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Reviews
Home Before Dark (1958)
A Superb Forgotten Gem
I first saw this on a local Boston movie anthology show called "Adult Theatre" when I was 13, in 1964. My very liberal parents not only let me watch it -- they had seen it in in its first theatrical run -- but dug up a copy of the book for me, which had been a minor best seller in 1957. I purchased a bootleg tape of it years ago which, mercifully, is complete, and I must say, it is a wonderful film. The novel and film deal with similar issues to Sylvia Plath's 1960 novel "The Bell Jar," dealing as they do with a young woman being perceived as mad because she wants to live her own life. In the hands of a George Cukor this would have been a great movie; as it is, directed by old reliable warhorse Mervyn LeRoy, it is still very good. Rhonda Fleming is suitably insensitive and conventional as the voluptuous step-sister to the heroine, Charlotte, and Jean Simmons -- as always -- is incandescent, rising, as she always did, far above the material. Efrem Zimbalist is a fine second lead, and Dan O'Herlihy is wonderfully smarmy as the proper husband lusting after his sister-in -law. REALLY good film, and it is enjoyable to see on film the Boston of my childhood.
Cold Case: That Woman (2007)
That Woman
I honestly did not feel the episode tarred all conservative Christians with one brush; the plot line clearly concerned this particular group of people. Nor did the episode you mentioned about the Amish libel people because of their religion. One has to accept that regardless of what group one belongs to -- I, for example, am both Jewish and gay -- that not every member of that group is perfect, morally or otherwise. I am not Jewish in the manner of David Berkowitz nor gay in the manner of Jeffrey Dahmer. I think that you, as a conservative Christian, are being oversensitive. You cannot deny that there are members of your group who are motivated by hate and judgment rather than love and compassion; it is people such as that which the episode depicted.