A mentally fragile young woman called Sharon Carlin (played by Mala Powers) boards a train for San Francisco where she has been sent by her employer. She is ambushed by an armed man in her compartment who knocks her out. She awakes to find herself framed for the murder of a middle aged woman on the train, but manages to evade the police. She thumbs a ride back to Los Angeles with a divorced insurance broker called Paul Colbert (played by Jacques Bergerac) who agrees to help her out of her predicament. When she finds her drunken, no good boyfriend Keith Burgess (played by John Baer) dead in her apartment, she and Colbert visit her employer Milo Seymour (played by John Harding). Here, Seymour denies ever sending her to San Francisco, accuses her of theft and, worse still, the man whom she believed to be a policeman and the person whom she swears was the murdered woman on the train are present. Seymour informs Colbert that Sharon has escaped from a sanatorium to which she was confined for killing a person who was under her care and that the phony policeman, Brady (played by Robert Karnes), is really a warder from the sanitorium who has come to take her back there. Seymour also says that the woman whom Sharon claims was dead on the train is really his sister Irene Maddox (played by Helena Nash). Is Sharon insane? Was the train trip and the murder all in her imagination? Or, is she being framed as part of an elaborate murder plot? Will Colbert believe Seymour or will he stick by Sharon and try to uncover the truth?
Low budget suspenser very much in the vein of the Jimmy Sangster-Hammer black and white psychological thrillers of the early 1960's. The build-up is excellent in which director Bernard Wiesen creates a lot of tension, aided by the fact that none of the characters are what they seem. The sequence in which Seymour, his sister and Brady do their utmost to convince Colbert that Sharon is insane and not to be trusted is particularly edgy since we are never sure whether or not he will side with them or Sharon. Unfortunately, the climax doesn't quite live up to expectations after a fine first hour in which we had been promised so much. Better than one might normally expect from this kind of picture though. Good performances too.
Low budget suspenser very much in the vein of the Jimmy Sangster-Hammer black and white psychological thrillers of the early 1960's. The build-up is excellent in which director Bernard Wiesen creates a lot of tension, aided by the fact that none of the characters are what they seem. The sequence in which Seymour, his sister and Brady do their utmost to convince Colbert that Sharon is insane and not to be trusted is particularly edgy since we are never sure whether or not he will side with them or Sharon. Unfortunately, the climax doesn't quite live up to expectations after a fine first hour in which we had been promised so much. Better than one might normally expect from this kind of picture though. Good performances too.