Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

kidboots In 1949 Ida Lupino had collaborated on an original story "Not Wanted" but things didn't go to plan, the director became sick and Ida stepped in to finish it herself. After that she was happy to go over to Universal-International for the suspenser "Woman in Hiding" taken from a Saturday Evening Post serial "Fugitive From Terror" by James R. Webb. She also met Howard Duff, a radio ("Sam Spade") and stage actor who had been in movies since 1946. He had replaced Ronald Reagan who had fractured his thigh and he also became Ida's new husband.This thriller gets off to a top gear start over the credits when Ida Lupino as Deborah Clarke, attempts to drive down a steep mountain road in a car whose brakes have been disabled. When the car plunges into the river and all seems lost Deborah's voice over begins a flashback as she accuses the seemingly grieving husband, Seldon Clark (Stephen McNally) of murder!!!Deborah is going to New York as she is fed up with Seldon's inattentiveness and her father has no time for him either, he says he comes from a long line of people he has no reason to be proud of. But Seldon has a determined mania to build up his once prosperous family name and make it great again. On the morning of her departure word comes that her father has had a fatal fall from the factory and, not surprisingly, Seldon is there to pick up the pieces. When the couple arrive at their honeymoon cabin they are met by Patricia (Peggy Dow), Seldon's cast off mistress and the way he attacks her should make Deborah have second thoughts. It is a highly dramatic scene as she tells Deborah a few home truths about her upstanding husband, like why he had been inattentive to her early on and even raising suspicions about her father's death. Deborah manages to run to the car but almost too late she realises she is soon to become Seldon's second victim.Ida Lupino's intense displays of fright and fear really carry this movie off. There is a splendid scene in a stairwell. Deborah has met Keith Ramsey (Duff), a college man working at a magazine counter, and really begins to trust again. Unfortunately Keith has seen an ad in the paper where her husband is begging for information about his "poor deranged wife" and Deborah's erratic behaviour has Keith believing in Seldon's story. He telephones Seldon giving him Deborah's location and suddenly Seldon is there, in the middle of a salesmen's convention, cornering her in a lonely stairwell. It is really a thrilling scene as McNally proved in "Johnny Belinda" he could be an unspeakable villain and he really lets all stops out when he is trying to throw Deborah down the stairs. Another great scene involves the climax which takes place at night in her father's factory. Deborah is fleeing an ambulance which has been ordered to take her to the local mental hospital. She hopes that with Patricia's help (after all she did witness Seldon's treatment of her in the cabin) she will have enough evidence to put Seldon in prison, but Patricia is still not over her infatuation of him.Although Ida puts both McNally and Duff in the shade, beautiful Peggy Dow makes the most of her scenes as the deluded Patricia. Dow could have been a major star, she was beautiful and sultry and proved in this movie, only her second, that she could handle dramatic scenes with verve but within a year she had retired for married life.

Neil Doyle As in almost all of these suspenseful melodramas from the '50s, there are certain lapses in logic throughout WOMAN IN HIDING that had me shaking my head in disbelief. Some of the choices that Lupino makes as the vulnerable heroine are too foolhardy to be believable, but once the plot starts rolling there's no turning away.A particularly bad choice is the scene where she casually gets into a car with Peggy Dow, a scorned woman who is leading her into a trap which brings her right back to the man (Stephen McNally) she is hiding from at a dark and sinister mill.But despite such motivational flaws, the film manages to be a better than average melodrama with all three leads--Ida Lupino, Howard Duff and Stephen McNally--giving expert performances.Most effective aspect is the tight pace of the story and the film noir look of the B&W photography. Ida Lupino gives another one of her tense performances as she gets caught up in the excessive manipulations of McNally who is intent on killing her to inherit her father's mill. Howard Duff tries to help once he understands her fears and from that point on the story leaps forward to a satisfying ending involving a trick later used to good effect in Joan Crawford's "Sudden Fear." Not a great film, but a satisfying "lady in distress" melodrama.

yardbirdsraveup This is a little known classic from the film noir era of the '40's and early '50's. I had the privilege of seeing this movie listed in the TV guide only once and that was in the summer of 1984 on one of the local cable stations. Luckily, we had just purchased our first VCR and recorded it for posterity. I can watch this one over and over again without getting tired of it.It's a simple plot with the usual sex-crime-greed ingredients that were common in these film noirs. And the cast is super! Howard Duff, Ida Lupino, Stephen McNally, John Litel, Peggy Dow and Taylor Holmes round off the principals featured in this movie. Also, look closely for Jerry Paris (of Dick Van Dyke fame)standing by the magazine counter! Steve McNally plays Selden Clark, manager of a local mill owned by John Litel. McNally has a tryst with Peggy Dow and conspires to get control of the mill by pushing Litel off a catwalk inside the mill, then marrying the owner's daughter (Lupino), bumping her off and living happily ever after with Dow. Being the case with film noir, this doesn't pan out exactly as Selden Clark anticipates! Sure, he marrys the daughter, but she finds out (too late) that this guy is a psychotic bum. She manages to get away from him by stealing away in her 1946 Ford convertible (nice car!), but her brakes don't work due to some mechanical failure caused by her neer-do-well new husband. She manages to leap from the car before it crashes into the river. Everyone thinks that she's dead, but the body can't be found.Selden is convinced that she's still alive somewhere and puts up a $5,000 reward for anyone who can produce her. Enter Howard Duff. Duff plays the catalyst in this film; at first thinking that she is a victim of amnesia, cheerfully (and alas) returning her to Selden. He then comes to his senses and manages to rescue her from Selden's clutches. It has a happy ending with Duff and Lupino getting married, as they actually did in real life.It is amazing that this movie continues to be ignored. Many think that Ida Lupino was great in the early '40's in such films as They Drive By Night and High Sierra, but she was actually better by the late '40's and early 50's (The Man I Love, Road House, On Dangerous Ground, Private Hell 36) and was about to earn the distinction of being Hollywood's first female director (The Hitchhiker, The Bigamist, Not Wanted, Outrage). She was an incredible lady.This chestnut is practically impossible to find even in bootleg form. Like many of the film noirs of this time period, Woman in Hiding continues to be neglected. This film certainly deserves to be recognized and marketed to the unsuspecting public. It seems that I have the only copy in captivity and it's not going to leave my collection any soon! Seriously folks, if you notice this one listed in the TV Guide, make a copy for your own personal collection. You won't be disappointed.

bmacv We first hear Ida Lupino's voice, in sepulchral voice-over, as we watch the wreck of a car that has plummeted over a bridge in North Carolina. "That's my body they're looking for..." she informs us. She's having a bad year; her father has died suddenly in an "accident" in the mill he owned and she up and married its general manager (Steven McNally), whom her father loathed (with reason: McNally killed him). On her wedding night she learned the truth about McNally (who seemed to specialize in deranged, controlling husbands, as in Make Haste to Live), and, trying to flee, found herself in a vehicle which he had rendered brakeless.She's presumed dead, leaving McNally to inherit the mill (his plan all along), but just to be sure he puts out a reward for finding her. And Howard Duff, a newsstand clerk at a bus station in a nearby town, spots her, now blonde and on the lam. They strike a few sparks, but McNally convinces Duff that Lupino is emotionally disturbed, insuring that she'll be institutionalized and under his thumb.All in all, Woman in Hiding's title says it all: It's a fairly standard woman-in-distress picture, but one with a superior cast. In addition to the tried-and-true team of Lupino and Duff (they were married at te time), Peggy Dow invests her few brief scenes as a ruthless rival for McNally's attention with memorable flair. The film looks good, too, especially in the darkened mill at the conclusion -- a conclusion which anticipates by a couple of years that of Sudden Fear, in which Joan Crawford fends of a homicidal busband who's got a bad girl on the side. Woman in Hiding is no masterpiece, nor is it one of Lupino's best performances, but it's well made, swift and satisfying.