So good to finally see a nice print of this film, billed (on TPTV) as Personal Column even though the on screen title is Lured? The film was renamed by producer Hunt Stromberg in the UK and also halfway through its run in the US - he wanted something 'more dignified'. Sirk says Stromberg, formerly a producer at MGM, gave him a free hand 'on the cutting and everything. I also had a great art director on this picture - Remisoff, a Russian. He did an expert job. And this was also the first time I worked with Bill Daniels, a very good cameraman.' Sanders he had worked with already on Summer Storm.
London. Young girls are being murdered, one of them a friend of dancer Lucille Ball. Police Inspector Charles Coburn enlists her to act as bait for the killer; meanwhile nightclub owner George Sanders has his eye on her...
Sirk's counter-casting of people like Ball and Coburn, better known for comedies, gives it a certain flavour; even Boris Karloff wasn't playing quite his usual type (I'm reminded of the crazy people in Tintin adventures who seem harmless until they attack you with a sword or something).
It's quite a bizarre film, especially in the scene with mad dress designer Karloff, showing off his creation to dummies and a dog. And in the sub-plot with Alan Mowbray as a slave trader!
With an interesting supporting cast of Sir Cedric Hardwicke, George Zucco, Joseph Calleia, Tania Chandler, Alan Napier (Batman's Alfred), Robert Coote (AMOLAD).
It was written by Leo Rosten, based on a 1939 Robert Siodmak film called Pieges.
Music by Michel Michelet, who also scored the original. An independent production released through United Artists.
All in all it's an interestingly directed picture with Sirk's 'curious camera' very much in evidence, and most enjoyable.
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