BEWITCHED

BEWITCHED-

Not to be confused with the TV show or the Nicole Kidman movie, this movie was made in 1945 and has nothing to do with witches. This movie deals with the very interesting topic of multiple personality/schizophrenia...in a 1945 sort of way.

Joan an ordinary plain country girl is "possessed" by her evil self : Karen... Karen is a psychopathic man eating hussy.

Joan is engaged to Bob, but Karen somehow managed to take over Joan's mind and body; runs away from home, gets a job selling cigars at a newstand in NYC, and both Joan and Karen falls in love with a new man. Later when Bob catches up with Joan to take her home, Karen forces Joan to kill Bob with the scissors!

"The scissors. Pick them up. Kill him! Lift your arm. Higher... higher... higher. Now - strike! " says Karen.

All this sounds very exciting and it is! I love the way you can tell when Joan is Joan or when Joan is Karen is by the stereotypical evil hussy smirk of Karen on Joan's face....and then falling back to the crying innocent country girl face of Joan.

Edmund Gwenn plays Dr. Wilton, a shrink, and his lecture about schizophrenia has the same long winded delivery as the last 10 minutes of "Psycho"... they both remind me of the Ed Wood lecture about cross dressing in "Glen or Glenda".
I only know Gwenn from his role as Santa Claus in "Miracle on 34th Street", so I keep picturing Santa trying to "exorcise" the evil Karen out of poor Joan.

Speaking of Ed Wood there are a lot of silly over dramatic acting and camera angles that can pass for an Ed Wood movie, however this film was directed and written by Arch Oboler, from what I know he also directed a very unusual "classic" that should be mentioned on this blog: "The Twonky"