THE GIRL WHO DARED (1944)
Article #1691 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-31-2005
Posting Date: 3-30-2006
Directed by Howard Bretherton
Featuring Lorna Gray, Peter Cookson, Grant Withers

A group of people are invited to a party on an island to see a ghost appear. Then people start dropping dead…

By the time the forties rolled around, the old dark house genre had pretty much run its course; most of the movies of that ilk that were made during the forties were pretty lethargic, and despite an efficient running time of about fifty-five minutes for this one, it’s no exception. Even the title makes it sound more like a soap opera than what it is. It has a little bit of novelty value; several serial actors appear (Kirk Alyn, Roy Barcroft and Kenne Duncan) among them, and the plot involves radium, which must have been a pretty topical subject in the mid forties. Still, the movie lacks atmosphere, despite the fact that Willie Best is acting scared by everything. And as can be expected in this sort of movie, the ghost isn’t real. The ending is rather odd, though – it almost seems a parody of the usual “hero and heroine falling in love” cliche that is pretty common to these movies, but nevertheless, the lackadaisical handling makes it fall as flat as does the rest of the movie.