REBECCA

REBECCA-

My friend tells me I would think this movie is another LAFF-RIOT, and she is totally right! "Rebecca" is a parody of itself! What a campy movie! Right from the start with the shot of the foggy drive leading to the haunted estate called Manderlay all the way to its final destruction, this film has the elements of every spoof from a Bugs Bunny cartoon to the corny Carol Burnett show.

Joan Fountaine plays a klutz who is married to Maxim de Winter (Lawrence Olivier), Maxim is a millionaire with a schizophrenic personality and mysterious past. Fountaine finds herself moving into this giant mansion that is haunted by the ghost of her husband's first wife Rebecca.

Judith Anderson is Mrs. Danvers the evil maid, her character is so evil that she should've been fired long ago. Mrs. Danvers was very loyal to the first Mrs. de Winter, so loyal that she kept everything in the house just the way the lady left it since the day she died. She even go as far as taunting the new Mrs. de Winter with the dead woman's belongings, Mrs. Danvers must be a closet lesbian to love her former mistress so much that she flaunts the see through nightie to the second wife saying things like: "Have you ever seen anything so so delicate? Look you can see right through to my hand!" She's great! She twitches her eye brows and stares at the poor new mistress from the corner of her eyes with not the slightest hint of a smile. It's so campy that's so great!


Olivier is considered one of THE best actors of all time and I can see it here as he over reacts to the slightest hint of Rebecca's presence, it just cracks me up! An Oscar for the man please! I think him and James Mason probably went to the same acting school, they both talk with out moving their lips!

This is another Hitchcock classic and has a wonderful supporting cast to the most minor characters that make the movie really amusing! Like the horrible Mrs. Edythe Van Hopper, Fountaine's character's employer. She played to mean old lady really well, like something out of an old Disney cartoon, like the evil step mother in Cinderella or something. Fountaine was her hired traveling companion or as she discribed it from the definition in the dictionary: Companion; friend of the bosom!

The movie was a bit on the long side over 2 hours, but It's a lot of tense moments, screaming and a laff a minute!