Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

One of my all time favorites.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

The inimitable Dirk Bogarde stars as Edward (Teddy) Bare, he is a ladies' man – that is on occasion that the lady is filthy rich. He has married wealthy but older Monica (Mona Washbourne) and thinks he will inherit all her money as he is her spouse. However, she wants to make a will, so he decides it might be time for him to become a widower a little sooner than had been expected.Alas he gets it all wrong and so is left 'financially embarrassed'. Well as he has gotten away with murder once he decides he needs another Mrs Money bags with a short potential life span and so he puts another dastardly plan into action.This is lovely for all the right reasons. Bogarde as the deranged yet charming killer is just excellent – his facial expressions alone make this film. The supporting cast including Margaret Lockwood and Kathleen Harrison as the maid are all superb and totally believable in their respective roles. This was an adaptation of a play and that come across at times but it does not matter as this is a 'sit back and enjoy film' of how the other half once lived and more importantly died – recommended to all fans of old black and white British crime flicks.

After so many years from its production --1955-- this film shows its age, even so it's still very enjoyable due to the fantastic professionalism of its interpreters. The stand out performances in my opinion: Margaret Lockwood, Dirk Bogarde, Mona Washbourne and Kathleen Harrison.The seal of excellence goes to all of them, from the director Lewis Walsh to the night club singer, Lita Roza, plus the technical members, who created an impeccable thriller with an astounding photography and music. Some of the close ups with deep focus are jaw dropping as are the night scenes so charged with mystery and doom.Every other reviewer detailed and commented on the script so there is nothing more to say about it.It's a pity that due to those rigid conventional times the villain of the title couldn't have gotten away with his plan to get rich fast (and his homosexuality frankly displayed) since in real life he would have done so without a shadow of a doubt, but films then had to have a "moral message" to the masses and that's why everybody finds the last 30 minutes or so fake and almost preposterous.The character of the lawyer --Robert Fleming-- is there as Deus ex Machina, to judge the schemer and forbid him to get away with his plans, the only cardboard figure that most dates this film with the most awkward apparitions making his presence totally out of place.My seven stars qualification is only due to the script weaknesses, otherwise I would say nine when it comes to the actors, director and technicians skills.

British actor Dirk Bogarde, no relation to Humphrey Bogart, plays a charming but cunning wife killer in "Shirley Valentine" director Lewis Gilbert's intriguing murder thriller "Cast a Dark Shadow" with Margaret Lockwood, Robert Flemying, and Mona Washborne. "Cast a Dark Shadow" is the kind of melodrama where we are privy to more information than the characters, a storytelling device called dramatic irony, and Gilbert and "The Woman in Question" scenarist John Cresswell, adapting Janet Green's stage play "Murder Mistaken," use dramatic irony to excellent effect. Of course, you know from the outset that amoral protagonist Edward 'Teddy' Bare is going to get what is coming to him, but Gilbert and Cresswell make sure that we enjoy this deliciously little 84-minute film for everything that it is worth. Mind you, Hollywood had been doing this kind of fare for years, but Gilbert and Cresswell add a spot of subtext, implying that the killer is not only homicidal but also perhaps even homosexual. Teddy likes to look at magazine with bronzed, bare-chested guys and he is terrifically fastidious. Bogarde appears to have had a great time playing this unscrupulous callous, inconsiderate fellow who literally outsmarts himself from the start and literally goes down hill the rest of the film to an explosive finale.This is the old, familiar story about a younger man, Edward (well-groomed Dirk Bogarde of "Libel"), who marries a woman, Monica (Mona Washbourne of "Billy Liar"), who is not only many years older than he but she also has financial wealth. Edward teaches the dotty old girl how to drink but not to handle her liquor. Early in the narrative, Edward kills her after he gets her so sloshed that she passes out in a rocking chair in their living room. By the way, the house belongs to Monica, too. Anyway, Edward arranges the unconscious Monica on the floor by a gas heater and scatters wooden stick matches between her and the heater. Meanwhile, Edward has completely fooled Monica's elderly servant, Emmie (Kathleen Harrison of "The Pickwick Papers"), so she does not suspect a thing. Indeed, Edward orchestrates everything by leaving Emmie with Monica before he puts on a coat and goes out of the house. None of this fools Monica's lawyer, Phillip Mortimer (Robert Flemying of "A Touch of Larceny"), who suspects Edward from the outset. Ironically, Edward killed Monica because he thought that she was going to revise her will to exclude him. Ironically, the old girl was going to remove her sister, living in Jamaica, and leave all the loot to Edward. Ultimately, Edward gets to keep the quaint little house and Emmie receives 200 pounds of money.Bereft of money, Edward hangs out at a seaside resort and meets a vulgar, fast-talking woman, Freda Jeffries (Margaret Lockwood of "The Lady Vanishes"), who reciprocates his interest, particularly when he realizes that she is a widow with a load of loot, too. Freda, however, turns out to be far from a pushover. She keeps Edward on a tight leash and refuses to invest her money into his schemes. Meanwhile, gossip being what it is, the village is filled with talk about Monica's death. A mysterious woman, Charlotte Young (Kay Walsh of "The Chinese Bungalow"), searching for a place to live and train horses, arrives and Edward latches onto her and makes Freda seem like a harridan every time that Freda is out of sight of them. Eventually, Freda grows jealous and runs Charlotte away.Murderous melodramas like "Cast a Dark Shadow" are always interesting, especially when they are told from the villain's point of view, but like all such tales, we know that no good can come from it because the morality of British films from the 1950s still dictated that the killer must pay the penalty for his audacity. Ultimately, poor Eddie does pay the price, but not before we learn that he was an unsavory lad while growing up and menaced a smaller boy next door in ways that neither Gilbert nor Cresswell could dwell in much detail.Altogether, "Cast a Dark Shadow" is a Hitchcock style thriller and Gilbert lets neither the cast nor the action loiter despite the largely expository nature of the narrative. The ending is not quite the surprise that it should be, but the last quarter hour of this movie is good. Nobody gives a bad performance, but the real gem of this modest little drama is the work of lenser Jack Asher, who did several of the early Hammer "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" films. Asher loves to create three-dimensional compositions so we see either a character or an object in the foreground, something occupying mid-ground, and somebody in the background. Okay, "Cast a Dark Shadow" is a black & white opus, but Asher makes the black & white look fantastic.

DIRK BOGARDE was always at his best playing the anti-hero with a dark side, lifting his eyebrow to suggest still another wicked scheme going on in his mind. And he's got plenty of eyebrow raising to do in this story that has him as a scheming Bluebeard who's looking for wealthy women to keep him in the money.Here he has to cope with not one, but two very strong-minded women who don't fall so easily for his duplicity or his charm. MARGARET RUTHERFORD is a free spirited lady with a tough will to live and not be undermined by any man looking for a windfall of money. KAY WALSH is a woman we gradually learn has more to do with the plot than her chance encounter with Bogarde would seem to indicate.It's stylishly directed with the emphasis on good old-fashioned suspense as Bogarde spreads the devious charm throughout a story that ends with a wallop.Summing up: Bogarde's fans won't want to miss this one.