Jennifer

1953 "Did Jennifer fear his fingers at her throat... or the burning caress of his lips?"
5.8| 1h13m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 25 October 1953 Released
Producted By: Monogram Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

A young woman is hired to take care of an eerie old mansion, where she finds herself entangled with an enigmatic murderer.

Genre

Thriller, Mystery

Watch Online

Jennifer (1953) is now streaming with subscription on Prime Video

Director

Joel Newton

Production Companies

Monogram Pictures

Jennifer Videos and Images

Jennifer Audience Reviews

Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place
Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.
Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.
robert-temple-1 I hate to say it, considering how much I admire Ida Lupino, but this film is a total flop. It was directed by 'Joel Newton', and is his sole directorial credit, so I suspect that may have been a pseudonym of someone else. Ida Lupino and her husband Howard Duff are the two leads. But despite their best efforts, the film is so badly made, so corny, and has such extremely ludicrous music that it is essentially worthless. It aims at being a sturdy film noir film, but it fails on all counts. James Wong Howe was the cinematographer, but even he is below par. His shots of 'a mysterious shadow' are not even good. In this same year, Lupino directed her brilliant film THE BIGAMIST (1953), and the previous year she had delivered a fine performance in ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952), so she was not at all in decline at the time of JENNIFER. This is just one of those duds which all concerned must have wished to forget, and so should we.
ptb-8 I wish I could have met Ida Lupino. When people ask who you if you could have 6 extraordinary 20th century persons over for dinner, well, for me one person would be her. I think she is now one of the great unsung and unprofiled personalities in the film industry. Her life story would make a great tele movie (Hey, Mr Bogdanovich........). Ida Lupino has been the driving force in many fascinating noir films of the 40s and 50s. I can remember being saddened at seeing her reduced to a horrible part in a ghastly AIP film is the late 70s. She was bitten by a big worm at the kitchen sink. Ugh. I should have contacted her then as she died not long after.. more from the part than the worm too. From High Sierra, Roadhouse and the extraordinary RKO thriller On Dangerous Ground, Ida Lupino was often the producer and the lead actress. Later, with her husband Howard Duff they produced many now timeless noir dramas that are still very engrossing today. One of them is JENNIFER which I think is the last film with a Monogram Pictures copyright. Monogram changed the company name formally to Allied Artists in 1953 and JENNIFER has both company names on the opening credits. This is a superior haunted house thriller equally as scary as both The Innocents and The Haunting made 8 years later. Really chilling and very creepy, this tiny film is exactly the sort of really good film Ida Lupino made and was responsible for. Try and find it...you will always remember it and as I feel, much admiration for this great and almost forgotten actress/producer.
mike173 In 1955 I took an entrance exam at Cambridge University, staying by myself in one of the old stone college buildings. One evening I went out to see a movie, which happened to be Jennifer. It's a classic creepy old house movie. Jennifer arrives to take over from the previous caretaker, who has mysteriously disappeared. She runs into a whole gamut of strange clues and spooky effects, pitched so you - and she -can't be sure if they are real or she's imagining them. Music and optical shock are used to great effect, with all the power that skillfully lit monochrome cinematography can deliver (considerable!!). At the end, she is reassured that it was all in her mind, and she's safe... till the very last shot, which opens up all the questions again, and still raises the hairs on my neck when I think of it. Going back to my room, I had to pass through a long set of dark cloisters - nearly didn't make it!! At least that's how it seemed back then. It would be great if the film were re-released on DVD, to see if its power persists today.
bmacv I first caught up with Jennifer years ago while out of town when it showed up on TV in the middle of the night; I fell asleep before it ended but it stuck with me until I had to track it down. Its appeal is that, though there's not a lot to it, it weaves an intriguing atmosphere, and because Ida Lupino and Howard Duff (real life man-and-wife at the time) display an alluring, low-key chemistry. Lupino plays a woman engaged to house-sit a vast California estate whose previous caretaker -- Jennifer -- up and disappeared. (Shades of Jack Nicholson in the Shining, although in this instance it's not Lupino who goes, or went, mad). Duff is the guy in town who manages the estate's finances and takes a shine to Lupino, who decides to play hard to get. She becomes more and more involved, not to say obsessed, with what happened to her predecessor in the old dark house full of descending stairways and locked cellars. The atmospherics and the romantic byplay are by far the best part of the movie, as viewers are likely to find the resolution a bit of a letdown -- there's just not that much to it (except a little frisson at the tail end that anticipates Brian De Palma's filmic codas). But it's well done, and, again, it sticks with you. Extra added attraction: this is the film that introduced the song "Angel Eyes," which would become part of the standard repertoire of Ol' Blue Eyes.