the end. The film is driven by the characters and I was taken by Harry while enthralled by his relationship with Lettie. The ending is a bit of a cop out as it was selected to be the least controversial and meet the requirements of the moral code of the time; the fantasy ending suggests a dark conclusion but really it is a nonsensical cop out that didn't do the film justice.With this the case it was important that the cast be able to produce the goods or else it may not have worked, fortunately the cast are roundly good. Saunders is best known to me as the Falcon and the Saint, perhaps roles that aren't the most demanding for an actor, but here he shows good touch and a subtly that works well with his character. He is more than matched by a wonderful Fitzgerald, who is convincing and complex with a performance that could so easily have hammy and OTT but one that she gets spot on. Support is good from Raines, MacGill and others but really the film belongs to the lead two and it is there strong performances that drives the film.Overall this is a fine piece of drama that moves from a standard romance into a much more interesting character piece that draws out great performances from Saunders and Fitzgerald. The direction is good and the story drew me in well to produce a film that is well worth seeing if you can track it down.