Super script, rare quality rendering, absolute masterpiece! I knew Bette Davis is a great actress, probably the greatest of all time(I think Meryl Streep owes her a lot...) I watched this for the first time in May 2018. And I was deeply impressed by how good is the movie. The genre is Hitchcock, no doubt one of my favorite directors, one of the best of all time. But this "Dead Ringer" is better than any Hitchcock. The secret? There is no secret: Hitchcock never had Bette Davis! At least not in a long feature, but in an episode, "Out There - Darkness"(1959) from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"(1955-1962) TV series, where Hitchcock is just a guest, episode directed by the same brilliant Paul Henreid.

Some neat twists and turns in this story make it an enjoyable couple of hours, particularly when Edie (Bette Davis) gets what's coming to her - even if she was convicted of the wrong murder! That was one of the ironic things about this picture; as the viewer one likes to see things wrapped up in a nice, neat little package, but if that doesn't work out, well at least justice was served in a roundabout fashion.This film reminded me of a couple others, the first being Bette Davis's own "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" which also featured a pair of sisters in a dysfunctional relationship. The other was "Sunset Boulevard", in the respect that the butler Henry (Cyril Delevanti) here remained loyal to the phony Margaret DeLorca (also Davis) in somewhat the same manner Erich von Stroheim's character traded his loyalty for individuality while maintaining a façade for Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond. Granted, that situation was a bit different, but you get my drift.And then there was Duke. Right off the bat I had a pretty good idea Duke would know the score with Edie masquerading as her sister. For a minute, I thought Edie might have given herself away when Sergeant Hobbson (Karl Malden) first came calling, and I was surprised he was never let in on Edie's little secret, although he came pretty close. Good detective work though, getting the goods on Tony Collins (Peter Lawford) and figuring out the old arsenic gambit. Come to think of it, if you wanted to make the case for Edie getting away with a second murder, she had a pretty competent accomplice.If you can overlook some of the pitfalls in the story and just take it as it plays out, it's a pretty good one. I got a kick out of the opening scene when a sign for Rosedale Cemetery comes into view stating 'Graves, Niches, Cremations and Undertaking - All in One Place'. I thought about that for a while before asking myself, where else would they be?

Back in 1948 Paul Henreid produced and starred in "Hollow Triumph," a.k.a. "The Scar," the story of a criminal on the run who murders and disposes of a psychiatrist he closely resembles, in order to assume the man's identity. But soon he discovers there are people out to kill the psychiatrist. And now, in 1964, Henreid reworks the same basic story, this time with aging Bette Davis playing twin sisters, one of whom kills and replaces the other, only to find that her sister has a fatal secret of her own. Like so many B-movies of the 1960s, "Dead Ringer" has the flat look and glacial pacing of a TV mystery, which is no surprise since Henreid by this time was a busy television director. It would have been a much better picture if he had trimmed about twenty minutes.

Amazingly enough, this is NOT the first or only film Bette Davis played herself and her evil twin sister! In fact, the film is highly reminiscent of the very enjoyable A STOLEN LIFE that Ms. Davis made with Glenn Ford back in 1946. Here, because she's quite a bit older, the romantic aspect of the film is changed, however. Instead of Davis hating her evil sister for stealing her boyfriend and impersonating her to get him back, the film begins with the death of this boyfriend--who the sister had apparently stolen two decades earlier. Filled with justifiable anger over this and the swell life the scummy sister now has (where she is quite rich, while the nice one struggles to make ends meet), the nicer sister decides to make up for lost time--killing the wicked sister and assuming her life. While the plot is clichéd and a bit silly (especially how they try to disguise the use of doubles in the beginning), the film is enjoyable and good for laughs--as it's often over the top. It's like a fun "bad film"--great for those who love watching Davis or Crawford in their juicy 1960s roles.The biggest difference in the two films is that in A STOLEN LIFE, one sister clearly was good and the other clearly was bad. The good one only stole her sister's identity after she died accidentally. However, the "good" sister in DEAD RINGER isn't exactly good--just not as rotten as her sister. Plus, unlike the previous film, she murders her sister in cold blood--feeling entitled to what her wicked sister has. And, interestingly enough, she was pretty much right--the nasty sister's life was by all rights hers--though killing her was a bit...um...extreme. The way that it's done and showing Davis stripping the corpse of her possessions is quite creepy--with more of a 1960s grittier style. Unfortunately for the surviving sister, her plan, though interesting, isn't completely thought out and soon comes to haunt her. How this happens and what happens next is something you'll have to see for yourself.Now this brings up the biggest problem with the film. Davis' plan is just too spur of the moment and dumb. There are just too many loose ends to make it a better film. Clichés such as the dog instantly "knowing" which sister is which and the fact that the twin would have different fingerprints aren't really addressed well. I would assume that when an identical twin dies it would be standard practice to ensure which of the two had actually died--especially in cases where foul play is suspected.Overall, this is a very improbable but very interesting film. You'll probably enjoy watching it--even if it is all very hard to swallow.