Lured

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Buy This Item Lured by Kino Video  Available from Amazon  $29.95  on 11-15-2008     Lucille Ball is in fine pre-TV form--still more the glamorous redhead than the slapstick comedienne--in <I>Lured</I>, Douglas Sirk's elegantly handled low-budget whodunit. Ball plays an American nightclub dancer in London, recruited by the police as a decoy for a serial killer--a maniac who finds his victims through the newspaper personal ads. The guilty party isn't difficult to guess, but the script by Leo Rosten is more literate than most such endeavors, and it's fun to watch our out-of-place heroine brazen it out in the London fog. George Sanders is the most cultivated of her suitors, and there's a weird sequence featuring Boris Karloff as a dress designer with crackpot designs on Lucy. Maybe best of all, the film has a crowd of good character actors: Charles Coburn (as a Scotland Yard inspector who becomes protective of his amateur agent), Cedric Hardwicke, Alan Mowbray, Joseph Calleia, and especially George Zucco, a frequent movie villain in a sympathetic role as an avuncular cop. Sirk brings his Germanic precision to the details, and cameraman William Daniels (Greta Garbo's favorite) no doubt had a hand in making Ball look good. <I>Lured</I> was subsequently re-titled <I>Personal Column</I>, much to Sirk's annoyance. <I>--Robert Horton</I> Reader Reviews This is the last of 3 stylish period movies directed by Douglas Sirk and starring George Sanders -the others ,for the record,being Summer Storm from 1944 and Scandal in Paris ,dated 1946. It is based on a 1939m French movie ,directed by Robert Siodmak,entitled "Pieges" with the setting shifted from Paris to London in the Victorian era . 8 personable and attractive young women have vanished from London after answering a newspapaper advertisement .Sandra Carpenter (Lucille Ball) an American showgirl in London is persuaded by Inspector Temple of Scotland Yard (Charles Coburn)to act as bait -to answer the advert and lure the killer into the trap . The suspects are plentiful and they are very well played by an accomplished cast of actors-including George Sanders ,with whom Sandra falls in love ,George Zucco ,Boris Karloff, Sir Cedric Hardwicke,Joseph Calleia and Alan Mowbray Ball is slightly miscast but still gives a strong performance and the movie is a neat slice of period melodrama ,complete with fog enshrouded streets ,rattling hansom cabs and flickering gaslight -all the requisite accotrements of the genre Recommended as a good whodeunnit mixed with the thriller -but be careful and do not be misled by the cover which features Karloff .It is NOT a horror movie and he does not get a great deal of screen time

Lured Available from Amazon Price: $29.95 Updated on 11-15-2008.

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