5/10
Ladies in Retirement-Her Sisters Made Her Do It **1/2
31 August 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Macabre film with Ida Lupino once more proving what a great actress she was. With its eerie atmosphere, Ida brings her two completely daffy sisters to stay at the home of the woman she is working for.

Lupino, with that jet-black hair and extremely dark-eyelashes depicts an eerie character if ever there were one. Insanity seems to run in the family, for when the dowager gets disgusted with the 2 loonies-played well by Edith Barrett and Elsa Lanchester, Ida does her in.

While this is going on, "nephew" Louis Hayward shows up and has fled a situation where he has embezzled from a bank. When he puts two and two together, the remainder of the film becomes a cat and mouse game with Ida and real-life husband Hayward really going at it together. Evelyn Keyes plays the maid who is smitten by Hayward's advances and Isobel Elsom portrays the wealthy dowager, a part she plays well but can you imagine Dame Judith Anderson as Miss Fisk?

The film tries to discuss those who have no understanding of the unfortunate in society. Of course, bumping them off is certainly no solution.

Remember in "They Drive By Night," Ida claimed that the doors made her do it. In this one, she is again daffy with Gothic horror ensuing.
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