Stanwyck Terrorises Herself In True Style Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 October 2008 This is one of the best performances of Barbara Stanwyck as the lonely ,crippled ,haughty,rich wife stuck in a plush apartment in New York ,as she tries to solve the riddle of some mysterious and anonymous phone calls that predict that she is in danger of being murdered before midnight ,initially she is amused but gradually it becomes truly menacing as she starts getting more details and the jigsaw puzzle starts to fall into place, piece by piece in an extremely sophisticated script . Gradually a picture begins to evolve which is memorable horror as well as a dazzling and ingenious mystery thriller ,not to say a great drama as you get involved into this intelligent experience , where her husband affectively played by a young Burt lancaster, is playing psychological games with her and himself as he seems to feel let down by both his wife and her rich family who despise the realtively poor husband she chose in alliance ,contrary to their wishes . The movie has to be seen to be believed as it is deadly and stylishy fastidious and you will never guess the finale even if you have seen every Hitchcock mystery,a genre which it has successfully managed to define in the master's own unique style . Stanwyck is superb with a tremendously detailed script at her disposal,where every trivia is taken heed of and she has done full justice to a unique character driven plot, which is a great social drama too as it explores the reasons behind the present day events by divulging into the past where the two periods almost fuse in a deft manner . Though the real star here is the telephone which becomes an instrument of true terror and torture as the director weaves his magical web and all the lurking shadows in the desolate Manhattan apartment ,and every squealing ring tone almost makes you jump as the callers ring the bed -ridden stanwyck ,and then even more calls are made to explore the mystery in a true 'Telephone drama'where the audio-visual medium is fully utilised in a 'claustrophobic' environment made memorable by a great actress . This is essential cinema from the frustrated helplessness of Stanwyck and the desperately reticent husband ,Burt Lancaster,who is trapped in a Catch -22 just as much as his spouse because of their mutual marital misunderstandings. The movie though is also an exploration of human behaviour and a profound psychological study of both class differences in society and the evils of materialistic greed which motivates the human mind in an unequal domain called civilisation and manages to turn love into hatred and breeds crime by promoting injustice. The movie succeeds in the arduous task of delivering all it's multi-layered messages as well as being a terrific piece of cinema and all thanks to the deft direction as in lesser hands it could have been reduced to an inadvertent farce itself .