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Henry the eldest is a cross-dresser who steals women’s clothing off clotheslines (leaving ten-bob notes pinned to the cord in exchange, so sweet of him); Terry the middle kid is unloved and scared, married with five lookalike tots of his own (all of whom can’t stand a visit to grandma’s), and nagged by his wife to escape to Canada; Tom the youngest is a cheeky loudmouth, whose idea of naughtiness is to fuck his fiancée in Mum’s bed (while Mum, he hopes, will pound on the door in helpless rage; but he doesn’t know Mum! ). The movie retains its theatrical structure: Act One has Mum revealing layers of her true, terrifying self; Act Two (with Mum switching to a dress of emerald green and a coordinating black eyepatch) shows the brood rebelling. The tension never lessens, the characters are unlikable, and the direction, by Roy Ward Baker (who replaced the original director after Bette had him fired; could Bette have been going Method-Mum off the set? ), is stage-bound and static: lots of close-ups of contorted, angry, or agonized faces, lots of cutting in-between, but little sense of the actors in space. The excellent actress Sheila Hancock, as Terry’s wife, also from the original play, was put off by Bette’s star posturing (and Bette did not want her in the movie to begin with).

The rest of the film follows through on that premise, its story presenting “the most terrifying day” experienced by the film’s fragile heroine, Ellen Jones (Loretta Young), a “girl” (as the poster indicates) who’s “in trouble! She must then attempt to retrieve that implicating letter from a teeth-grindingly obstinate mailman (Irving Bacon), whose strict observation of post office rules (he has to deliver a letter once it’s been mailed—rules is rules! ) leads to Ellen’s confrontation with an obtuse post office supervisor (Art Baker) who won’t release the epistle until he’s received the (now-deceased) husband’s consent to do so. Ellen herself, as seen in a flashback, had once been one of that corps of capable women who fought the good fight on the home front, and her post-war reaction to this shrinkage of her horizons may be reflected in the house’s geography. When seen in the flashback (how he and Ellen met during the war), George is snarkily charming, the self-regarding Alpha male strutting like a rooster in a barnyard, who blatantly manipulates Ellen’s feelings (you can see why this smart woman made such a bad choice).

I couldn’t resist watching a movie called The Bad Lord Byron. Rest assured, however, that BLB is not a comedy but a thoroughly respectable film, quite solemn in its view of one of England’s greatest poets, and I hope all of you reading this know who Lord Byron is, else there’ll be much tedious exposition in what I hope to be a short essay… Of all the major poets, Byron seems perfect film fodder. The print I saw, a bad YouTube upload, was so dark, its scenes could have been filmed by the River Styx, especially if the Styx ran with ink. So I can’t comment on the film AS a film, as I couldn’t quite see it.

I’d never heard of the 1945 film Don Juan Quilligan and I bet you haven’t either. Mom’s been gone for ten years now, but loyal son Patrick Michael Quilligan doesn’t forget his filial obligations, no sir. As minutes matter not when Love strikes, it’s not long before Patrick and Margie are discussing honeymoons and furniture on the installment plan, with Patrick promising to get his bride a rock that’s I know you’re panting to know more, but I shan’t divulge; the film’s too much fun to dish all beforehand.