Back from the Dead (1957)

There are shades of Noël Coward in this clever little mystery, and though the cast are all a bit wooden, it’s not a bad low-budget effort. We start with a distracted “Miranda” (Peggie Castle) who is distressing her new husband “Dick” (Arthur Franz) by going into hysterics, a coma, then emerging claiming her name is “Felicia”. Her sister “Kate” (Marsha Hunt) is even more bemused when she learns that was the name of his late wife. Is she just over-stressed or might she actually be being possessed by the returning spirit of the deceased woman whose death saw her fall from a cliff into the murky waters beneath. It turns out that the mother of “Felicia” is adept in the dark arts and so she (Helen Wallace) is all too willing to accept the story, but her husband (James Bell) is much more sceptical. Seeking clarity, they send for “Renault” (Otto Reichow) who lives locally and might have a solution to this messy psychological conundrum - though he’s clearly not a man to be trusted, either! What is going on? With the scene set, this plays out quite intriguingly for a time and had the cast just been a little more robust, it could have been quite a bit better. The leading roles are pretty much all disappointingly underplayed: Reichow sounds like he could have a future career as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dialogue coach; and the standard of the production isn’t really up to much with scenes clearly shot against backdrop cinematographers that aren’t always as well synched as they might have been. It’s still quite an exciting watch, though, and with a soundtrack straight out of the “Outer Limits” and even a secret doorway, it’s not too bad at all.