TL:DR - A non-mystery, not worth your time unless you like California real estate.
EXTERIOR, DAY. THE DUFF ENDING CASTS A LONG SHADOW.
Ida Lupino takes a caretaker job at a Santa Barbara mansion, where the previous caretaker mysteriously disappeared. Can Ida solve the mystery, seeing as nobody ever does any work around here? Even the miscast shop gofer tries to help out, as he has a thing for the unsmiling Agnes (Ida). Luckily, Jennifer left an extensive series of clearly written notes that explain everything at regular intervals. It's a sort of Easter Egg hunt, with all the suspense and mystery that suggests.
Photographed by James Wong Howe, who steals the show from the oh-so-earnest Ida and her IRL husband Howard Duff (whose acting skills wouldn't give Elvis Presley any sleepless nights) and not helped by the terribly overwrought music and underwrought script, which is a half-hour story stretched thin to 70-odd minutes.
The most gruesome murder is of the song 'Angel Eyes', which Matt Dennis seems to have been playing all night while several old couples attempt to dance to it, trying to do Sammy Davis Junior, but coming over as Bobby Vee Senior. Maybe they could have given Russ Conway, who plays the gardener, a shot. That might have livened this film up a bit.
The ending (spoiler): Jennifer didn't die, the family put her in a sanatarium because she was insane, and they didn't want anyone to know. The End. They attempt to suggest, by the repeat use of the long shadow, that there actually is a ghost, but by then nobody cares.
EXTERIOR, DAY. THE DUFF ENDING CASTS A LONG SHADOW.
Ida Lupino takes a caretaker job at a Santa Barbara mansion, where the previous caretaker mysteriously disappeared. Can Ida solve the mystery, seeing as nobody ever does any work around here? Even the miscast shop gofer tries to help out, as he has a thing for the unsmiling Agnes (Ida). Luckily, Jennifer left an extensive series of clearly written notes that explain everything at regular intervals. It's a sort of Easter Egg hunt, with all the suspense and mystery that suggests.
Photographed by James Wong Howe, who steals the show from the oh-so-earnest Ida and her IRL husband Howard Duff (whose acting skills wouldn't give Elvis Presley any sleepless nights) and not helped by the terribly overwrought music and underwrought script, which is a half-hour story stretched thin to 70-odd minutes.
The most gruesome murder is of the song 'Angel Eyes', which Matt Dennis seems to have been playing all night while several old couples attempt to dance to it, trying to do Sammy Davis Junior, but coming over as Bobby Vee Senior. Maybe they could have given Russ Conway, who plays the gardener, a shot. That might have livened this film up a bit.
The ending (spoiler): Jennifer didn't die, the family put her in a sanatarium because she was insane, and they didn't want anyone to know. The End. They attempt to suggest, by the repeat use of the long shadow, that there actually is a ghost, but by then nobody cares.