kim hunter

When Strangers Marry

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Millie with new husband Paul

A peculiar, interesting and not entirely coherent crime thriller about a woman who marries a man she barely knows and then starts wondering if he’s a killer. When Strangers Marry makes more sense as a title than Betrayed, which is the flag it flew under when it was re-released in 1949, five years after its debut. The re-release also allowed a bit of rejigging of the pecking order. Third-billed Robert Mitchum – who’d become a star in the interim – is top-billed second time round. To be fair to everyone, Mitchum is in it more than Dean Jagger, who plays the mysterious salesman Kim Hunter’s wide-eyed Millie Baxter has married more or less … Read more

The Seventh Victim

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Kim Hunter as Mary

A prequel of sorts to Cat People, 1943’s The Seventh Victim is also something of a warm up for Rosemary’s Baby – Satanists in New York! – as well as the debut of Kim Hunter, who plays the little girl lost in the big city. It’s a bit of a mad film and doesn’t quite add up but it’s stoked with atmosphere, all kicking off with young Mary (Hunter) being called into the principal’s office at her school because her older sister, Jacqueline, has not been keeping up with the payments on the fees. She’s gone missing, it seems. So Mary heads to New York to find her, and there tangles with one … Read more

A Matter of Life and Death

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Marius Goring in A Matter of Life and Death

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 29 December UK pays off Second World War debt, 2006 On this day in 2006, the last working day of the year, the British Government made the last of 50 payments to the US and Canada, money it had borrowed off them in 1945 at the end of the war, when the British economist John Maynard Keynes had been dispatched to Washington with the begging bowl. With the national debt standing at 180% of gross domestic product, the government had expected, or hoped for, a grant. Instead it was offered a loan, on terms of 2% interest annually, a rate that … Read more