Before I Wake (1955)

Though it's all entirely predicable, this, I still quite enjoyed it. "April" (Mona Freeman) returns home for the funeral of her father who was tragically killed in a boating accident. Her stepmother "Florence" (Jean Kent) shows all the outward signs of sympathy, but as the details of her father's death emerge, "April" beings to smell a rat. Things are only compounded when the reading of her father's will doesn't quite deliver what was expected! Is "Mona" just an hopeless paranoiac or might there really be danger? It's all just a little to rushed and convenient at the end, but the story is quite menacingly delivered by a jobbing cast rattling through a simple story of greed. Maxwell Reed features sparingly but adds very little to what is really a film about two strong women, some cigarettes and a few bottles of VSOP.