If a murder can be said to be fun, this one is pretty close to it. We're talking one murder here and possibly a couple more to come down the pike.Dirk Bogarde is in his really really bad boy mode with those huge limpid eyes working away at catching the attention of the older ladies. Catch them he does and wonderfully so.Problem is that "lady #2" proves to be more than a match for Teddy and really gives back as good as she gets, plus some.It's dark. It's got twists and turns galore. It's an afternoon at the British seaside with one of those terrific British casts from the 50's with a stagy feel but set in real locations.Watch it if you can !

"I know who I appeal to. Freda because she's my class and Monie because she was old and lonely." That's Edward 'Teddy' Bare (Dirk Bogarde) speaking. He's a charming young man. Monie (Mona Washbourne) was his first wife, considerably older than he and quite rich. He killed her and made it look like an accident. Freda (Margaret Lockwood) is his second wife. She's strong-willed, older than he, common and is quite well off. Teddy was thinking about other kinds of accidents that might happen even before they married. He already has spotted Charlotte (Kay Walsh), another older, wealthy woman he and Freda met shortly after their wedding. But Teddy didn't count on two things: That he might be too clever by half is one. The other is that Monie had a sister. Please note that there are no spoilers here; everything is laid out early. The plot is all about how Teddy will get his comeuppance, not about what he does. Cast a Dark Shadow is a British noir from the late classic period, as they say. It's a moody, murderous film filled alternately with sunlit days and scenes in the dark, curtained drawing room of the country house Teddy inherited from Monie. It's the room he killed her in. A lot of drama, melodrama and acting takes place in it. Don't misunderstand me. While the last fifteen minutes of the film nearly collapse from the weight of twists and double twists, from dramatic confrontations and from hysteria as psychological revelation, the bulk of the movie is an effective study of charming, shadowed nastiness. The film also has a sharply-written screenplay. After Teddy kills Monie he learns that her will, which she was about to change to give him everything, at the time of her death only gave him the house, none of her cash. "I tripped up that time," Teddy says to the chair Monie usually sat in, "but one thing's for sure, somebody's going to have to pay my passage." He has a bookmaker friend finance his wooing of Freda, who is as sharp as they come; she's not about to let Teddy get his hands on her money. But Teddy's friend wants to be paid back. "You've landed the fish," he tells Teddy, "but don't forget it's your Uncle Charlie who supplied the chips." Teddy, who occasionally looks through male muscle magazines, offers to sleep in Monie's room after an argument with Freda. She's having none of it. "I don't know what your arrangements were with Monica," she tells him, "but I didn't marry you for companionship." Bogarde at 34 was eager to escape the sensitive, funny young men he had been playing ever since he hit it big with Doctor in the House. He'd begun starring in action roles, but this was his first as a villain. I doubt too many remember him any more as the naive young man. He proved himself not only a very good actor, but outstanding at playing neurotically vicious characters, or troubled, middle-aged men, or just condescending representatives of the better classes. This is very much his movie. He's in just about every scene. Holding her own with him, however, is Margaret Lockwood. Through the Forties she was a huge star in Britain. She took off with The Lady Vanishes in 1938 and Night Train to Munich and The Stars Look Down, both in 1940. She was a brunette vision, slender, intelligent and with a slightly sly sense of humor lurking behind her eyes. Now at 44, her Freda Jeffries is startlingly effective, and nothing like Night Train's Anna Bomasch or Lady Vanishes' Iris Hamilton. She's still a vision, but Freda is common and crude, with a lower class accent, a loud laugh and a firm hand with Teddy. Freda was a barmaid at a pub, she says, who "married my guv'nor" and inherited his money when he died. Freda (and Lockwood) is still very attractive, but Freda looks at the world through experienced eyes. She tells Teddy at dinner before they are married that she's known a few men since she was widowed. "But it was just the moneybags they were after," she says with a loud laugh, "not the old bag herself." Cast a Dark Shadow is a modest semi-noir. Up to the last two or three scenes it's a stylish bit of murder, trickery and fate.

I tuned into this movie not realizing I had seen it years earlier, so I didn't pay a lot of attention to the opening credits or the set up. I was soon hooked - all over again. This is a thoroughly engaging movie with a twisted plot line. A thrilling English mystery with a wink and a nod.Dirk Bogarde plays an absolute cad with a caviar appetite and a beer purse. He marries a tattered old English matron for her money, but misses the mark when she fails to include him in her will. They do a scene at a seaside tea house that is not to be missed. Listen for the lilting melody of the all girl band. He needs another sugar mama before his money runs out, and heads back to the tea house for another try. For a dapper dude, he really does not know how to pick them. This time his target is a shop worn widow played to the nines by Margaret Lockwood.It took me until halfway through the second viewing to figure out she was the same actress that played the naive ingénue in Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes". Not only does she outguess him, she outfoxes him. About this time, I began to think he ought to get another line of work. Margaret Lockwood makes him look like an amateur. Instead of her being a rich, vulnerable pigeon, she turns out to be very savvy slut who one ups him at every turn.There is a real mind bender ending, but I would never screw the reader by revealing it. Every time I thought I had this movie figured, I got hit with one surprise after another until about four minutes before the ending credits rolled. Give this movie a play, but only if you have the time to give it the attention it deserves. For me, most of the delicious moments are quite subtle. I gave this movie a 9/10 and I'm a stingy voter.

DIRK BOGARDE was always at his best playing the anti-hero with a dark side, lifting his eyebrow to suggest still another wicked scheme going on in his mind. And he's got plenty of eyebrow raising to do in this story that has him as a scheming Bluebeard who's looking for wealthy women to keep him in the money.Here he has to cope with not one, but two very strong-minded women who don't fall so easily for his duplicity or his charm. MARGARET RUTHERFORD is a free spirited lady with a tough will to live and not be undermined by any man looking for a windfall of money. KAY WALSH is a woman we gradually learn has more to do with the plot than her chance encounter with Bogarde would seem to indicate.It's stylishly directed with the emphasis on good old-fashioned suspense as Bogarde spreads the devious charm throughout a story that ends with a wallop.Summing up: Bogarde's fans won't want to miss this one.