* out of ****
Every once in awhile you see a well-regarded older movie you expect to enjoy and come away bitterly disappointed. I'm a big John Carradine fan, but even his wonderfully restrained performance could not get me interested in most of BLUEBEARD. Indeed, this film was so boring that I had a hard time believing that director Ulmer had given us his excellent 1934 masterpiece, THE BLACK CAT (and that goes double when I watch his AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN, but that's best saved for another review).
There was a lost opportunity in that there was never anything really developed in the area of Carradine's psychotic persona, and that silly musical score went on and on continuously, getting in the way.
Every once in awhile you see a well-regarded older movie you expect to enjoy and come away bitterly disappointed. I'm a big John Carradine fan, but even his wonderfully restrained performance could not get me interested in most of BLUEBEARD. Indeed, this film was so boring that I had a hard time believing that director Ulmer had given us his excellent 1934 masterpiece, THE BLACK CAT (and that goes double when I watch his AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN, but that's best saved for another review).
There was a lost opportunity in that there was never anything really developed in the area of Carradine's psychotic persona, and that silly musical score went on and on continuously, getting in the way.