Sudden Fear marks that period of Joan Crawford’s career where she was explicitly exploring the experience of mental illness (see also Possessed and Daisy Kenyon, both from 1947). It also marks one of her first forays into camp—where the exteriority of her performance becomes so prominent that it might prompt some audiences to laugh. Crawford plays Myra Blaine, a playwright and heiress who falls deeply in love with a younger actor (a physically intimidating Jack Palance). Not long after they’re married, Myra suspects he may be planning to kill her. (Gloria Grahame, giving a big performance of her own, is in on the plot.) Director David Miller, adapting a novel by Edna Sherry, hands the movie over to Crawford, letting her indulge in lengthy solo sequences in which she uses her face to beam out Myra’s terror and distress. The filmmaking follows suit: on occasion, the sound design incorporates threatening voices in Myra’s head; at another point, her eyes are superimposed over scenes of her imagined, elaborate plot of revenge. Adding to the psychodrama is Elmer Bernstein’s expressive, modern score—one of his earliest efforts. It’s all extremely entertaining, if a bit less satisfying than the best Crawford performances, which have an interiority that offsets the outer madness.
