DVD Review

Lightning Strikes Twice (Warner Bros. Archive Collection)

Official Synopsis:

Richard Trevelyan (Richard Todd) was convicted of murdering his wife, given an 11th-hour Death Row reprieve and freed under unusual circumstances after retrial. But his past does not matter to Shelley Carnes (Ruth Roman), an actress visiting the Texas ranchland that Richard calls home. She’s fallen in love with him. But after she becomes the second Mrs. Trevelyan, Shelley is beset by doubts and fear. The director and screenwriter of Bette Davis’s Beyond the Forest – King Vidor (The Fountainhead) and Lenore Coffee (The End of the Affair) – reteam in a richly atmospheric mix of mystery, romance and murder sparked by a luminous cast that also includes Mercedes McCambridge and Zachary Scott.

Our Take:

Lightning Strikes Twice is a title from the Warner Bros. Archive Collection, which means this is a barest-possible bones release. The print of this 1951 film has not been remastered for this release, but is in surprisingly good shape. So fans need not worry about wasting their money on this never-before-released-on-DVD film.

As for the film itself, Lightning Strikes Twice is average melodrama by a generally above average Texas director, King Vidor. Vidor, a director whose career spanned 1913 to 1980, made 74 films in his lifetime, but unfortunately Lightning Strikes Twice is not one of his best. The film’s plot bounds from soap opera twist to twist without ever stopping along the way to develop any sense of character motivation for all involved. Vidor litters the picture with a few suspenseful set pieces, which viewed in isolation work well. Yet, without the needed character development, the suspense was purely technically present as I did not actually care about the characters.

Special Features:

There are no special features.

Conclusion:

Lightning Strikes Twice will feel undoubtedly to many as watered down Hitchcock, and rightly so. The film takes the fairly Hitchcockian pretense of a woman with a man who may or may not have done something, analyzing his every move and projecting her fears on to them to generate self-made suspense. Unfortunately, the script is not as strong as the average Hitchcock film, and while Vidor’s direction is steady throughout, he could not direct around the shoddy script. Lightning Strikes Twice is a film with a bare-bones script, which makes it fitting that it be released via a Warner Bros. Archive Collection bare-bones DVD.

Overall Picture:

Movie: B-
Extra Features: D

- Matthew Orlando
Staff Writer