Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Nice effects though.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This is yet another of those vintage films that, when presented to film-goers far less sophisticated than today, would hit some 90% of its targets, leaving the audience entertained, disturbed, and satisfied in equal measure. Today it's all too easy to wonder aloud how it was possible for identical twins to grow to maturity (Olivia de Havilland was 30 when she played both roles) without one of them living in blissful ignorance (despite sharing an apartment) that her sibling was a psychopath and criminally insane with it. We also wince at the coincidence that one twin (and they switch roles for fun) works on the newsstand in a building full of doctors one of which just happens to be a world authority on twins and is more than happy to drop everything in order to help the police establish which twin has the Tony award as best actress. Having said this the film is still entertaining and the technical credits out of the right bottle. German émigré Robert Siodmak - who arrived in Hollywood via France, making excellent films in both countries - continues his exploration of twisted psyches (Pieges, The Spiral Staircase, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry) to telling effect, throw in some first-rate optical lab work and a bravura performance from de Havilland and we're talking excellent diversion.

It's an entertaining mystery. Olivia De Havilland plays identical twins, one of whom is guilty of murder. But, you know identical twins. It's hard to tell them apart. It's driving the Chief Detective, Thomas Mitchell, nuts. Either Ruth was walking in Jefferson park while Terry was stabbing a swain to death -- or the other way round. A psychologist who happens to specialize in twin research, Lew Ayres, is called into the case and manages to unravel it.The burden of the film falls on De Havilland, and it's a heavy one. She doesn't only have to play two slightly different characters; she has to play three, because one of the two is covering up a psychotic personality. She does her best to pull off the psychotic monster when it emerges at the end, but it's obviously a strain on her talent because she pops her eyes out and goes through more mental contortions than Humphrey Bogart's Captain Queeg on the witness stand.Olivia De Havilland is simply too nice a lady. She's no longer the spring chicken of the Errol Flynn movies of ten years earlier but she remains beautiful -- and more than that; delicate, vulnerable, winsome, and edible. It would be a sin to think of her legs. In fact, though, she can be pretty bawdy. In a later interview she described some trouble that Errol Flynn was having with his tights during a kissing scene in "Robin Hood." That's what being schooled in a convent will do to you.Thomas Mitchell is the exasperated cop; Lew Ayres with a thin mustache is the psychologist who examines the twin sisters. Actually, he shows them a couple of Rorschach ink blots and at least one of them is from the real Rorschach series and showing them in a movie today would be a justiciable offense. The murderous twin's answers are rather revealing too, in a subtle way. Tainted without being obvious. The writer must have done his homework. I speak to you as your psychologist. That will be ten cents.It's always tricky to pull off a twin movie successfully. It involves a lot of clever work on the part of the visual effects team when the two identical characters appear on the screen at the same time. They've done a splendid job here.It must be said that without the twin angle there's nothing special about the movie. It's a routine B murder mystery. But with the talent exercised by the writer, the director, and especially De Havilland, it's a neater job than you might expect.

Olivia de Havilland gives one of her greatest performances in a dual role as twin sisters, one of them a psychopathic murderess. At first glance, these two ladies (who alternate working at a newspaper stand, one pretending to be the other) seem so much alike, so at first her performance is difficult to make heads or tails of which character she is playing. But everything is not as it seems, and when detective Thomas Mitchell (her co-star from "Gone With the Wind") and psychiatrist Lew Ayres get involved, it will only be a matter of time before the psycho is exposed. In the meantime, the innocent one shows signs of mental illness herself and a clever scheme ends up exposing the truth, resulting in a truly shocking ending.DeHavilland is one of those actresses who as she aged became "grander and grander", bringing in qualities of Melanie Wilkes into many of her performances with breathy lady-like qualities that made her sometimes too good to be true. But this performance is one exception, even though the manners and politeness are still there, qualities of the butterfly who spits acid are slowly revealed inside both characters. In a sense, this is close to her truly only other performance of this nature, the evil cousin in "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" who seemed all cream and sugar on the outside, but was filled with venom when all was said and done.The slow road to revealing the truth about both personalities is worth the wait, the examinations of Ayres' psychiatrist revealing the neurotic nature of one and psychotic manners of the other. Then, you end up confused for a bit, not knowing which one is whom as the trail leads to the end of the road for one and heartbreak for the other. The result is pleasantly perplexing, concluding in a manner that is never melodramatic in spite of its tragic circumstances. Watching the guilty party slowly being trapped and revealed will have you on the edge of your seat.While the analogy of what twins are supposedly like (mirror images the same in all but mentality) is implausible, this does reveal some pondering ideas of the intensity of their relationships. This was one of several melodramas about twins released during this time, the others being the camp "Cobra Woman" with Maria Montez and the Bette Davis melodrama "A Stolen Life", all about one good sister and one bad, but connected with the other so tightly that the result could only be destruction for one and a difficult journey for the other. Daytime soaps have also dealt with the same issue ("Days of Our Lives'" Marlena and Sam; "All My Children's" Stuart and Adam, etc), so obviously, films like this made some impression on the writers who created those characters.

As stated in everyone's write-ups, this is a story of a murder with a twist; the perp is one of two identical twins. One alibis for the other, and since both can't be prosecuted for the crime, the guilty one walks. This does not sit well with Insp. Thomas Mitchell, who tries to think of a way to implicate the guilty one - whichever one that is. And so he enlists the help of psychiatrist Lew Ayres.At first, the murder is presented as an unsolvable conundrum and in a light-hearted vein, but things get serious thereafter and, unfortunately, the plot begins to bog down over some technical psychological data. But Olivia DeHavilland saves the day and the movie with a splendid performance (or two) as the twins. Gradually there appear personality differences so that even the audience can tell the difference between the two. Not many actresses could have pulled off the layered performances of the twins, but not many actresses are as proficient or as skilled as DeHavilland.This is another neglected gem from Universal's cobwebbed movie vaults that needs to be put into circulation by that comatose studio. It is one of Ms. DeHavilland's best performances and raises an average, talky movie to classic status.