Search - Lured on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1947 DVD Release: 05/23/2000 Format: DVD - Black and White SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 43 mins Studio: Kino Members Wishing: 10 Genres: Mystery, Thriller, Film Noir, Psychological Thriller, Police Detective Film

Lucille Ball is an American taxi-dancer living in London whose roommate has disappeared. The missing girl had left to answer a job offer in the "personal" column of the Times...just like several other women who've vanished without a trace. Scotland Yard detective George Zucco suggests that Ball answer the personals herself in hopes trapping the killer. She crosses the paths of several eccentrics, including deranged artist Boris Karloff, who for a brief time is the prime suspect. The actual culprit, a sex murderer, is the least likely and most helpful of Ball's contacts -- a fact that she learns almost too late. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

George Sanders - Robert Fleming
Lucille Ball - Sandra Carpenter
Charles Coburn - Inspector Temple
Alan Mowbray - Maxwell
Cedric Hardwicke - Julian Wilde

Lured (1947) is not a Douglas Sirk title with which even many Sirk fanatics are familiar, as an independent production (from producer Hunt Stromberg) that predates the director's emergence as a major popular filmmaker and stylist by more than a half decade. Its strange casting -- Lucille Ball, Charles Coburn, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, George Zucco, George Sanders, Alan Napier, Alan Mowbray, and Boris Karloff, many in some of the more offbeat roles of their respective careers -- is only one of its odd touches. Karloff's character doesn't amount to much more than a red herring, but the movie offers so many bizarre twists and turns that this piece of deception can be forgiven. Visually and thematically, Lured incorporates elements from Edgar G. Ulmer's Bluebeard and André De Toth's House of Wax, among other movies. There are too many changes in mood and tone to hold it together, but Lured makes the most of its delightfully odd turns as entertainment, if not credible cinema storytelling. Above all, this is one gorgeous DVD -- maybe the best-looking presentation of an independent-made release of its era this side of Artisan's disc of Bretaigne Windust's The Enforcer (1951), and definitely the best-looking of Sirk's black-and-white movies to make it to digital disc as of 2004. Except for a short stretch of film at about 27 minutes into the movie, which has some scratches and a moment of visible frame damage, this edition generally looks about as good as any major studio DVD release of its era. Considering some of the disquieting images that appear every few minutes, the disc is worth every cent.

Some of the dialogue is also quite racy for its time. When duplicitous butler Alan Mowbray admits to prospective employee Lucille Ball that it's her "personality" that interests him, she answers right back, "I can see that from here." Ball is superb as an American showgirl stranded in London who gets involved in the hunt for a serial killer when one of her friends falls victim. Hardwicke almost melts into the part of a creepy, overly officious business manager of habitual womanizer Sanders, and George Zucco appears in one of the oddest roles of his career as a tough Cockney police detective with a penchant for crossword puzzles. The quality of the full-frame transfer (1.33:1) and the presence of 16 chapters show a good amount of care in the package, though one does wish there were a trailer or a bio on Sirk covering his early career. There are no special features, but the movie itself has enough to offer fans of the mystery genre, in general, and Sirk's work, in particular. Though it doesn't resemble the movies upon which Sirk's reputation was built, one can find elements in common: The woman-centered story and Ball's ambition and perseverance anticipate Sirk's later subjects and characters, and his use of Charles Coburn seems like a dry-run for the latter's serio-comic performance in Sirk's delightful (and terribly underrated) Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952). ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide