THE SPELL OF AMY NUGENT (1940)
(a.k.a. SPELLBOUND, PASSING CLOUDS, GHOST STORY)
Article #824 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-17-2003
Posting Date: 11-14-2003
Directed by John Harlow
Featuring Derek Farr, Vera Lindsay, Hay Petrie

A man loses his fiancee to a fatal illness, and becomes caught up with spiritualists in an attempt to contact her.

Title check: THE SPELL OF AMY NUGENT is perhaps the best; SPELLBOUND isn’t so bad, but it does confuse it with the Hitchcock film; GHOST STORY is far too vague and somewhat inaccurate, and PASSING CLOUDS is nothing but a question mark, unless I missed a crucial line of the dialogue. The last one is the title on my copy.

This movie has an occasional interesting idea and a few good visual moments. It’s also poorly paced, indifferently acted, creaky and static, filled with clumsy dialogue, and what music there is is poorly incorporated into the film. All in all, this was a pretty uninvolving movie with dull characters; the most interesting one doesn’t appear until the movie is nearly half over. I can’t believe it’s sitting with a 7.7 rating on IMDB; either some people find it a lot more exciting than I do, or it’s confused with the Hitchcock version. I don’t think I’ll be going back to this one any time soon.