Cast a Dark Shadow (1955) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by Lara Pop ★★★½ 40

  #Bogarde

  My god did the Brits have style when crafting their noirs. Cast a Dark Shadow's photography crackles like a freshly laundered banknote or the embers of smoldering greed forgotten in the fireplace. Dirk Bogarde's deceptively angelic features are swathed in the most gorgeously contrasting black & white colors. He is mysterious, menacing, and gentlemanly in his rottenness. You know, when someone plays a nutcase but with the restraint and tact of a true Brit. I love it.

  British actors truly have a graceful poise that you just don't get with American 20th-century actors. Both countries' thespians have their own characteristic and natural charisma, but the prototype of the leading man differs in its core outside traits. Take for instance my…

• Review by Meaghan🐀 ★★★★★ 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  dirk forgetting which way a car driving downhill would be facing is a foundational moment in 'gays can't drive' history

• Review by nora ★★★★½ 2

  GUYS the way that this dirk bogarde marathon on tcm today is specifically for MEEEEE!! i loved this sinister little movie. i think conniving charmer dirk is my favorite flavor of dirk, between this and THE SERVANT, SLEEPING TIGER, and THE BOYS IN BROWN (even parts of THE MIND BENDERS too). although i say that about all the flavors of dirk (tortured academic dirk, cutie comedy star dirk, emotionally troubled hero dirk, they're all my favorite). at some point i'm going to write a longer piece about bogarde but alas i am still looking for a specific entry point because there are truly infinite directions i could go. but it's coming. this marathon of films on tcm is gonna fill…

• Review by sakana1 ★★★★ 16

  Repeatedly through its back half, Cast a Dark Shadow put me in mind of a giallo, albeit one made in England, more than 15 years before the genre exploded in Italy. And then the last few minutes happened, and they so flawlessly foretell the end of a certain George Hilton film which I cannot name to avoid spoiling them both, that all doubts were erased: in 1955, Lewis Gilbert directed a giallo.

  If one can step away from the sense that a film must have a black-gloved killer and a murderous blade to be a gialli, many of the crucial elements are undeniably here: women are ferociously manipulated by an overly confident, murderous man; said women, at least some of…

• Review by Chris 🍉 ★★★★★

  “Brain’s still working, Freda.”

  Such a nasty little movie but SO effortlessly watchable. Dirk Bogarde and Margaret Lockwood’s performances are perfect it’s all so fucking good I can’t believe this is as overlooked as it is

• Review by Dante ★★★★

  i miss the days when you could just make a movie in high contrast black and white that's just about Dirk Bogarde being an evil little motherfucker

• Review by Chance ★★★★ 2

  WHAT a particularly nasty and delicious performance from Dirk Bogarde, who serves as a British Bluebeard in this wickedly playful noir. While Dirk's "Teddy" Bare really is in it for the money, the women of the older and wealthier persuasion he pursues are less sugar mommas and more like beards, made clear by his affinity for browsing through muscle man magazines while keeping an eye out for his next mark, and by a last minute allegation of committing a heinous crime against a neighbor boy during his boyhood. I can't trace if Dirk ever did come out - one source I found says he never officially did - but his sexuality must have been such an open secret, as he…

• Review by mari. 1

  always wanted to see dirk bogarde murdering his sugar mommy and being rude in the worst youtube quality ever

• Review by Cate ★★★★½

  This mf named Edward "Teddy" Bare

• Review by theironcupcake ★★★½ 4

  Oh, that Dirk! What a rascal. He can't entirely escape the limitations of a predictable and largely stagebound thriller, but like all the best criminals, he makes sure to stay well-read.

• Review by AlfredAngier ★★★½ 3

  We buried my poor Albert six months ago

  What was the matter with him?

  He was dead!

  
  Cast a Dark Shadow is deliciously dark for the first two thirds of the film almost having an Arsenic and Old Lace tone with how casually and humorously it deals with murder. Dirk Bogarde's Teddy Bare (yes, that's really his name) misunderstands his much older wife's intentions and murders her, thinking he'll inherit everything but unfortunately he gets just a giant house, the money goes to his late wife's sister. Fortunately he's charming as hell and sets his sights on wealthy widow Freda Jeffries (Margaret Lockwood) who falls under his spell but isn't nearly the pushover Teddy was expecting and gives as good…

• Review by David Conner ★★★★½ 6

  And the BAFTA awardfor Best Performance by an Eyebrow in a Comedy-Thriller or Musical goes to...Dirk Bogarde’s right one in Cast a Dark Shadow! I swear this movie had moremagnificent arches than the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

  Such a delicious little arsenic-filled cupcake of a film. Bogarde is sitting smack dab in middle of his wheelhouse, serving us sociopathic cad like no one else can. And if you liked Margaret Lockwood’s spunky performance as the gaslit heroine inThe Lady Vanishes, you’ll love her as the waspish second-act sparring partner for our boy Dirk. Her best acid-tongued lines come when she’s upbraiding the dim-witted maid, Emmie. “Don’t just stand there like a wet wig. Get a move on!” Or when Emmie…