I saw a movie yesterday on TCM that was a lot of fun to watch: Homicidal. The plot of this black and white film from 1961 was nothing special. A woman stages a phony marriage with a justice of the peace to get close enough to kill him and that killing has something to do with her real husband’s pending inheritance. I got it, pretty standard mystery-thriller fare.
What made this movie stand out was the casting gimmick. An actress named Joan Marshall, billed as Jean Arless, played the parts of Emily and Warren. Emily was a wasp-waisted homicidal hottie, who duped a bell boy into the phony marriage, then gutted the JP. She later careened around Solvang CA, seducing druggists, menacing her sister in law and tormenting a stroke victim. Warren, as portrayed by Joan, looked like a young Freddie Mercury to include the lisp and overbite. When “Warren” made his appearance on screen, I did not initially pick up on the fact that Joan was portraying him. However, I did think to myself, “that is one strange looking, overbiting effeminate actor with a really high voice who is wearing a really big, ill fitting suit coat.”
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