A slightly atmospheric but unendingly silly Three Faces of Eve/Sybil jaunt about a frail shut-in named Elizabeth (Eleanor Parker) who lives with her lush aunt (Joan Blondell) and happens to have two other personalities inside her head (a saucy vamp named Lizzie romancing a local playboy (John Reach) and a ‘nice normal girl’ named Beth), brought out by a doctor (Richard Boone) in bland hypnosis sequences. Parker does do a solid job differentiating between Elizabeth and Lizzie (with a lot of assist from the makeup, and I haven’t seen Three Faces of Eve so I can’t contrast them), but there’s very little dramatic interest, especially since the dramatic ‘trigger moment’ of all this splitting-off trauma turns out to be hilariously benign (when she was a kid, she went to the beach with her mom and her mom’s boyfriend, who Elizabeth overheard wishing she would go somewhere so they could make out…yup, that’s it). There’s just…not a lot here, and certainly no reason to watch this when the vastly superior Sybil is also sitting on the shelf, so much more in reach.
[Grade: 5/10 (C) / #24 (of 29) of 1957]
myboringlife42 