Dead Ringer | | Cast : | Bette Davis, Karl Malden | | Director : | Paul Henreid | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby, Black & White | | Released Date : | February 19, 1964 | | DVD Released Date : | August 10, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | Unrated | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 05, 2005 | | Summary | "But I am Margaret De Lorca!" | Content
 | By the time 1964 came around Bette Davis was having career resurgence. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was a huge hit for her and Joan Crawford; therefore, it was only logical that both actresses would be offered a variety of quasi horror and gothic-like roles. While Dead Ringer isn't really a horror film, it certainly has enough spooky and unnerving elements to involve the viewer and create an atmosphere of foreboding.
Is Dead Ringer a piece of B grade junk designed as a vehicle for a fading star's last gasp at glory? Or is it a cleverly wrought psychological thriller, made redeemable by the presence of a true star and great actress? Well, the answer is probably a bit both - theres no doubt that movie has elements of a second rate melodromatic thriller, but the film is also surprisingly tense and in the end provides a perfect showcase for the glamorous Ms. Davis to do what she does best.
Dead ringer is ultimately a campy gothic thriller about estranged twin sisters Margaret and Edith (Davis, playing both roles). The film begins with a funeral for Margaret's husband who has just died of heart failure. When the wealthy Margaret invites Edith back to her mansion in Westwood it is soon revealed that the insensitive, social-climbing Margaret actually stole Edith's insanely rich beau away from her and has since been living the high-life while Edith struggles to keep her run-down nightclub afloat.
With her rent three months in arrears and frantic for money, Edith hatches a desperate plan to murder her own sister by making it look like suicide. Thinking that she can just walk in and take over her life, Edith scrambles to carry off the masquerade, pretending she knows Margaret's safe combination by heart, or that she can differentiate between the mansion's hundred rooms, all the time trying to figure out what sort of person Margaret really was.
There are lots of surprises as Edith gradually discovers that Margaret possessed a lot of dark secrets that she was desperate to hide. Murder, betrayal, and infidelity all follow with Edith ultimately learning a hard lesson: when you adopt someone's assets, you must also accept their liabilities, for better or for worse. Viewers are in for such side attractions as Davis slapping checkbooks across rooms, contemplating burning her own hand with a red-hot fire poker, and even shoving herself backwards into a chair.
The supporting cast is strong with Carl Malden competently playing an affable, nice-guy cop who is in love with Edith, and just can't believe that she'd ever commit suicide. Jean Hagen absolutely chews up the scenery as a blithely indecent social butterfly and Estelle Winwood is terrific as a dour, doily-wearing Bible-thumper.
But in the end, Dead Ringer totally belongs to the commanding Bette Davis. This is one of her campiest and most ham-fisted roles ever, and where she's at her chain-smoking, eye popping, and out of control best. Mike Leonard August 05.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 27, 2005 | | Summary | "You Aren't Margaret DeLorca, You're Edith!" | Content
| The juicy thriller "Dead Ringer", is a personal favourite of mine and is a classic example of that curious genre that sprung up in the early 1960's as a result of the sensational box office success of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?",in 1962. The films made in the wake of Baby Jane's success were to provide many veteran actresses and actors such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Ray Milland, with meaty leading roles in lower budgeted thrillers and horror stories for the rest of that decade. Whatever failings these films may possess critically they are still immensely entertaining efforts and they certainly gave the veteran actors involved a new lease of life career wise at the time. I believe that "Dead Ringer", starring the legendary Bette Davis in the dual roles of two long estranged identical sisters who get caught up in a web of envy, intrigue, deception and finally murder is one of the best in this cycle of films despite what th ecritics may say. Produced by Warner Bros., the studio where Davis was once the undisputed Queen in the 1930's and 40's, "Dead Ringer", has an irresistably expensive look to it and is the ultimate star vehicle for the ageing Davis wedged as it is in between her two other Grand Guignol vehicles of this period in the before mentioned "Baby Jane", in 1962 and "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" in 1964. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 08, 2005 | | Summary | "Now who's the fairest twin of all?" | Content
| Nobody in film has yet portrayed evil bitch, and sometimes crazy evil bitch, as well and as often as the late great Bette Davis, as evidenced by such films as "Of Human Bondage", "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane", and "The Nanny", just to name a few that come immediately to mind. Capable of spitting out lines such as "Ah'd luv tuh kiss yuh, but ah jus' washed mah hair" (from "Cabin In the Cotton", 1932), "Every time you kissed me, I had to wipe my mouth! Wipe my mouth!" (from "Of Human Bondage", 1934) to "But Blanche, yuh ahhh in that chair, yuh ahhhhhhh!" (from "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane", 1962), Bette Davis made a lucrative living with her hip-swinging sashaying stride and her mannerisms that still make her a favorite of drag queens everywhere.
In "Dead Ringer", Bette was once again cast in the dual role of good sister/bad sister (Edith Phillips/Margaret DeLorca) similar to her dual roles in "A Stolen Life" (1946, with Glenn Ford). "Dead Ringer"'s premise is simple: good sister impulsively tries to step into shoes of deceased bad sister in an ill-conceived move to improve her own quality of life, without thinking of the inherent consequences. In this case, as in the case of "A Stolen Life", Davis inherits the dead bad sister's myriad mix of self-imposed problems, but with worse consequences.
And as veteran filmgoers have realized for many years, the family dog always knows who's who.
Karl Malden, as Davis' earnest boyfriend (and cop) Sgt. Jim Hobbson is basically re-enacting his earnest boyfriend characterization from "A Streetcar Named Desire", and Peter Lawford, who was a real-life playboy and drunk, (in addition to allegedly acting as a bit of a pimp for the Kennedys, circa the Marilyn Monroe/John F. Kennedy/Robert Kennedy liasons era), plays Tony Collins...the drunken playboy boyfriend of the dead bad sister, Margaret DeLorca.
"Dead Ringer" was made in an era of more rudimentary special effects, so Davis's two characters interacting almost face-to-face in some scenes was quite innovative for the time, well-done (better than the obvious stand-in used for some scenes) and still holds up well.
Fun times ensue for all. Classic Bette melodrama. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 13, 2005 | | Summary | "To OUTAH SPACE!" | Content
| The creepy yet memorable poster the studio released for DEAD RINGER of Bette Davis partially superimposed over a skull suggests its a horror film, but its really a kind of recap of 40s women's pictures with a few highly memorable Gothic elements in it. Davis was offered this role after the success of WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, but it's much tamer than either that film or Davis's other entry into the Grandes Dames Guignol sweepstakes, HUSH... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE, and offers her more chances for more subtle acting moments. As in her 40s film for Warner's A STOLEN LIFE, Davis plays twin sisters, one of whom substitutes for the other when the richer twin is suddenly killed; in this instance, the down-at-heels Edie actually murders her wealthy sister Margaret so as to take her place.
The film is satisfyingly silly with wonderful camp elements: Edie intentionally grabbing a redhot poker so as not to be given away by her signature the next day at her lawyer's office; Edie wrestling with Margaret's corpse to take off her clothes and change her hairstyle; Edie loudly pretending to sing "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" with her dead sister when detective Karl malden is on her staircase; etc. These are the moments Charles Busch gets to celebrate hilariously in this DVD commentary (although he is disastrously paired with Bose Hadleigh who bores the audience blind with his incessant facts about every minor actor in the movie; Buschs hould have been allowed to do the commentary himself). One of the most interesting things about the film is that Margaret de Lorca moves in the circles of Los Angeles "Old California" moneyed society, a milieu rarely explored on film: thuis we get the pleasures of seeing Mildred Natwick (of all people) done up in a mantilla as "Dona Anna," the doyenne of this society. And Davis really does have some fine redemptive moments where she really gets the chance to show she's a fine actress, even when she's being manhandled by a elderly gigolo (Peter Lawford) or siccing her giant Great Dane on him. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 24, 2005 | | Summary | Give DEAD RINGER Five Stars for Camp Value | Content
| I never understood why performers like Bette Davis were considered legends. They belonged to that stylized school of acting that leaves no scenery unchewed, and makes one really appreciate what Marlon Brando and his generation accomplished. That being said, for camp value, DEAD RINGER, like Baby Jane and several others of the washed-up-Hollywood-actress-as-reborn-ghoul genre, is pure gold. The thought of Davis playing twin sisters (one rich and not so nice; the other, not so well off but marginally more moral), is like hitting a double jackpot at the quarter slots: 1964 split-screen technology giving us two of Bette Davis for the price of one. In this film the scenery definitely doesn't stand a chance. Toss in Karl Malden as a cop and the gentleman caller of the poorer, cocktail-lounge-owning twin, Peter Lawford as the secret love interest of the rich, recently-widowed twin, and you have 115 minutes of . . . well, you have 115 minutes of something special. Let's not worry about the plot points, but suffice it to say the film has a nice little twist at the end that makes me long for the old Hitchcock TV show, in which every episode had a little surprise at the end. Maybe I'm jaded, but every time I see certain actresses of this era (Davis, Crawford, De Havilland, et al), I can't help but visualize Carol Burnett doing one of her dead-on camp takes on these types of stars, which, of course, makes it very hard to take seriously the over-emoting Davis in this particular film. But that's the entertainment value of it all. The film is 41 years old and shows every year of its age, but what a treat to watch this with a big bowl of popcorn while simultaneously longing for this more innocent era of star-vehicle films. This one's a keeper in my collection!
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