Strange Intruder

Director Irving Rapper had seen much better days (remember "Now Voyager" or "Menagerie of Glass"?) when he worked on the mise en scène of this quite bizarre flick. It starts as a war movie in a Korean torture camp, then switches to poverty-ridden melodrama, Peyton Place and Douglas Sirk style (even Gloria Talbott from "All that heaven allows" is here!), to end up as a cheap thrill version of "Night of the Hunter". There's plenty of incredible action and silly dialogue in this story about a young Korean vet who returns to fulfil a promise he gave to a dying comrade: to kill his kids in order to spare them a life with some stepfather if his wife/widow should marry again. And so a man has to do what he's gotta do. But the kids are such cuties (and so is their mom)and melodramatic effects come rising. Technically well crafted and thoroughly entertaining in spite of the crappy story, this is a must-see for bad movie aficionados!