Broadly speaking, Joan Crawford’s career split into four decade-long acts: Striving Joan in her M-G-M ‘30s Prime; Melodramatic rebirth @ Warners in the ‘40s; Mature Joan looking for the fountain of youth & studio deals in the ‘50s; and finally, ‘60s Grotesquerie. BEACH is mid-list Mature Joan, landing at Universal with a noticeable dip in production values and a story that lifts from the best of the ‘40 in a prologue that opens like MILDRED PIERCE/’45 and a main story arc to mirror her recent Oscar-nom’d turn in SUDDEN FEAR/’52.* (Same lenser too, Charles Lang, here reduced to light reflectors faking ocean-front property on studio sets.) A largely ridiculous tale of widowed Joan (in tip-top scary shape) finding her new neighbors are running a con on her. Cecil Kellaway & Natalie Schafer in a crooked pinocle racket, sweetened with graying boy toy Jeff Chandler. Only problem: Mr. Grey (Chandler) falls for Mrs. Black (Crawford) for real. But when circumstantial coincidence (circumstantial coincidence?) makes it look like Chandler plans on doing away with the new bride on the honeymoon cruise, Joan has to think fast to stay alive. Yikes! This might have worked with a bit of style in the acting (everyone feels vaguely insane) or direction (Joseph Pevney’s dutiful megging hasn’t a clue), but they’d still have to come up with something better than the whopper of a twist that unties all the knots here.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The DVD shows in Full-Frame, but original theatrical releases would have cropped the image slightly (like, 1.66 or 1.85:1 aspect ratio) which most players can deliver by enlarging the picture image one notch. Just don’t use the 9X16 anamorphic setting. Streamers probably don't have a choice.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *An even better solution would be to stick with the far superior SUDDEN FEAR/’52 mentioned above, with an initially charming Jack Palance turning deliciously bad.
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