Bewitched

BEWITCHED is an audaciously stylized psychodrama that marked the keenly anticipated directorial debut of Arch Oboler, a brilliant enfant terrible of radio drama whose popular horror series LIGHTS OUT and scandalous Adam and Eve parody—with none other than Charlie McCarthy and Mae West in the biblical roles—earned him regular comparison with Orson Welles. Oboler accepted the inevitable invitation to Hollywood where he worked successfully as a screenwriter before directing this striking adaptation of his own celebrated radio play “Alter Ego”. “There are dark corners of the human mind we know nothing about ...” confesses an eminent psychiatrist, as BEWITCHED flashes back to study the strange symptoms of his most enigmatic patient, a beautiful bride-to-be possessed by a dark inner voice that compels her to violently reject and destroy her glittering debutante life by fleeing to the other side of the tracks and adapting a new but dangerously unstable identity. Especially effective in viscerally evoking the young woman’s struggle are the moody score by underappreciated Polish émigré composer Bronislau Kaper and the embittered inner voice hissed with demonic fury by radio actress turned noir vixen Audrey Totter. (Haden Guest)

With THE MARK OF THE WHISTLER