Bewitched

It is difficult to make a good thriller about multiple personality disorder, especially if you don’t even fundamentally understand it in the first place. Granted, in the eighty years since the film Bewitched first released a lot has been learned about this mental condition, but that only goes so far when excusing a film such as this. The level of silliness, the camp, and the overall tone of this film simply prevents any degree of suspense while watching it. Instead, we are laughing at it. It’s not irredeemably bad—it is watchable after all—but it just doesn’t work on any level other than parody. 

Joan Ellis (Phyllis Thaxter) is a demure woman celebrating her engagement to Bob Arnold (Harry H. Daniels Jr.). But the voice in her head (voiced by an unbilled Audrey Totter) is taunting her, pushing her to violence, so she flees her Midwestern home to New York City. She leaves behind her friends and family, leaving nothing but a note asking them not to look for her. Changing her name to Joan Smith, she begins a new life in the city and eventually falls in love again, this time with Eric Russell (Horace McNally), an attorney. But the voice, which calls itself Karen, returns, taking control of her for a moment as she and Eric passionately kiss. When Bob tracks Joan down in the city, Karen takes over again and kills him with a pair of scissors. Thus begins a fight between the two women sharing the same body, a fight that, with the help of psychiatrist Dr. Bergson (Edmund Gwenn), Joan simply must win. 

Mental disabilities were still widely misunderstood at the time this film was being made. Still, this is little excuse for how ridiculous this screenplay handles the condition Joan has. It distills the problem down to a Jekyll and Hyde duality that is too easily fixed in the finale. The solution is far too convenient, like a priest waving his crucifix and banishing an evil spirit out of someone. It also never fully resolves the question brought up about who is then responsible for Bob’s death and how the courts handle such a situation. On top of that, while we are sympathetic towards Joan’s plight, Phyllis Thaxter is playing things far too broadly to take it seriously. This is a poorly made film that fundamentally doesn’t understand the two things needed to make a good thriller from this concept: understanding the disorder and portraying it realistically. 1945 - 65 minutes